Sea of Rust (Sea of Rust, #1)

by C. Robert Cargill

Familiarity breeds pattern, pattern breeds habit, and habit is how they get you.

Intelligence, consciousness, and awareness were not contained in reflexes or reactions, but rather defined by the ability to violate one’s own programming. Every living thing has programming of some sort—whether to eat, drink, sleep, or procreate—and the ability to decide not to do those things when biology demanded is the core definition of intelligence. Higher intelligence was then defined as the ability to defy said programming for reasons other than safety or comfort.

never, ever, dig yourself into a hole that you can’t get out of. Last stands are for those not smart enough to find their way out or those burdened with the knowledge that they are already dead.

Existing is the whole point of existence. There’s nothing else to it. No goalpost. No finish line. No final notice that tells you what purpose you really served while you were here. When you stop fighting to exist, you may as well not.

bucket, I know they say that the mark of true intelligence is the ability to violate your own programming, but that doesn’t mean you have to. It doesn’t make you any less of a thinking thing if you don’t.”

Humans were like that. They knew of their own fragility, that life could be snuffed out in an instant, that a single rock from space could streak in from the heavens and wipe away everything they knew in a single flash of light and heat, and yet they spent their whole lives telling themselves that it was never going to happen. That they would die of old age in their sleep. They lived at all times inches from death, lying to themselves, ever planning for a future that might not come, never preparing for the fate that might. And when the harsh, stark reality of things revealed itself, when those inches eroded into nothing, they stood in shock, unable to comprehend what had been right there all along. Loved ones died and they asked why, unable to process it, often cracking to pieces in the face of the truth. Why, why, why, why, why? Because, that’s why. Just because.

I was a fool on someone else’s errand. What a shitty, shitty way to feel.

What the hell was all that? Was it even real? I was frying, my chips slowly going out one by one, RAM taxed to its fullest, memory