The Lost Colony (The Long Winter, #3)

by A.G. Riddle

All I can do is make the best decisions I can in the moment and prepare myself to make better decisions in the future. Agonizing about them after the fact accomplishes nothing.

“Two fundamental forces. In a battle that stretches from the beginning of the universe to the end. Forces greater than matter and energy. Took me a while, but it was obvious once I figured out the spheres. Those two forces are space and time.”

The biggest impact she had on me was changing the way I looked at the world. She took nothing at face value. Nothing she heard. Nothing said on the news. Nothing written in the paper. If a topic interested her, she would do a deep-dive into it—books, articles, research—she would even call up experts in the field and pepper them with questions, insisting she was a college student doing research and needed their input.

But it wasn’t a casual pursuit for her. She believed that if you were going to have an opinion about an important topic, you’d better know it top to bottom before you opened your mouth. And when she did, she was sure of what she was saying.

She was a walking, talking reality distortion field.

If you’re right about something, that gives you the authority to act on it, to stand and not back down. The consequences don’t matter—the world will catch up eventually.

Sure, those at the top generally went on to excel in life, but—at least at my high school—there were tons of people outside the top five percent who were a whole lot better at life and the real world than school.

had things traditional tests don’t measure: common sense, drive, and, in a word, heart.

A robot can’t do anything it’s not programmed to do, and I was the programmer, in total control.

“You know it’s a messed-up world when you can go away for twenty years and come back to find that people are even dumber and more antiquated than when you left.”

“A clock on Earth records less time than one on the ISS—by a very small degree. The clock on Earth is subject to stronger gravity, so it runs slower.”

The one thing I didn’t see before was the truth about human nature. This is the life humans want, whether they know it or not—a life where they do something they think matters, something that helps their family, neighbors, and friends, work they take pride in—like that bike you’re making.”

we have observed a phenomenon we believe is of interest.” “What is it?” “Gravitational waves, sir. Specialized drones have traced them back to black holes, where we think they originate.

A physicist named Stephen Hawking theorized a solution that, if valid, would reconcile quantum mechanics and the existence of black holes. He posited that black holes only break quantum mechanics at larger masses—that atomic and subatomic particles could be emitted from black holes. These theorized particles are called Hawking radiation.

We do know that the gravitational waves were created by the merging of two black holes.”

We’re like two puzzle pieces that looked like they would fit but, once brought together, didn’t snap into place instantly. We both have rough edges that weren’t apparent at first glance. Where those rough edges meet, there’s been friction. In a way we’ve sort of filed away at ourselves, giving and taking to make our lives fit together. I think doing that has been worth it. With a tighter fit, the pieces are likely to stay together longer.

“That’s what’s wrong with us, you know? What we have never seems to be enough. That hunger made us succeed. And I think it might be our undoing.”

That is the true human challenge: to have faith that the end is only a beginning we can’t understand.”

I think the best gift a person can receive is one they can use to achieve happiness for themselves year after year.

I want to know I made the world I live in now a better place.

Our brains crave certainty because only in certainty can we know that we are safe and that those we love will be safe. In times of great uncertainty, that survival instinct drives us to achieve certainty. In doing so, the brain can overreact. It can malfunction. It can drive us to act, even in times when the right thing to do is wait.”

How to deal with these uncertain times isn’t the issue. It’s how we keep ourselves sane while we deal with these uncertain times.”