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(If you do not know precisely where impossibility begins and ends, then of course it cannot constrain you.)
If power is a thing to be had, it must be capable of possession. But power is not any discrete size or weight. Power is continuous. Power is parabolic. Say you are given some power, which then increases your capacity to accumulate more power. Your capacity for power increases exponentially in relation to the actual power you have gained. Thus, to gain power is to be increasingly powerless. If the more power one has, the less one has, then is it the thing or are you?
Without Libby for a counterweight, there was nothing to temper his recklessness. Nothing to anchor him at all.
one thing Parisa had come to learn was that other people’s view of her said far more about them than it ever did about her.
There was something odd about it, thought Parisa with a frown. The way the simulation had ended. Nico’s ended in a draw, Reina’s ended with—presumably—Parisa’s death, but Tristan’s simulation was still continuing without him.
They had the same markers as every other blemish Tristan could see: the little warps of magic they each used to hide their imperfections. The energy that burst from Nico. The waves that dazzled off Callum. Tristan could see magic in use; that much Parisa had already understood. But this—what he saw right before his imminent projection-death—was different. Almost a portal of some kind, a tunnel, as if when he’d closed his eyes the room around him had shifted, rearranged. It lost its definable characteristics, its colors and lines and basic solidity, but Tristan had … done something. Moved
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“Do you think they know what it really means to love?” his projection-self mused aloud to him. “That it isn’t the simple joy of fondness, I mean. In fact it’s violent, destructive. It means to cut the heart out of your chest and give it to someone else.” He slid a sidelong glance to Callum, who didn’t look up. “To care at all about anyone or anything means inevitably to suffer. After all, what is compassion?” Callum’s projection posed, pausing for the punch line. As if it were a joke, which it was, in some capacity. “To feel the feelings of someone else is to exhaust yourself with double the
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“Well, I’m sure it was all exactly as playful as you imagine and not at all some kind of ongoing experiment to indoctrinate you into their cult of homicidal academia.”
know. And honestly, I haven’t decided yet whether I will.” To his credit, Gideon did look immensely undecided. “It’s just … it doesn’t seem like it could be a bad thing, does it? Breaking someone out who’s trapped in their own consciousness? I find it difficult to believe that’s something that happened by choice.”
AUGUST 13, 1989.
Aviditas vitae, the wanting to live. The hunger for it, which drove everything.
Ezra’s chosen six were Nothazai, who infamously represented the Forum; James Wessex, who was infamously James Wessex; Julian Rivera Pérez, the CIA technomancer whose work was notoriously unmentionable and publicly unmentioned; Sef Hassan, the mineral naturalist who represented the magical interests of the MENA region; a medeian from the Beijing operation that was easier to seek out than to actually name; and a professor, Dr. Araña, whose government contracts were likewise of extreme and remarkable confidentiality.
It was the woman, the professor, one of Ezra’s chosen six: Dr. J. Araña, the J standing pretentiously for something Ezra could not recall. She was a diminutive dark-haired chemist in her fifties—with, every now and then, a ghost of prettiness, despite a face that was now predominantly sunken eyes and puckered cheeks—who specialized in geoengineering, and who ran a notoriously private government-funded university lab. She had been a guerrilla activist in her youth, her work and protests decrying the nature of the Society, though as time went on Ezra was beginning to doubt her usefulness.
“I just feel—” Dalton halted again. “I just sense that perhaps you might be quite an important piece, Mr. Caine, to the kind of research this particular group of initiates could provide.” Tristan frowned. “I thought our research was independent.”
There was no science here, only vibes.
“Professor J. Araña,” Atlas’s voice was saying. “Your reputation precedes you. Tell me, the J is for…? Ah yes, Jiménez,” he observed, sitting down at his desk. “Are you married now, or just pseudonymous?” “It’s my grandmother’s maiden name.” The voice in response was measured, mature.