Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)

by Becky Chambers

‘From the stars, came the ground,’ she said to the body. ‘From the ground, we stood. To the ground, we return.’

She is now, and always, a member of our Fleet. By our laws, she is assured shelter and passage here. If we have food, she will eat. If we have air, she will breathe. If we have fuel, she will fly. She is daughter to all grown, sister to all still growing. We will care for her, protect her, guide her.

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

We’re not detached from Earth. We turn into earth.

‘Despite growing up in an environment that is utterly artificial, we default to the rawest, purest state at the end. So you can’t tell me that our souls are sick and broken when they’re inextricably linked to a force that powerful. Whatever soul we got from Earth – whatever that even means – we took it with us when we came out here.

‘Knowledge should always be free,’ she said. ‘What people do with it is up to them.’

She knew better than to get dragged along by ifs in situations like these, and she shut that line of questioning down. The guilt lingered, even so. Ghosts were imaginary, but hauntings were real.

From death, you took life, and from your death, we now live. Here you will stay, until we rejoin the stars once more.’

My own research methodology professor phrased this concept succinctly: learn nothing of your subjects, and you will disrupt them. Learn something of your subjects, and you will disrupt them.

She’d wanted a recycling bin, a compost box, somewhere she could throw the junk cluttering her brain.

‘We die one way or another. That’s a given. What’s not is being remembered after the fact.

‘Our species doesn’t operate by reality. It operates by stories.

That’s a poisonous thing, thinking your way is all there is. The only way to really appreciate your way is to compare it to somebody else’s way. 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.