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“You’re telling me,” Cooper plowed on, “you need two numbers to measure your own ass, but just one to measure my son’s future?”
He remembered Donald’s words again. But even if he were anywhere near to being in the market for another wife, no amount of looks could make up for this amount of stupid.
“We used to look up and wonder at our place in the stars,” he said. “Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.”
“Our children need to learn about this planet. Not tales of leaving it.” As if the Earth existed without the sun, the planets, the stars, the rest of the universe. As if staring harder at the dirt would give them all the answers they needed.
“Don’t trust the right thing, done for the wrong reason. The ‘why’ of a thing—that’s the foundation.”
“We farmers sit here every year when the rains fail and say ‘next year.’” He paused, and looked at his father-in-law. “Next year ain’t gonna save us. Nor the one after. This world’s a treasure, Donald. But she’s been telling us to leave for a while now. Mankind was born on Earth. It was never meant to die here.”
“One word,” she continued. “You know what it is?” He shook his head. She held out her notebook so he could see it. STAY
In space, distance was time, and time was distance.
Brand reached toward it. “Don’t!” Romilly warned, as it touched her, and her hand began to ripple; like the air, like the wormhole. But she felt nothing, no pain. Nothing but delight.
“What was that?” Romilly asked her. She touched her hand, remembering the presence, the sentience she had felt, out of phase, in different dimensions, but sharing the same space. “The first handshake,” she replied.
“Airbrake?” Case said. Cooper noted for future reference that Case apparently had an “are you kidding me?” setting.
“We’re not prepared for this, Brand,” he said. “You’re a bunch of eggheads without the survival skills of a Boy Scout troop.” “We got this far on our brains,” she said defensively. “Further than any humans in history.” “Not far enough,” he said. “And we’re stuck here till there won’t be anyone left on Earth to save.”
Cooper leaned back and just let it come, tears streaming down his face. And it kept coming for a long time, and he kept hoping that maybe, maybe Murph would appear. But she didn’t. It was always Tom or Donald. So he watched them age.
He owed the old man a lot, and there was no way to repay him. Sometimes you have to see your life from far away for it to make sense, he thought. To see what was probably obvious to anyone else.
“But today’s my birthday,” she explained. “And it’s a special one because you once told me—” Her voice caught, and for a moment she couldn’t speak. “You once told me that when you came back we might be the same age… and today I’m the same age you were when you left.” Her eyes glistened as tears started to form. “So it’d be a real good time for you to come back,” she said.
“I’m not afraid of death, Murph,” the professor told her. “I’m an old physicist. I’m afraid of time.”
“Murphy’s Law—whatever can happen will happen. Accident is the first building block of evolution—but if you’re orbiting a black hole not enough can happen.
Love is the one thing we’re capable of perceiving that transcends dimensions of time and space.
Sure, Tars was a machine, but he was a person, too—in a way. “You’d do this for us?” Cooper asked the machine. “Before you get teary,” Tars said, “try to remember that as a robot I have to do anything you say, anyway.” “Your cue light’s broken,” Cooper said, when no LED came on. “I’m not joking,” Tars replied. Only then did the light flash on.
Tars might have survived the wave that killed Miller, at least long enough to post a sign on the cosmic bulletin board that said “Keep the hell away from here!”
“Do not go gentle into that good night,” Mann said. Cooper remembered of course—the professor’s comforting voice, wishing them farewell as they slipped the shackles of Earth and headed out toward Saturn, the wormhole, the stars beyond. His words had been a guide, a path to follow, a message of hope. On Mann’s lips they were a eulogy.
“The autopilot does,” Cooper replied, thinking about how screwed they were. There was simply no way to beat him there… “Not since Tars disabled it,” Case said. Cooper looked over to the airlock and the singed robot that occupied it. He felt a blaze of newfound respect. “Nice,” he said. “What’s your trust setting?” “Lower than yours, apparently,” Tars replied.
Being human was to inherit from a parent, a sibling, a family, a community, a town, a culture, a civilization.
“That little maneuver cost us fifty-one years,” Cooper reported. “You don’t sound bad for a hundred and twenty,” Amelia responded, a little giddy with reaction.
“I thought they chose me,” Cooper said. “They never chose me. They chose Murph.” “For what?” Tars asked. “To save the world!” Cooper replied.
“Murph,” he said after a time. “It was me. I was your ghost.” “I know,” she said, lifting her wrist, showing him the watch.
“Nobody believed me, but I knew you’d come back.” “How?” Cooper asked. “Because my dad promised me,” she replied.
