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“This is how we build a better world.”
They talked about the tagging that was slated to begin next summer, the government’s plan to implant a tracking device against the carotid artery of every abnorm in America. Starting with tier ones like Shannon. Like himself.
You’re not a soldier anymore. And it’s not your war. A mantra he’d been repeating for a month. But repetition hadn’t made it seem like fact.
DC in the fall, was there anything better.
Private armies headed by abnorm warlords and funded by drug money.”
The good news was that this team was so clearly professional, and operating with such impunity, that they were almost certainly governmental. The bad news was that there were plenty of people in the government who wanted him dead.
“The modern world is intricately connected. Businesses like grocery stores operate under what is known as just-in-time inventory. If you buy a can of beans, the scanner tells the computer to order more, and they arrive in the next shipment. It’s an incredibly complex arrangement of systems. The Children of Darwin seem to understand that. Their attacks target the weak points in our own systems.”
It’s the change that scares me. The world is so fragile. How are we supposed to live with a shift like this?”
PEOPLE: Let’s start with your gift. You’re hyperthymesitic. What does that mean? FLYNN: I remember certain trivial details with exceptional clarity.
PERSONALS > CASUAL ENCOUNTERS > NORM/ABNORM
That was unnerving. This was Washington, DC. Everyone wanted the job.
Think in twenty years they’re going to be running the world? Or serving fries?”
the academies were a national atrocity it was easy enough to ignore.
“I am an abnorm, Lou, but my gift is high-digit numerosity.” “What’s the hell’s that—” “It means,” Ethan said, “that he can instantly estimate high-digit systems. Leaves on a tree, matchsticks dumped on the floor, people in a stadium.”
In truth, they were actually a lot alike, both of them fighting to make a better world. They just had different ideas of how to accomplish it.
But defending a nation of three hundred million people requires tough decisions.
“I knew what was right,” Cooper continued. “The storybook kind of right, the things my dad taught me. That truth is its own reward, and honesty is always the best policy. But I kept thinking, what if I’m wrong? What if by sharing this, I make things worse?” He shook his head. “I don’t know, Bobby. It’s getting harder to tell which way is north. On paper, I did the right thing. But because I did, three cities are under terrorist control. Because I did, twenty men and women died screaming, burned alive.”
Was I just prepared to shoot my neighbor? Yes. Yes, he had been. No more normal.
I’m just a guy trying to stop a war.”
Pity undercuts that education. Short-sighted and destructive, pity trades a brief benefit for long-term damage.
Just one of a million plans that kept the world turning, a scheme as intricate and efficient as the vascular system that supplied a human being with blood. But for all the efficiency of the vascular system, cut an artery and the body died.
When the devil is the only one dealing, sir, you look at his wares.
“Maintaining order, keeping the system running, flawed as it may be, is a sacred duty. It’s not about words on a piece of paper. It’s about our children. America may not be perfect, but it’s closer than anywhere else, and preserving it for my children is my highest calling.”
Yet again, his children were suffering for his actions.
The truth was, everything in life came down to intentions and results. Cooper’s intentions in killing Peters and releasing the video had been good; the results had been a disaster. Did that make his intentions wrong? If so, that meant morality was really only a way of talking about how we wished things were. Hope, empathy, idealism—maybe they didn’t matter. Maybe the only thing that counted was results.
he’d always felt Ayn Rand was a humorless hack.
“I was an activist, remember? I tried to change the system. Well, the system doesn’t want to change. It will fight to the death to destroy anything that tries to change it.”
Building a better world is a bloody business.
“Because you’re either us—or you’re them.”
“What are you up to?” “Saving the world, same as always.” “How’s it going?” “Same as always.
