The Collapsing Empire (The Interdependency, #1)

by John Scalzi

If I know nothing else, ma’am, I know that you are worth being loyal to.”

I need to believe you might actually be able to save the world.”

It was nice when you could look up to your parent, even as an adult, and think, This is who I fucking want to be when I grow up.

they’d created possibly the most ridiculously complex method of ensuring the survival of the species they could have devised.

“That’s the human brain,” Attavio VI said. “It creates patterns when there aren’t any. Imagines causality when there is none. Imagines a narrative where none exists. It’s in the design of the brain itself. It’s primed to lie.”