Dead Astronauts (Borne, #2)

by Jeff Vandermeer

Why should they not roam like wild things? For they were wild things. Why should they have a purpose? For they were wild things.

But the three had been dying for a long time, and had vowed to make their passage as rough, ugly, and prolonged as possible. They would claw and thrash to their end. Stretched halfway to the infinite.

That nothing should be wasted. And that what might appear broken might in fact be whole.

“It was never real.” “It was real.” Chen or Moss, it didn’t matter. “Not real in the sense of lasting.” “Nothing is real, then.” “Real enough.”

You had to be there. You couldn’t conceive. Empathy wasn’t enough. Imagination wasn’t enough.

“We each handle what we can.” “No one should have to feel responsible for the entire world.”

By these signs they knew they were home.

creator who no longer remembered the creation: Wasn’t that one definition of a god?

the future never left the past behind,

You couldn’t mission forever,

People were serious, but the world wasn’t serious.

Suits were premade coffins. Space was the grave. Better to think of yourself as dead already. There was freedom in that; liberated the mind to roam quadrants farther than the body.