Beacon 23

by Hugh Howey

Part One: Little Noises • 1 • They don’t prepare you for the little noises.

I’m here because they haven’t made a computer yet that won’t do something stupid one time out of a hundred trillion. Seems like good odds, but when computers are doing trillions of things a day, that means a whole lot of stupid.

dropping his stogie, and leaping through the lighthouse door just in time to save his ass from getting washed away. This is the thing about being a hero: It’s all about when you get your picture taken

The chewy meat center of their big ol’ spacesicle.

They’re statistics. Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name.

In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, “Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight!”

Drunks are an asset on the front line, the army taught me. In the air, we’re a nuisance.

“You’re . . . a rock,” I tell the rock. “The fuck I am.”

They say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming. They don’t stop. They’ll never stop.

she can read my mind, and yet somehow she doesn’t seem to hear a word I say.

There’s no up or down to the cosmos, just a whole bunch of fucking sideways.

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming,

feel this way as an adult

We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future. Our mood is as much expectation as experience.

This is the story of my life, I suppose: always in the right place at the right time, and then I don’t do anything. I stand there.

no one knows whether these rumors are true, but we tend to spread and believe the worst of what we hear.

I’ve known it because there’s no escaping it. War is always coming—it’s only ever a matter of time.

Our brains can fool us. Mine makes a fool out of me.

the only thing that ends a war like this is trust, release, love for those we hate, arms around those who would kill us, forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.