A Closed and Common Orbit (Wayfarers, #2)

by Becky Chambers

But then she looked up again, up at the big soft galaxy, and after a bit, she felt okay. She felt good. Somehow, outside, looking at the stars, everything was a little better.

I love learning. I love history. But there’s history in everything. Every building, everybody you talk to. It’s not limited to libraries and museums. I think people who spend their lives in school forget that sometimes.’

There are few better ways to get to know how a species thinks than to learn their art.’

She slept, kind of. It wasn’t a real sleep, just a confusion she dipped in and out of until she heard the flutter of lizard-birds overhead, which meant the sun was coming up.

And no matter what the sims said about the power of a single solitary hero, there were some things just too big to change alone.

Had he been more comfortable with her when she’d been easy to control? When she’d been truthful by default? She hoped not.

She had worked for nine years to get out of that place. Nine years where she thought of nothing but leaving, but now . . . now she dug her toes into the dirt, trying to hold on.

‘Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it.

‘All the things made better for some people. Nobody has ever figured out how to make things better for everybody.’

But it will never feel the same as it did when I was a kid. I’m different now. And different is good, but it cuts both ways.’

You are all desperate for purpose, even though you don’t have one. You’re animals, and animals don’t have a purpose. Animals just are. And there are a lot of intelligent – sentient, maybe – animals out there who don’t have a problem with that. They just go on breathing and mating and eating each other without a second thought. But the animals like you – the ones who make tools and build cities and itch to explore, you all share a need for purpose. For reason.

All of your histories are the same, in essence. They’re all stories of animals warring and clashing because you can’t agree on what you’re for, or why you exist.