Playground

by Richard Powers

The fate of continents is written in water. And sometimes great cities owe their existence to tiny ocean islands.

She had been made for water, gliding through a place edgeless and muffled, free of the blows that had always assaulted her in the world of air.

He was a creature of scientific rationalism, too moral to suspect what Evie had discovered: eager young girls required camouflage.

Taciturnity was just desire that hadn’t yet blossomed.

Certain kinds of scientific young men would always feel drawn to smart extraterrestrials.

Bliss was so simple. Just hold still and look.

“Okay. Remind me again? About the beanie and the potato?” “Put the beanie on. Do not release the potato.” “Don’t release the potato.” “Never release the potato.”

We make things that we hope will be bigger than us, and then we’re desolate when that’s what they become.

Now, even when her waywardness grabbed him by the throat, when her coming and going left him bereft, he knew he would never again think of letting go of the potato. Everything came from the potato. Without the potato, life would be far bleaker.

“Is a thing still garbage, once life starts using it?”

People are like sculptures. You can mold them a little when they start out, but not much. A body wants to be what a body wants to be. I’ve known who these two souls are since we first laid eyes on them.”

‘People with money do scary things.’

needed feeding. “But here’s the thing. Number four. I’m not from the same planet as you. On your planet, there’s always more. More growth, more land, more possibility. You can get in your car and drive for three days, and still not get where you’re going. And when you do get there, it’s time to get going again.

Most everything was now submerged. But what you could still see hinted at all the invisible amazements hidden under the waves.

I will die believing that eggplant is the only remotely believable proof of intelligent design.

We had confirmed for him his enduring nightmare: people he trusted were judging him.

“If two choices are impossible to choose between, it means they have equal merit. Either choice can have your belief. It doesn’t matter which you choose. You shed one chooser and grow into another.”

The priest, as always, chose his words carefully, grasping the power of every spell that came out of a person’s mouth.

The need to solve an intricate puzzle and the need to quiet your brain are twin sons of different mothers.

Or perhaps what a person’s cells come to love and the niche they can live in is laid down by processes too primal for a parent to alter much.

It came to her that this was why she had always shied away from human love. To give it was always to incur a growing obligation: someone else’s gratitude.

How hard it was, how painful, to be grateful for everything.

For every island is a canoe, and all the Earth is an island, living by the grace of the immense and slowly turning blue creature.