Babel

by R.F. Kuang

‘Good luck, Robin Swift.’ Abel squeezed his hand. ‘God be with you.’

Death is a better state. Death frees the immortal soul. Death is transcendence. Death is an act of bravery, a glorious act of defiance.

In theory they would be martyrs, heroes, the ones who’d pushed history off its path. But none of that was a comfort. In the moment, all that mattered was that death was painful and frightening and permanent, and none of them wanted to die.

No; a thousand worlds within one. And translation – a necessary endeavour, however futile, to move between them.

You are lucky, they said, to be here with us, where things are safe, and civilized. This she believed. She had no way of knowing anything else.

She learned revolution is, in fact, always unimaginable. It shatters the world you know. The future is unwritten, brimming with potential. The colonizers have no idea what is coming, and that makes them panic. It terrifies them. Good. It should.

‘Let them hate, so long as they fear.’