The Doors of Eden

by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Evolution is inevitable once you have an imperfectly self-replicating system in an environment of limited resources.

“There are shades of qualities your language does not accommodate. Between us there was not love or love but love. Love is pain sometimes. Sometimes pain is good.”

“You are gullible. Surrounded by people you don’t know, with your leaders even less knowable, and you are gullible. Someone says a thing to you strongly enough, you believe them. You take confidence for truth.

All of reality, which had seemed so robust and enduring, was merely the fevered dream of a dying god. In much the same way, a single-celled creature might see its drop of water as a vast and eternal ocean even as the sun came out of the clouds to dry it up.