Pushing Brilliance (Kyle Achilles, #1)

by Tim Tigner

One second the rabbit is chewing alfalfa, the next second the rabbit is alfalfa. Not because it’s too slow or too stupid ... but because it’s out of its element.”

TIME LIES. It masquerades in symmetrical guise, using clocks and calendars as accomplices. They cloak it in perfect uniformity, regular as hatch marks on a ruler, stretching forward and backward without variance of size or scale or import. As anyone who has lived even a little knows, this is a grand deception.

The day that would forever split my life into before and after.

As they say, a problem shared is a problem halved.

“Women, at least, all seem to have that common dream. But we differ on how. The vast majority opt for a tour bus trip. They want safe hotels, familiar food, and guides who speak their language. They want to hit all the must-see sights, without fail. They’re willing to settle for a guaranteed B-minus experience, because it’s predictable. The tourism industry has evolved to cater to them — the multitudes, the risk-averse.” She met my eyes and I saw fire within. “Then there are the backpackers. A paper map in their pocket and a few euros in their shoe. They figure things out on the fly, and enjoy an unscripted experience. They’re the only people who have a shot at experiencing the real Paris, and that’s only because they’re willing to risk an F in order to earn an A. You follow?” “Sure.” “I’m a backpacker, Achilles. I want to live. I want to suck up every second I can of this strange new world of yours, because I know that I’ll never see it again. Soon, I’ll be back in my ivory tower. And that’s fine. I love it there. But while I’m here in your world, I want to live it. I’m not one to settle for a guaranteed B-minus in life.”

Here, you’ve got New York, but you’ve also got Washington, and Chicago, and LA, and Dallas, and Miami, and, and, and. They might not all be considered quite equal, but to each her own. In Russia, on the other hand, there’s just Moscow.

A quote by Martina Navratilova popped into my mind. The moment of victory is much too short to live for that and nothing else.

For millennia, only the wary lived long enough to reproduce, so now extreme caution is built into our DNA. This creates what military minds would call a disproportionate response.

Rodents and bugs rarely harm anyone in the civilized world, but we still react to them as if they’re hand grenades.”

Over time, I conditioned myself to calibrate my psychological response to dangers based on their probability. I learned to evaluate before I react.”