A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot, #1)

by Becky Chambers

Any other day, the act of going through a door was something Dex gave no more thought to than putting one foot in front of the other. But there was a gravity to leaving a place for good, a deep sense of seismic change.

Find the strength to do both.

stridulated

endemic.

incongruously

Oh, and there’s Black Marbled Frostfrog. It’s something of a legend. It’s been holed up in a cave, watching stalagmites form for three and a half decades, and plans to do nothing else. A lot of robots do things like that. Not

“I am made of metal and numbers; you are made of water and genes. But we are each something more than that. And we can’t define what that something more is simply by our raw components.

“I appreciate the intent. I really do. But if you don’t want to infringe upon my agency, let me have agency. I want to carry the tank.”

thicket?” “I … can’t say that I have.” “It’s a fine lesson in trampling. Sometimes, damage is unavoidable.

“So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.”

Without constructs, you will unravel few mysteries. Without knowledge of the mysteries, your constructs will fail. These pursuits are what make us, but without comfort, you will lack the strength to sustain either.’”

If we want change, or good fortune, or solace, we have to create it for ourselves.

You are not separate or other. You’re an animal. And animals have no purpose. Nothing has a purpose. The world simply is. If you want to do things that are meaningful to others, fine! Good!

it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”

“Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing?

You and I—we’re just atoms that arranged themselves the right way, and we can understand that about ourselves. Is that not amazing?”