The Red: First Light (The Red, #1)

by Linda Nagata

THERE NEEDS TO BE A WAR going on somewhere, Sergeant Vasquez. It’s a fact of life. Without a conflict of decent size, too many international defense contractors will find themselves out of business.

I want to apologize for the hell I’ve put him through, but I don’t, because an apology implies you’d do things differently, if it was given to you to do it all again.

I mean, we all have an image of ourselves, right? I think it leverages that image, using our beliefs, our hopes, our expectations, giving each of us a chance to shine in our own personal story.”

I don’t really want a chance to shine. I think that when God’s making plans, it’s best to stay out of the way.

The amount of data gathered on any one of us is mind-boggling—but

“Well, I can’t know for sure, but penniless fuckups make lousy customers, don’t they?”

“So the Red makes optimized customers? Happy little consumers who buy more shit?”

good people—quietly financed war after war because it’s easier to pay our taxes than to risk our livelihoods by trying to change the system.

People cutting themselves off from everyone but their tribe—that scares me. We all know where that goes. But it’s worse, because the filters that go up around us aren’t necessarily our choice. It’s like an external agent is working to engineer the distribution of information, and divide us from each other.”

“Justice over loyalty?” “There’s no honor in being loyal to a corrupt system.”

No self-respecting survivalist should ever opt to watch the world die from the cushy shore of a tropical island.

When the mechanisms of justice fail, justice must be served by other means.