Mickey7 (Mickey7, #1)

by Edward Ashton

I’ve always believed it’s important to accept the people in your life for what they are. There’s no such thing as a perfect friend, any more than there’s any such thing as a perfect anything, and if you slag everyone in your life for their many and varied failings, you’re going to miss appreciating the good stuff they bring to the table.

I drifted closer to her. I thought we were about to have sex. Yes, I am exactly that stupid.

I’m not sure what lesson to take from the story, though … except maybe that once things start to spiral, it can be really hard to pull them back.

I’m not the most sensitive person, but I’ve been alive long enough to figure out that telling a miserable person about how much worse things could be is usually a bad idea.

“Well,” I said, and took a bite. “Nothing but the best for the sacrificial pig, right?” “Lamb,” she said. “What?” “Lamb, Mickey. You sacrifice a lamb. Pigs are gross. You don’t sacrifice them. You just eat them.” I sighed. “Either way, they end up just as dead.”

It’s a truism that every new technological advancement in human history has been applied first to advance the interests of the horny. The printing press? Some Bibles, mostly porn. Antibiotics? Perfect for treating STIs.

There’s nothing remotely sexy about a rapidly expanding cloud of high-speed quarks and gluons.

I don’t agree.

Nobody has heard a peep out of old Earth in over six hundred years.