The Expert System's Brother (Expert System, #1)

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Perhaps you’re tired of my hunger now. Not as tired as I was, but when you’re starving, that starvation sets up a big camp right there at the front of your mind and won’t let you forget. It’s not some pastime you can put down and take up again later when you’re at liberty to do so. It’s your life until it kills you.

Better a thief than a corpse, yes, but better a thief than a beggar as well. The world finds it harder to say no to a thief.

Without struggle, nothing could get better,

I am ashamed of who I was that night, more so because I became a man who has always been within this body but held back by the regard of others. When we surround ourselves with people who call evil good, how quickly we accept their definitions and speak them back, round and round until every way we experience the world is tainted by it.

It is a great poison, to know you have a destiny and that everything you do is right by default.