Authority (Southern Reach #2)

by Jeff Vandermeer

“We live in a universe driven by chance,” his father had said once, “but the bullshit artists all want causality.”

The thing about people who wanted to show you things was that sometimes their interest in granting you knowledge was laced with a little voyeuristic sadism. They were waiting for the Look or the Reaction, and they didn’t care what it was so long as it inflicted some kind of discomfort.

Whitby chimed in unexpectedly: “Rabbits have three eyelids and can’t vomit.” For a moment Control, startled that Whitby had spoken, assigned more significance to the statement than it deserved.

lunch repeated too many times became a meaningless word that morphed into lunge that became lunged that became a leaping white rabbit that became the biologist at the depressing table that became an expedition around a campfire, unaware of what they were about to endure.

“We shouldn’t take the meaning of words for granted!” and he would shout back, “You mean a word like border?”

The director, followed by that unnatural silence. Were her eyes closed, or did she not have eyes anymore?

He wondered why the stewardesses were looking at him funny by mid-flight, and realized he’d been responding to their rote kindness with the intensity of someone who has never experienced courtesy, or never expects to experience it again.