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February 28 - April 2, 2025
the constant sounds of people working and laughing and fighting all around him had become a comfort. The open was an empty place to be, and there were moments when even the most seasoned spacer might look to the star-flecked void outside with humility and awe.
“The very fact that we use the term ‘cold-blooded’ as a synonym for ‘heartless’ should tell you something about the innate bias we primates hold against reptiles,”
“Do not judge other species by your own social norms.”
Harmagians had money. Aeluons had firepower. Aandrisks had diplomacy. Humans had arguments.
The point of a family, he’d always thought, was to enjoy the experience of bringing something new into the universe, passing on your knowledge and seeing part of yourself live on. He had come to realize that his life in the sky filled that need.
Weren’t they all born running the Basic Human Starter Platform, which was shaped and changed as they went along?
Acting all sanctimonious while spouting bad info was a terrible way to win a debate, but a great way to piss people off.
Just walking. Bare-bloody-foot. With, like, lions everywhere. Lions.” “Not everywhere,” Sissix said. “Listen, when you’re talking about lions, it doesn’t matter if they’re literally everywhere,” Kizzy said. “Knowing there are a few lions that might be around is bad enough.”
“Want and intelligence,” the historian had written, “is a dangerous combination.”
Time was a curious equalizer.
You know how when you have something big to tell someone, you stammer through it or sit in front of your mirror practicing what to say? Aandrisks don’t bother with that. They let the gestures take care of all the awkwards. They figure that big, deep feelings are universal enough to be defined with just a flick of the hand or whatever, even though the events that cause those feelings are unique.”
on her wall, there’s this big fancy frame with a mess of Aandrisk feathers hanging from it. Every Aandrisk’s got one, as far as I know. See, if you’re an Aandrisk and somebody really touches your life in some way, you give that person one of your feathers. And then you keep the feathers you get from others as a symbol of how many paths you’ve crossed. Having a lot of feathers on your wall shows that you’ve had an impact on a lot of people. That’s a pretty big life priority for most Aandrisks. But they don’t give feathers out casually, not, like, for helping you carry something or giving you a
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“Being weird doesn’t mean that she doesn’t deserve companionship.
“Being alone and untouched . . . there’s no punishment worse than that. And she’s done nothing wrong. She’s just different.”
Aeluons, by some weird fluke of evolution, had a look that made most Humans drop their jaws, hold up their palms and say, “Okay, you are a superior species.”
Pei had many scars—corded stripes across her back, healed bullet holes on her legs and chest, a warped patch left over from the business end of a pulse rifle. Her body was a tapestry of violence.
Humans can’t handle war. Everything I know about our history shows that it brings out the worst in us.
Humans, we’ve got something dangerous in us. We almost destroyed ourselves because of it.”
A black hole was the perfect place to contemplate death. There was nothing in the universe that could last forever. Not stars. Not matter. Nothing.
How is it possible that when meeting our galactic neighbors for the first time, we are all instantly reminded of creatures back home—or in some cases, of ourselves?
If we all evolved on such kindred worlds, why is it such a surprise that our evolutionary paths have so much in common? Why can we not conclude that the right combination of specific environmental factors will always result in predictable physical adaptations?
In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.
He took out a misting bottle and a riksith—a small, flat board with a rough coating on one side. Kizzy had once called it “a nail file for your entire self.”
The idea that a loss of potential was somehow worse than a loss of achievement and knowledge was something she had never been able to wrap her brain around.
“Just because you leave home doesn’t mean you stop caring about it.
But that’s the risk you take in trying to be more than the little box you’re born into. Change is always dangerous.”
this was a Human concept, the idea that one could hide their feelings away and pretend that they were not there. Dr. Chef knew exactly where all of his feelings were, every joy, every ache. He didn’t need to visit them all at once to know they were there.
Humans’ preoccupation with “being happy” was something he had never been able to figure out. No sapient could sustain happiness all of the time, just as no one could live permanently within anger, or boredom, or grief.
He did not run from his grief, nor did he deny its existence. He could study his grief from a distance, like a scientist observing animals. He embraced it, accepted it, acknowledged that it would never go awa...
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there’s one big thing that Grum and Humans have in common, and that is our capacity for cruelty. Which is not to say we are bad at the core. I think both of our species have good intentions. But when left to our passions, we have it within ourselves to do despicable things. The only reason Humans stopped killing each other to the extent that you used to, I think, is because your planet died before you could finish the job. My species was not so lucky.
Such a quintessentially Human thing, to express sorrow through apology.
The memories reached out to Dr. Chef, trying to pull him away from his safe observation point. They tugged, begging for him to give in. But he would not. He was not a prisoner of those memories. He was their warden.
“We cannot blame ourselves for the wars our parents start. Sometimes the very best thing we can do is walk away.”
he had everything. That made him feel safe and powerful. People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. Your father had probably gotten his way for so long that he thought he was untouchable, and that is a dangerous way for a person to feel.
You found something dark within your own house, and you are wondering how much of it has rubbed off on you.”
Feelings are relative. And at the root, they’re all the same, even if they grow from different experiences and exist on different scales.”
The truth is, Rosemary, that you are capable of anything. Good or bad. You always have been, and you always will be. Given the right push, you, too, could do horrible things. That darkness exists within all of us.
You think every soldier who picked up a cutter gun was a bad person? No. She was just doing what the soldier next to her was doing, who was doing what the soldier next to her was doing, and so on and so on. And I bet most of them—not all, but most—who made it through the war spent a long time after trying to understand what they’d done. Wondering how they ever could have done it in the first place.
“All you can do, Rosemary—all any of us can do—is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play.
“Most days I wake up and have no idea what the hell I’m doing.” He puffed his cheeks. “I don’t mean the practical details. Nobody ever figures those out. I mean the important thing. The thing I had to do, too.” He made a clucking sound. He knew she would not understand it, but it came naturally. The sort of sound a mother made over a child learning to stand. “You’re trying to be someone good.”
While the actual physical blocks would stay where she left them, her brain was always full of new configurations that she hadn’t tried yet. If she didn’t get them out before she fell asleep, they’d be totally forgotten by morning,
There are few things as unsettling as a lack of control in an unfamiliar situation.”
I never thought of fear as something that can go away. It just is. It reminds me that I want to stay alive.
Elders don’t shift around as much. They’re more stable. And most important, they’ve got life experience. They’re wise. They know things.” She smirked. “I’ll never understand how the rest of you expect brand-new adults to be able to teach kids how to be people.”
It was a look of profound gratitude, the sort that comes at the end of a long wait, at being able to exhale after holding your breath until your lungs burned.
He said, ‘This means we matter. We’re worth something.’ And I said, ‘Of course you’re worth something. Everyone is worth something.’ And he said, ‘But now I know the galaxy thinks so, too.’”
It was more than just missing the smell of the desert grass or being able to fall back into Reskitkish. It was that people there understood. As dear as her crewmates were, constantly having to explain cultural differences, to bite back a friendly remark that might offend alien ears, to hold her hands still when she wanted to touch someone—it all grew tiring.
Perhaps the ache of homesickness was a fair price to pay for having so many good people in her life.
Tresha. It was the thankful, humble, vulnerable feeling that came after someone saw a truth in you, something they had discovered just by watching, something that you did not admit often to yourself.
It was funny how the potential for profit always seemed to trump antipathy.
