Beacon 23

by Hugh Howey

Who is this limp-dick, shell-shocked, mamby-wamby space monkey I’ve become?

All that remains are the memories—the one damn thing we wish we could amputate.

Ain’t this the fucking truth

The book is Salaman’s Battle. It’s part of the Frontier Saga by T.W. Rudolf.

config.sys

Anyone that worked with computers before the days of Microsoft and Windows will have a love/hate memory of the config.sys file.

This is what happens when they give you medals for breaking the rules: you forget the rules apply to you.

Five by five is what someone used to say back in some other time to mean that everything is okay.

Loud and Clear

You die a little inside every time you have joyless sex. Neurons prune back. The good in there withers. And some things never grow back.

Truth so pure it burns

How do you share what you think no one else can hold? Why do we all do this to ourselves and each other? Why can’t we just fucking cry like men?

And she shows me that I’m not alone. And we cry like the universe is about to end.

We’d get hit by these frag grenades of nicety.

Our mood is as much expectation as experience.

So this is the thing I learned from Claire: Crying isn’t simply about opening the floodgates to some private trauma and letting it out—crying is just as much about letting those around you know you’re hurting.

Our tears are trying to serve a purpose, but we rarely let them.

I just know that it takes a bit of courage to unlearn that shame, and to be there for others when they try to unlearn that shame, and that it all gets easier after you feel how healthy it is.