Manifold Quotes

“… It was dark. There were no dead stars, no rogue planets. Matter itself had long evaporated, burned up by proton decay, leaving nothing but a thin smoke of neutrinos drifting out at lightspeed. But even now there was something rather than nothing. The creatures of this age drifted like clouds, immense, slow, coded in immense wispy atoms. Free energy was dwindling to zero, time stretching to infinity. It took these cloud-beings longer to complete a single thought than it once took species to rise and fall on Earth...”
― Stephen Baxter, Manifold: Origin

“After you’re gone? Poor Malenfant. I know what’s really bothering you. It’s not that the question is unanswered. It’s the idea that you won’t be around when the answer comes. You always did think you were the center of everything, Malenfant. You can’t stand to think that the universe will go on without you.” “Doesn’t everybody feel that way?” “Actually, no, not everybody, Malenfant. And you know what? The universe will go on. You don’t have to save it. It doesn’t need you to keep space expanding or the stars shining. We’ll keep on finding out new stuff, visiting new places, finding new answers, even when you aren’t around to make it happen.”
― Stephen Baxter, Manifold: Origin

“After you’re gone? Poor Malenfant. I know what’s really bothering you. It’s not that the question is unanswered. It’s the idea that you won’t be around when the answer comes. You always did think you were the center of everything, Malenfant. You can’t stand to think that the universe will go on without you.” “Doesn’t everybody feel that way?” “Actually, no, not everybody, Malenfant. And you know what? The universe will go on. You don’t have to save it. It doesn’t need you to keep space expanding or the stars shining. We’ll keep on finding out new stuff, visiting new places, finding new answers,”
― Stephen Baxter, Manifold: Origin

“It is as if we are all embedded in a vast graph of possibilities, a graph with an axis marked time, for our own future destiny, and an axis marked space, for the possibilities of the universe.”
― Stephen Baxter, Manifold: Origin