The Lost Colony (The Long Winter, #3)

by A.G. Riddle

But we see the end with our eyes wide open, like the arcs in the eye.”

The spheres are the key to everything, James. The story of why and how they came to be here will reveal the fate of your species. I’ll

don’t know exactly. What I do know, what I’ve come to believe—very recently—is that things happen for a reason.”

“What if I told you there was a greater force at work in the universe.” “Such as…” “Such as something operating at a level we can’t fully understand now. But we might soon.”

She reveled in it. At her core, she had a simple belief: 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.

“The Next World Foundation.” “I’m not familiar.” “You wouldn’t be. It’s new. I formed the legal entity today.” “Practicing law now too?” “Not quite. I used an online legal service to file the articles of incorporation with the California Secretary of State.

Architect and Master of Human Destiny will suffice.” “Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue.”

Right now, human civilization is building a world where the vast, vast majority of people have no place. We have the first world, composed of developed, mostly consumer-driven economies with advanced technologies and stagnating population growth. And we have the third world, where the population is exploding and people still live the way they did ten thousand years ago—for the most part. All of these people are living on the same planet—a planet with only so much land, so much water, and so much food. In short, there is a limit to how many people Earth can support. Without intervention, at some point, the population of the third world will require all the planet’s resources. However, the first world has the ability to protect those resources, which it also needs. This does not end well.”

“One thing won’t change,” she says, lips almost touching mine. “I love you. I always will.”

threw myself into school and returned to what was perhaps my first love: reading. It was an escape, a way to distract my mind while my heart healed.

turned my focus to robotics. In some small way, I think it was because a human had hurt me so badly, so unexpectedly. A robot can’t do anything it’s not programmed to do, and I was the programmer, in total control. A robot couldn’t hurt me the way she had. Investing myself in that seemed safer to me.

It was a quick death—a plane crash in Bangladesh. I can’t help thinking about how my life would have been different if she and I had traveled that path together.

My father’s study is lined with bookcases, stained a light gray. I sit on the couch in the bay window, Alex beside me, staring at the floor. My father’s words come in clips and phrases: “not operable … nothing else to it … not going to do that … a dignified death …”

The next memory is in the hospital, standing with Alex and Abby in a room where Dad lies in bed asleep, a machine charting his vitals. Oscar is outside in the hallway, watching.

There’s only one person left in my life, and I focus on protecting him. I hire a small law firm to set up a company that I use to buy a rundown ranch north of San Francisco, just outside Petaluma. The

Unlike Oscar, time does touch me. At Edgefield Federal Correctional Institution, each year is like a wave washing over me, peeling a layer away, a piece of me gone forever.

and gin blossoms sprouting from his nose.

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.”

“In quantum mechanics, if a reaction is possible, the opposite reaction is also possible. Thus, if a black hole can consume mass, it must be able to lose mass, yet it cannot. No matter that crosses the event horizon can ever escape.”

Many efforts have been made to address the paradox. 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. When the Bollard and McTavish departed Earth, Hawking radiation had never actually been observed.”

people whose only desire is a quiet corner of the

universe where they can do an honest day’s work and read themselves to sleep.

the paradox: if matter, and the information it contains, can fall into a black hole, it must be able to escape—however, the parameters of the universe make that impossible.

“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.”

But great success is a disease only those infected with it truly understand. In the wrong kind of minds, once it takes hold, it grows, always wanting more, and when it doesn’t get it, it tortures that person, compelling them to drive forward, to push the boundaries and reach for more.

“Oscar, I made you in the image of humanity, but I left out all the things I loathed in us: greed, envy, hatred, and ruthless ambition.

“The spheres. The map. They were Oscar’s message to me. He told you it was just a way of informing me about what was happening—pursuant to root directive seven.

Harry, in a stroke of brilliance, figured out that something was here, but he didn’t have time to figure out what. I have. Do you know what it is? Oscar revealed it very subtly to the original James.”

Humanitarians. The universe is vast and filled with evil. With its power, the grid can end wars and feed the hungry and save the ones who can’t save themselves. They will use the solar output they gather for good—and never again be the destroyer of worlds.”

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

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

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.”