Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

The guilt lingered, even so. Ghosts were imaginary, but hauntings were real.

‘Our species doesn’t operate by reality. It operates by stories. Cities are a story. Money is a story. Space was a story, once. A king tells us a story about who we are and why we’re great, and that story is enough to make us go kill people who tell a different story. Or maybe the people kill the king because they don’t like his story and have begun to tell themselves a different one.