Axiom's End (Noumena, #1)

by Lindsay Ellis

Eli was a scene kid, the type that was just a little too into Panic! at the Disco to be trusted.

Black olives. The answer to the eternal quandary of what if one were to combine snails and old tires into a foodstuff. The only way the creature could have punished her more brutally was if it had forced celery on her.

“They represent your own government,” he said. “Why are you afraid of your own government?”

The secretary was trying to keep his gaze on Ampersand, not Cora. “Here in America, we consider ourselves created equal. We stand on equal ground.” “Categorically untrue.” “He says he feels that’s dishonest,” said Cora flatly.

‘The human fascination with intelligent exoterran species focuses on their similarity to humans. Humanity is not prepared for any cultural, biological, or ideological disparities it may encounter. No species is.

One species is only comprehensible to another species as it understands itself. But with all species, there are attributes one possesses that the other does not share. Where attributes are not shared, inevitably both parties will try to shape the other into a form they can understand.’”

“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.”

An axiom developed that planets that support life are so competitive and dangerous that advanced civilizations can never evolve, and advancements such as ours are unlikely to the point of impossibility.

“You are the civilization that disproves this axiom. You would be both the greatest discovery in the history of the Superorganism and the greatest threat to its conception of itself as divinely unique.”

“Conspiracy theories and fictive narratives made finding information through networks impossible.

These are experiences I cannot erase from memory, but they cripple my cognition all the same.”

“Trauma can cause cognitive impairment in all sapient species.”