The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3)

by John Scalzi

To the women who are done with other people’s shit

“I don’t need a therapist.” “I’d get a second opinion on that if I were you.” “I’ll take that under advisement.”

“The fact you are trying to reduce a civil war to ‘she started it’ does not fill me with confidence,”

“Let’s be clear about what’s going on,” Deran Wu said. “It’s the end of civilization as we know it. And it’s going to be great for business.”

the House of Wolfe wants to file a suit with the Guild Courts, they can go right ahead, because the House of Nohamapetan will tie that shit up, not only until the collapse of the Flow, but until the actual heat death of the observable fucking universe.” Kiva turned to Fundapellonan. “We have the resources for that, right?” “Oh, yes,” said Fundapellonan.

Kiva was extremely self-interested. Senia thought that was neither good nor bad, but Kiva was of a different mind about that. She thought it was pretty much the only way to be in a universe that didn’t care about anyone’s life one way or another, and in a civilization that was designed to keep the rich as rich as possible and the poor from actively starving so they wouldn’t think to rise up and behead the rich. An uncaring universe and a fundamentally static civilization would smother anyone who didn’t keep themselves and their own concerns front and center.

Perhaps in a different era, when in fact civilization was not just a few short years from falling down a deep, dark fucking hole, she could have contentedly continued on a path of self-regard, secure in the knowledge that ultimately it wouldn’t matter what she did anyway. She was just a speck of animated carbon that would be eternally inanimate soon enough, so might as well go ahead and have another muffin, or lay that cute redhead, or whatever.

But Kiva was aware that her time now was not that time. Her time was human civilization fucking imploding, taking the individual humans with it—including her. The time span she was likely to be around (barring assassination, unintentional overdoses and falls down flights of stairs) now exceeded that of the civilization she lived in. Which meant that some portion of her life—possibly decades—would become exceedingly fucking uncomfortable unless things were done by people in positions of power to avoid that.

As far as Kiva could tell, whenever selfish humans encountered a wrenching, life-altering crisis, they embarked on a journey of five distinct stages: Denial. Denial. Denial. Fucking Denial. Oh shit everything is terrible grab what you can and run.