Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

‘From the ground, we stand. From our ships, we live. By the stars, we hope.’

So, even when we lose people we love, they don’t leave us.’ She pressed her palm flat against her chest. ‘We’re made out of our ancestors. They’re what keep us alive.’

Everybody had a home, and nobody went hungry. There was a practical necessity in that, he knew. A ship full of people fighting over food and space wouldn’t last long. But there was compassion, too, a commitment to basic decency. Too many people back on Earth had been hungry and cold. It was one of the copious problems the first Exodans had vowed not to take with them.

‘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.

Figure out what you love, specifically. In detail. Figure out what you want to keep. Figure out what you want to change. Otherwise, it’s not love. It’s clinging to the familiar – to the comfortable – and that’s a dangerous thing for us short-term thinkers to do.

Yes, things had changed, and would keep changing. Life meant death, always. But by the same token, death meant life.