Spin (Spin, #1)

by Robert Charles Wilson

Amazing, I thought, how busily we had turned ourselves into people who didn’t know one another very well.

You don’t understand a lie, Molly said as we paralleled an ancient boardwalk gone white with salt, until you understand the motivation behind it.

“There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time, the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. It’s hard to live in all those kinds of time. Easy to forget that you live in all of them.”

Big Salvation. It was a honeyed lie. A paper lifeboat, even if we were killing ourselves trying to cling to it. It wasn’t the Spin that had mutilated my generation. It was the lure and price of Big Salvation.

We’re as ephemeral as raindrops. We all fall, and we all land somewhere.

We’re all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we’re seldom formally introduced.”

When people come to understand how big the universe is and how short a human life is, their hearts cry out. Sometimes it’s a shout of joy: I think that’s what it was for Jason; I think that’s what I didn’t understand about him. He had the gift of awe. But for most of us it’s a cry of terror. The terror of extinction, the terror of meaninglessness. Our hearts cry out. Maybe to God, or maybe just to break the silence.”