The Consuming Fire (The Interdependency, #2)

by John Scalzi

When a lie has negative consequences, people dislike it. But otherwise? They move on, and eventually the lie as a lie is forgotten, or in this case, codified as the foundation of religious practice and buffed and sanded into something prettier and more congenial.

“Yes, ma’am. A lawyer is here.” “Toss him out a window.” “Her, actually, I think.” “So toss her out, then. Equally defenestratable.”

There were more than a few scientists who knew one little thing, and then thought that knowledge was universally applicable to every other problem, to the point of excluding or discounting information from people whose specialty was that other problem.

The testimonial, recorded on a tablet, would be unseen and unheard by any other living thing. The tablet itself, whose internal battery would drain within two years, would lose the ability to function fifty years later even if it had been charged. The Child itself would be a cold, powerless husk within ten years. It would be never be found by humans or any other intelligent creatures, if there were any. It would drift between the stars for twenty million years before being gravitationally snagged by a passing red dwarf star, which it would orbit for another six million years in a comet-like path before falling into the star and vaporizing into its constituent atoms. But this was all in the future.

“That’s the point of rumors. They’re not based on anything, so nothing is very effective against them. Truth is no defense, and the people fielding these rumors know it.”

Confidence isn’t about knowing you’re right. Confidence is about knowing you can make it right.

“And while we are happy to know that we possess a spy ship so secret that even we were not aware that we possessed it, nevertheless we are concerned about the disposition of the Oliveer Bransid and her crew.”

Kiva considered that she might be developing a thing for Fundapellonan, which on one hand would be a very not-Kiva thing to do, but on the other hand who gave a fuck if it was “not-Kiva,” because she wasn’t some fucking fictional character destined to do whatever some goddamn hack wanted her to do.