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Everyone is guilty of something, and everyone still harbors a memory of childhood innocence, no matter how many layers of life wrap around it. Humanity is innocent; humanity is guilty, and both states are undeniably true.
We are instructed to write down not just our deeds but our feelings, because it must be known that we do have feelings. Remorse. Regret. Sorrow too great to bear. Because if we didn’t feel those things, what monsters would we be?
Hope in the shadow of fear is the world’s most powerful motivator.
Who cared about the lettuce when the beef was being devoured?
Rumors adhered to no logic but their own.
The very idea of schooling used to be about learning so that we could improve our lives and the world. But a perfect world needs no improvement. Like most everything else we do, education, from grade school through the highest of universities, is just a way to keep us busy.
With nothing to really aspire to, life had become about maintenance. Eternal maintenance.
The greatest achievement of the human race was not conquering death. It was ending government.
For to put oneself above all other laws is a fundamental recipe for disaster.
There was no 15B – the concept of the B seat, where one had to sit between two other passengers, had been eliminated along with other unpleasant things, like disease and government.
She was the type of girl who participates, and Rowan was the kind of kid who avoids. Their circles were about as far from intersecting as Jupiter and Mars in the night sky. Now, however, they had been pulled into convergence.
“Some are merely dusty, others tarnished. You shall decide what type of care each one needs.”
Although we all have what we need, we’re still allowed to strive for the things we want. Of course, no one strives like they did in mortal days, when the inequality was so great people would actually steal from one another – sometimes ending lives in the process. I wouldn’t want the return of crime, but I do tire of we scythes being the sole purveyors of fear. It would be nice to have competition.
We are not the same beings we once were. So then, if we are no longer human, what are we?
Curiosity is human; I merely allowed you to get it out of your system. I have to say, it took you long enough.” Then he gave her a little conspiratorial grin. “Now let’s see how long it takes Rowan to go for the ring.”
I wonder what life will be like a millennium from now, when the average age will be nearer to one thousand. Will we all be renaissance children, skilled at every art and science, because we’ve had the time to master them? Or will boredom and slavish routine plague us even more than it does today, giving us less of a reason to live limitless lives? I dream of the former, but suspect the latter.
Citra watched, feeling almost detached, as if this were a tennis match and it was match point. But she wasn’t an observer, was she? She was the ball. And so was Rowan.
When the weight of responsibility felt so heavy, leaving the yoke of the world behind seemed a better alternative. But one thought always stayed my hand from committing that final act. If not me, who?
“True solace can be worth its weight in gold.”
In the Age of Mortality, death would often come with no warning. It is our task to mimic what we’ve stolen from nature – and so that is the face of death I’ve chosen to recreate.
Immortality has turned us all into cartoons.
