Three Days in April Quotes

“She giggles. I’m not ordinarily a fan of giggling, but Charity giggles with panache.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“My point is that those aren’t just cameras, or drones, or crawlers. They’re the eyes of the panopticon. Every single spy eye in North America is networked or tapped, Anders. They all feed into NatSec’s network.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Those who would surrender essential liberties in exchange for a little temporary security are deserving of neither”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“do”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“As far as I can tell, every single thing that ever happens in the world is good for some investors and bad for other investors, and knowing which investors any particular thing is good for is only helpful if you know it before that thing happens.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Who knows what motivates the sort of greed-sotted creatures who run Bioteka or GeneCraft? The most likely explanation, however, is that the knowledge of how to activate these codes has escaped their makers, and that yesterday was a demonstration. If we accept this premise, then the answer to the second question is obvious: our national government is a wholly owned subsidiary of the biotech industry. In”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Fear has always been the best friend of the tyrant. You”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“So, here it is,” I say. “This is a real-time view of the sample from the integrated electron microscope.” I step back, and give them a view of the screen. It shows a mass of spheres. They move randomly through the frame, occasionally bouncing off of one another. In among them, though, are other shapes. These are far fewer, larger, and more irregular. “See the balls?” I continue. “Those are what should have been produced. They’re temperature-sensitive cages, with serotonin inside. Those other things, though—they’re not supposed to be there. They look a bit like big viruses, but their mass is much higher than you’d expect from a biological. I’m guessing these are what the crypted code tacked onto the configuration file is producing.” “I thought we’d decided that Hagerstown couldn’t have been a virus,” Gary says. “I didn’t say these are viruses,” I say. “I said the protein coat we can see looks like what you’d see on a virus. That’s just the delivery mechanism. I’d be willing to bet that these things bind to cells like a virus, but what’s inside them is definitely not RNA.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Gary looks back and forth between them. “Charity?” I ask. “Why is he calling you Saria?” She sighs again, much more deeply. “Because that’s my name, Anders. Who really names their kid Charity?” “Christians and strippers, I think,” says Gary. Charity and Dimitri both glare at him, and he shrinks back into his chair.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“I step out onto the porch, and quickly realize that I’ve missed some important developments while my nanos were cooking. Terry is there, leaning against the railing and looking like she just lost a fistfight with a polar bear. There’s a man there as well, on his knees in front of Charity. He looks to be worse off than Terry, if that’s possible, to the point that it takes me a long moment to recognize him as Dimitri—which is weird, because while I’ve only met him once before, he was actively killing someone at the time, which I consider to be pretty memorable.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Even worse, from the way they move, it’s pretty clear that the students are mostly Engineered or Augmented, and the campus cops are not. I have no idea why the Engineered are rioting—noblesse oblige, maybe?—but they’re definitely doing a better job of it than their friends downtown. As I watch, first one cop, then another, then the rest of them all at once go down under a wave of fists and feet.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“A crowbar is coming. In two minutes, I am going to die. “Why did you call in the strike?” my avatar asks. “You knew I wouldn’t let you go.” “You are responsible for ninety thousand deaths,” Dimitri says wearily, “and Sauron’s Eye does not believe she can hold you here indefinitely. If you were to escape into the broader networks, you might kill another ninety thousand.” “But I couldn’t kill you,” she says. “I couldn’t kill Terry. I tried. You don’t have the nanos in you. Those other lives are just shadows. How can you let them outweigh the only ones you know are real?” I close my eyes. My beautiful apartment is about to become a smoking hole in the ground. “I have forced many others to sacrifice for the common good,” Dimitri says finally. “Perhaps it is time that I did so myself.” “That’s great,” I say. “That’s noble, Dimitri. What about me?” Dimitri turns to look at me, and his face looks as if he’d honestly forgotten that I was here. He starts to speak, but then his eyes go wide and his jaw snaps shut. He’s not staring at me anymore. He’s seeing something behind me. I turn to the darkened hallway. Dimitri’s voice is soft and wondering. “Elise?”