Exordia

by Seth Dickinson

“As long as we live, this will be our story. The choice, and the choice to make it.”

Anna wants him. Not in the physical sense, no; she wants his fucking clarity, his unyielding righteousness. She drinks up his stare like moral Powerade.

It maneuvers with arrogant disregard for the laws that have constrained humanity. Like a rich man in court, it has its own arrangements.

The mast celebrates its promotion to Real Boy by glowing up to 817 billion degrees Kelvin. It is very good for Earth and Davoud that the Real Boy is smaller than a proton, because it suddenly outshines the brightest star in the galaxy by a factor of four hundred thousand.

To maneuver inside Death, you’ve got to leave someone in hell.

Bahala na: you can only control what you can control, and God can be trusted to see to the rest.

We’re temporarily immortal. We should be at least temporarily immoral too.

He wants to feel something that can’t help feeling good. She sees him break that rightness. Snap it like a bone. For her. God, that’s a thrill.