A Memory Called Empire (Teixcalaan, #1)

by Arkady Martine

THE problem with sending messages was that people responded to them, which meant one had to write more messages in reply.

Patriotism seemed to derive quite easily from extremity. Mahit supposed that was true for all the rioters in the City’s streets, too.

A MIND is a sort of star-chart in reverse: an assembly of memory, conditioned response, and past action held together in a network of electricity and endocrine signaling, rendered down to a single moving point of consciousness.