Cold Fusion 2000 Quotes

“Memories don't all have to be good.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Maybe we should go on a holiday. What do you think? Can we go on a holiday next summer? Go away together? Greece, like some of those musty philosophers you write about? You get to see all those crumbling things from the past. And I get sun, beaches, bikinis, cocktails.”

“Greece is a bit far. What about Wales?”

“Wales!”

“I’ve never been abroad. I need to start slowly.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“He felt that he perceived the shape within, just for a second. She had hope. It spread; he could almost witness electrons moving through the magnetic field between them, following lines of force, beautiful things everywhere, sharing, changing both of them in the process, the covalent bonding of life.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Natalie was one of the confident skaters weaving in and out of bodies, natural movement that succeeded because there wasn’t too much thought put into it. Relaxed. It reminded him of wild particles pulled and repelled into a rapidly curving orbit. Pattern within apparent chaos.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Maybe he could get used to this ‘being a superhero’ thing. The Ginger Avenger.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Scrawled in the album’s white space, in an angry deeply-pushed biro that indented even the next page, were some words paraphrased from Tennyson’s Locksley Hall:

I’m mad.
She bears but bitter fruit.
She never loved me.
Love is love forever more.
Fucking traitorous bitch.

The last three words were purely Alex’s addition.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“She wandered almost at random, zigzagging streets, following a canal for a bit, stopping to admire the towering red brick buildings that channelled her along, manufacturing heritage trailing along the water. Some were more than eight stories tall, solid behemoths that would outlast whatever food outlet had set up shop on the ground.

Looking up changed things, it revealed all the details on the old buildings: secret towers, spires, turrets. They were castles in the city. Rewards for those that saw beyond their shuffling footsteps. This was a city made for looking up, she thought.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“Alex decided the stakes were high enough to justify one of his advanced psychological theories. He knew all women liked cats. People liked things that resembled themselves. Therefore applying some of the rules for interacting with cats to the reality of interacting with women could only help.

Most rules were straightforward:

• Admire their grace.
• Don’t interrupt them when they’re grooming.
• Back off if they hiss.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“He wondered where his mind had wandered this time, what life it had lived as a trail of neurons sped through networks of possibilities particle-fast, too rapid to catch without a hadron collider, causing super quarks of weirdness and leaving him with only a vague after-image like a melting dream. He had to accept that he couldn’t catch all his thoughts, all the things going on in his body, the processes which slipped by in the background just leaving a shadow, an itch, the grain of sand that probably wouldn’t become a pearl, a blazing after-trace that lives a second then is gone forever. All those possibilities occurring in a second of frantic life: it never ceased to amaze him. The world was an incredible and beautifully constructed thing.

However, there wasn’t really time for a wank.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000

“These rare mini mind-blanks always seemed to occur when he needed perking up, creative jolts as if his brain had temporarily overclocked its processor to light-speed frequency, but with the side effect of shutting his consciousness down to protect it from overheating. That theory certainly fit the observable phenomena.

Then again, the competing theories included: he was nuts; he had a brain tumour; aliens had temporarily abducted him.”
― Karl Drinkwater, Cold Fusion 2000