More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“Incidentally, if you want to watch while we break orbit, we will be porting the video into our observation deck theater. The theater is quite large and can accommodate all recruits, so don’t worry about seating. The Henry Hudson makes excellent speed, so by breakfast tomorrow the Earth will be a very small disk, and by dinner, nothing more than a bright point in the sky. This will probably be your last chance to see what was your homeworld. If that means something to you, I suggest you drop by.”
“Just look at it,” I said. “All our lives, it’s the only place we’ve ever been. Everyone we ever knew or loved was there. And now we’re leaving it. Doesn’t that make you feel something?”
I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Since I was now officially legally dead on Earth and flying across the solar system in a spaceship, I guess I wasn’t too far off.
“Speak for yourself, Harry,” Thomas said. “If anything, I do believe I am a shade less attractive than in my salad days.” “You’re the same color as a salad these days,” Harry said. “And even if we excuse Doubtful Thomas over here—” “I’m going to cry all the way to a mirror,”
“In the land of the incredibly attractive, the merely good-looking could be in trouble.”
“Now, you may think that this is some sort of generalized hatred that I will carry for the lot of you. Let me assure you that this is not the case. Each of you will fail, but you will fail in your own unique way, and therefore I will dislike each of you on an individual basis. Why, even now, each of you has qualities that irritate the living fuck out of me. Do you believe me?”
You may additionally tell him that Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz has declared that you are not nearly the dipshit that most of your fellow recruits have turned out to be.” “Thank you, Master Sergeant.” “Don’t let it go to your head, Private. You are still a dipshit. Just not a very big one.”
“We don’t pay for drinks,” I said. “This is an all-expenses-paid tour of hell, if you’ll recall.”
“Religion,” I said. All eyes shifted to me, and I suddenly felt like a choirboy who has just farted during a chapel service.
“What is it like when you lose someone you love?” Jane asked. “You die, too,” I said. “And you wait around for your body to catch up.”
