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Government officials of any stripe made the average person’s skin crawl.
Each retained their brain like a family unwilling to demolish a crumbling mansion even though they hardly ever lived in it.
Exordium was an experiment, Remontoire, an attempt to achieve unification between consciousness and quantum superposition. It happened on Mars; you can verify that much for yourself. But Galiana got far more than she bargained for. She curtailed the experiments, frightened at what she had invoked. And that should have been the end of it.”
From where Clavain stood, it was like watching fireworks above a remote town. From the colours of Agincourt to the flames of Guernica, to the pure shining light of Nagasaki like a cleansing sword blade catching the sun, to the contrails etched above the skies of the Tharsis Bulge, to the distant flash of heavy relativistic weapons against a starscape of sable-black in the early years of the twenty-seventh century: Clavain did not need to be reminded that war was horrific, but from a distance it could also have a terrible searing beauty.
“But then filthy times call for filthy habits.
Even now, somewhere at the back of his mind (there were days when he did not notice it) there was a scream that had never ended; a thread of agony that connected him with the past.
Inertia isn’t a property of matter as such, but a property of the quantum vacuum in which matter is embedded. Matter itself has no intrinsic inertia.] The vacuum imposes inertia? [It isn’t really a vacuum, not at the quantum level. It’s a seething foam of rich interactions: a broiling sea of fluctuations, with particles and messenger-particles in constant existential flux, like glints of sunlight on ocean waves. It’s the choppiness of that sea which creates inertial mass, not matter itself. The trick is to find a way to modify the properties of the quantum vacuum—to reduce or increase the
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“Yes.” Clavain’s host seemed pleased. “It appears that Mercier and Sukhoi’s final experiment concerned the transition between tardyonic—the matter we are familiar with—and tachyonic matter states. They were exploring the vacuum states that would allow the construction of a faster-than-light propulsion system.” “That’s simply not possible,” Clavain said. H put a hand on his shoulder. “Actually, I don’t think that is quite the right way to think about it. The grubs knew, of course. This technology had been theirs, and yet they chose to crawl between the stars. That should have told us all we
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In Clavain’s experience, it was the less comforting possibility that generally turned out to be the case. It was the way the universe worked.
“So take help when it’s offered. I’m not in the habit of co-operating with people, Clavain, so make the most of this rare display of magnanimity and shut the fuck up.”
The Captain’s sigh was like the collapse of a distant building.
“Some of you are still sons of bitches that deserve to die in the most painful and slow way I can envisage. But not all of you.” “I’ll take that as a compliment.” “Take it while you can. I might change my mind tomorrow.”
The mob was an emergent property of crowds,
