The Terraformers

by Annalee Newitz

“Everything is in balance,” she said, evoking the time-honored greeting to avoid mentioning all the out-of-balance shit she’d seen.

Cautiously she deployed the access key and perceived the Spider network. It was not like the tightly hierarchical La Ronge systems; it felt more like the ragged, organic calls of prairie grass.

Inside every conflict, a friendship waits to be born.

One may celebrate the ancestors without approving of everything they’ve done.

We do not make sacrifices, but we do make bargains. Pay attention to the difference. One path leads to a simple death, and the other to a complicated life.

The best way to figure out a problem is to walk through it, literally.

Better to burn it all down than lick the League’s anus! We know how to live in fire. Let those sapiens try it for a while.

When people survived, their most beloved places often survived with them.

Instead of a virgin Pleistocene frontier, Sasky was like every other planet that Earth people had occupied—a chunk of rock and biomass, stolen and re-stolen so many times that even its humblest microbes were of decidedly sketchy provenance.