House of Suns

by Alastair Reynolds

In the long run, the best strategy for cultural longevity was either to sit tight in a single system, or become like the Lines, entirely unshackled from planetary life.

The first six million years had been all fun and games. Now we were growing up.

Campion had always been less sentimental than me. He could ditch ancient treasure, or submit to memory consolidation, without a moment’s hesitation. He moved through life with less baggage, less to weigh him down, less to anchor him to his own history. I had always admired him for that willingness to discard his own past, while knowing it was one of the things that made us distinct, a bridge I could never cross if I wished to remain Purslane.

We had embraced, holding each other so tightly that it was as if our coming back together was only provisional, a state of affairs that might be rescinded at any moment if the universe changed its mind.

Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.

You dare to think that I will find you as interesting as you obviously find me? Well, perhaps in that very act of daring you become interesting to me, if only fleetingly.

Nothing had ever existed between us except the possibility of something, and now even that was over.

If you suppress a memory, it seems to me that two things can happen. The memory may stay repressed, absolutely closed to both conscious and unconscious recall. Or - and this is surely the more likely outcome - the memory finds expression elsewhere. It will seep into other memories, distorting them, shaping them to conform to the truth of what has been suppressed.