Children of Time (Children of Time, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

The whole point of civilization is that we exceed the limits of nature, you tedious little primitives.

That is the problem with ignorance. You can never truly know the extent of what you are ignorant about.

They are performing that oldest of tricks: constructing a path by which to reach a destination, only in this case the destination is permanent security. With each step they take towards it, that security recedes. And, with each step they take, the cost of progressing towards such security grows, and the actions required to move forward become more and more extreme.

You are made of My will, and you are made of the technology of that other world, but all of this has been to speed you on a path you might have taken without me, given time and opportunity. You are Mine, but you also belong to the universe, and your purpose is whatever you choose. Your purpose is to survive and grow and prosper and to seek to understand, just as my people should have taken these things as their purpose, had they not fallen into foolishness, and perished.

This is why they chose her. She is a pioneer, a risk-taker, a spider never satisfied with simply sitting and waiting for the world to come to her. She is a hero, but one more envied than emulated.

She has never been one to just sit and wait: she needs to plan or she needs to act.

The spiders have equivalents of the Prisoners’ Dilemma, but they think in terms of intricate interconnectivity, of a world not just of sight but of constant vibration and scent. The idea of two prisoners incapable of communication would not be an acceptable status quo for them, but a problem to overcome: the Prisoners’ Dilemma as a Gordian knot, to be cut through rather than be bound by.

Life is not perfect, individuals will always be flawed, but empathy – the sheer inability to see those around them as anything other than people too – conquers all, in the end.