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Human beings have a remarkable ability to accept the abnormal and make it normal.
Oh thank God. I can’t imagine explaining “sleep” to someone who had never heard of it. Hey, I’m going to fall unconscious and hallucinate for a while. By the way, I spend a third of my time doing this. And if I can’t do it for a while, I go insane and eventually die. No need for concern.
Deadline-induced quality issues: a problem all over the galaxy.
Do you believe in God? I know it’s a personal question. I do. And I think He was pretty awesome to make relativity a thing, don’t you? The faster you go, the less time you experience. It’s like He’s inviting us to explore the universe, you know?”
I should have a bolo tie. Maybe a cowboy hat. Because I’m a rancher now. And I’m running about 50 million head of Taumoeba on my ranch.
The hardest part about working with aliens and saving humanity from extinction is constantly having to come up with names for stuff.
But I can’t just sit around for eleven days when there’s so much work to do. How do I explain “impatience” to someone who lives seven hundred years? “Human thing,” I say. “Understand. Not actually understand, but…understand.”
He puts down two tools and picks up three more. “If all plans work, we make good Taumoeba. I give you fuel. You go Earth and I go Erid. We say goodbye.” “Yeah, I guess,” I mumble. I should be happier about surviving a suicide mission, returning home a hero, and saving my entire species. But saying goodbye to Rocky forever will be hard. I put it out of my mind.
He bounces back and forth some more. “Erid will live! Earth will live! Everyone live!” He curls the claws of one hand into a ball and presses it against the xenonite. “Fist me!” I push my knuckles against the xenonite. “It’s ‘fist-bump,’ but yeah.”
Anyway, it means I can finally eat meat. Yes, that’s right, I’m eating human meat. But it’s my own meat, and I don’t feel bad about it. Spend a decade eating nothing but odd-tasting, vaguely sweet vitamin shakes and then see if you’ll turn down a burger.
