The Last Day

by Andrew Hunter Murray

The first day of slowing had been five years before Hopper was born, but she’d read several histories. It had come in late May 2020.

she was allowed to forgo this extra kink of bureaucracy. Eventually the official handed back her passport, reluctant, as though only a lack of evidence compelled him to release her on this occasion.

‘I always knew the Lord intended to divide the people of the earth into the damned and the saved. I don’t think anyone expected he would do it with a fucking ruler.’

Save up the lies.

Stop talking; the liar is condemned by her need to embroider. Each extra lie is a new strand in the rope they will use to hang you.

irresolute,

All I will say is, it’s hard to tell at first, when you get given a little gold chain. You put it on, you think it’s a reward. Then you get another. And then suddenly you’re wearing thirty and you can’t move your neck any more.’

‘Everyone says they’re opposite endeavours, politics and science; that one deals with truth and the other with perception.

to persuade them the alternative is catastrophe – that’s even more powerful.

‘Never a mission. Always a project. Missionaries take their own beliefs with them. The Spanish Armada was a mission. Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle was a project.’)