Axiom's End (Noumena, #1)

by Lindsay Ellis

Trying to exert some control over her life was an exercise in futility, so why bother? A good concert was the one place she could genuinely lose herself, have an out-of-body experience and detach from the deteriorating morass that was her life.

On the opposite side of the marsh was the Circuit City and then the mall. Both wildernesses seemed like good places to lose anyone tracking her.

The box of brownie mix peeked out, the Pillsbury Doughboy smiling gleefully at her predicament.

“Because it offers little opportunity to strategize. It is mostly a game of chance.” “The same could be said about life,” offered Cora. “Yes,” he said. “That is why I don’t like it.”

“If an alien species has the power and technology to even get here, then it stands to reason that they have the power and technology to do terrible things. That doesn’t mean terrible things are inevitable or that we’d see them in our lifetime. But what do we do with the knowledge that terrible things are possible, if not inevitable?”

Men his age weren’t too fussed about the potentiality for man-made climate change to pose an existential threat to human civilization. Why should hostile aliens be any different?

Having washed the blood off her neck and face, she might have passed for merely a hot mess.

[I require insurance you won’t betray me.] [I require incentive not to betray you.]