Live by the Code (Star Trek: Enterprise: Rise of the Federation #4)

by Christopher L. Bennett

An ugly sentiment of xenophobia, shifting the blame for the Pebru’s hardships onto outsiders rather than their own leaders, had been spreading through the more gullible and angry segments of the populace, finally erupting into these riots.

Fathers . . . well. They shape us in ways we can’t escape, whether we admit it or not.”

How many times do we have to sacrifice the few before they outnumber the many?

“Consciousness is a special kind of neurological architecture. A network of complex feedback loops that make a mind aware of its own activity, able to modify and direct that activity. In a way, a conscious mind is like a simulation constructed by the brain—a simulation of itself, so that it can take its own activity and attention into account in its own calculations and adjust itself accordingly. It’s crazily complex. It’s something nobody’s ever been able to reproduce in a machine.”

Evolution selects for solutions that work, which is why it so often

looks the same as conscious planning. And if it operates long enough, it can produce some incredibly intricate results.”

All that mattered to them was being true to the precepts of a warrior—to strike quickly or strike not, to face the enemy and reveal one’s true self in combat, to seek adversity and destroy weakness . . . and most of all, to choose death over chains and to die standing up.

It’s the ideas themselves that must be fought—that must be cancelled out by demonstrating that there is a better way.”