Dead Astronauts (Borne, #2)

by Jeff Vandermeer

Came a mighty yipping and barking from the multitudes, the gathered folk that were foxes but not foxes as had been known in the past. For what had a fox been but what a human thought it was?

There will be a terrible price to be paid. But I will pay it. If you follow me. It made them braver. It made them fierce. It focused their thoughts through the prism of the blue fox’s mind. Now their play had purpose.

Flesh was quantum. Flesh was contaminated, body and mind. Chen dealt in probabilities on one side of his brain and impossibilities on the other. Because the probability was always that he would disintegrate into his constituent parts sooner rather than later. He had come to think of himself as a complex equation and a symphony both, and, really, what was the difference?

no one should feel responsible for the whole world

“What men make of the future must be better than the past. If the world is to live, we must make better things.”

“I cannot see the destination sometimes. But I know the work must continue. 10, 7, 3, 0.”

Do you understand? Nothing thrives without being broken. Nothing exists without being dead first.

“Do you ever wonder?” she asked the shape-shifter. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like not to live in the world of humans?” The shape-shifter considered that a moment, made a sound like a sad laugh or a weeping chuckle. Shook off the question.

You want. Things to be words. That are not words. Could never be words. Your fox is some other construct. We did not agree to that. We do not call ourselves foxes. A thing you created that is not me. To think an autopsy was a person. To think a dissection meant a type of mind. If I went rummaging through your carcass, would I find you?

You wouldn’t understand me even if I made sense.

But, in the end, joy cannot fend off evil. Joy can only remind you why you fight.