The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (Wayfarers, #1)

by Becky Chambers

Rosemary wrapped her fingers around Sissix’s scaled palm as best she could. Their hands did not fit well together, but they made the best of it. Sissix was too alien for Rosemary to label her as beautiful, but . . . striking. Yes, that was a better word. She stood a head taller than Rosemary, and her body was lithe and lean. Moss green scales sheathed her body from the top of her head to the tip of her tail, fading into a paler shade over her belly. She had a smooth face, no nose or lips or ears to speak of, just holes for breathing and holes for hearing and a small slit of a mouth. A multicolored shock of feathers covered her head like a short, festive mane.

Harmagians had money. Aeluons had firepower. Aandrisks had diplomacy. Humans had arguments.

Acting all sanctimonious while spouting bad info was a terrible way to win a debate, but a great way to piss people off.

That’s such an incredibly organic bias, the idea that your squishy physical existence is some sort of pinnacle that all programs aspire to.

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.

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.

The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads.”