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Dimitri walks slowly into the kitchen. I follow, a few paces behind. He pulls out a chair, sits down at my breakfast table, and closes his eyes. My avatar pops up on the kitchen wallscreen. She’s back to her cartoon robot self. “You’re not going to let me go,” she says, “are you?” “No,” Dimitri says. “I am not.” “If I can’t go, you can’t either,” says the avatar. He stands, lifts his chair, and smashes my back window. He uses the chair back to poke the remaining glass out of the frame, then leans out and looks down. “It’s a long way down,” my avatar says. “I am aware,” says Dimitri. It’s actually about thirty feet to the ground from here. There’s a flat-roofed building across the alley, maybe ten feet below the level of my window and fifteen or twenty feet away. Dimitri glances back at me, then across the alley. He heaves a deep sigh, and sits down again. “Excuse me,” I say, “but would someone please explain to me what, exactly, is going on?” “You called in a crowbar,” says my avatar. Dimitri leans back, and knits his hands behind his head. “I did.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“I feel like I should know what she’s talking about, but the thought slips away like a fish through my fingers. Dimitri closes his eyes again. “You’re talking to someone,” my avatar says. “What are you telling them?” “I am discussing your situation with an old friend,” he says. “Oh God,” she says. “You’re talking to Sauron’s Eye, aren’t you?” “Yes,” he says. “We agree that remorse is easy. Atonement is much harder.” The screen flickers. The avatar’s face is twisted in fear again. Somehow, I think this time it’s sincere. “Do you feel remorse?” she asks. Dimitri closes his eyes. When he opens them, my avatar wears the face of a dark-haired teenage girl. “I do,” he says finally. “In truth, much of the time, I feel very little else.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“I grant the possibility. However, the tones you imitate are in a human the result of an excess of adrenaline. In you, they are the result of a deliberate decision, made in the hopes of altering my emotional state in your favor.” “Fair enough.” The wallscreen comes alive again, and she appears as a young girl in pigtails and a blue and white dress. “What would alter your emotional state, then? A change of appearance? An expression of remorse? I’m sorry. I’m very, very, sorry. I didn’t really know what I was doing until the cyborg. It was horrible. If I had known it was like that, I never would have gone along with them.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Dimitri? What did you do to my network ports? Why can’t I get out?” “You mimic fear well,” he says. “I am sure you hope to elicit sympathy. You should know, however, that almost exactly twenty-four hours ago I looked into the weeping eyes of a living girl, and forced her to inject herself with poison. Your theatrics are not likely to change the outcome of this discussion.” Okay, now I feel less reassured. I slide out from under Dimitri’s arm and step away. “Why do you think this is mimicry?” The lights come back up, and my avatar’s voice returns to a conversational tone. “I’m trapped in this apartment with a NatSec assassin. Isn’t it possible that I’m truly afraid?” He shrugs.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“She smiles, and runs her hands down over her absurd, gold-plated breasts. “No, Dimitri, I’m not arguing that the universe is just a figment of your God-like imagination. I’m just saying that there’s no point in wondering whether I have a soul. If I say I don’t want you to kill me, you should just take my word for it. That seems like a simple principle, but based on the way you’ve treated the apes and whales and elephants and pretty much everything else that walks or flies or swims on this Earth over the past fifty thousand years, it doesn’t seem like it’s one you folks are able to get behind.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“He shakes his head. “You argue that we can only be certain of our own minds. This is simply solipsism, is it not?”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“You’re an idiot, Dimitri. All you monkeys are idiots. You sit around arguing back and forth over whether avatars are self-aware, or whether dolphins are intelligent, or whether dogs get to go to heaven or not. There’s only one person that you really know for sure is self-aware, and that’s you. Everybody else, you’re just taking their word for it.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“I look at him. His voice is starting to sound more and more like Doug’s, and it’s beginning to creep me out. Good God, I can’t believe that’s the part of this that I find creepy.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Gary looks at Charity. She raises one eyebrow. “It’s a nice night,” he says. “I’m gonna go out on the porch and reestablish communication with the real world. Call me when this thing is finished. Charity? Would you care to join me on the veranda?” She giggles. “Why sir,” she says, “I would be delighted.” She offers her arm. He takes it, and they go.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“So everything Aaliyah said was bullshit? The stories, the mother tongue . . . all of it?” Tariq sighs. “As with any religion, there are aspects which are clearly truth, aspects which are clearly myth, and aspects which are more or less uncertain. I looked into these issues when I was younger, and first began to doubt. The so-called mother tongue is a grammatically consistent and complete language. It bears some similarities to ancient African tongues. Is it truly the language of the mother-of-all? Who is to say? The stories, the myths—these are things passed to us from our mother. Do they truly stretch back over three thousand generations? Perhaps they do. Or, perhaps they were devised thirty years ago from whole cloth. How are we to know?”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“We follow him down the darkened hallway, and into the dimly lit kitchen. The walls are hung with plants and herbs, both growing and in the process of being dried, and the smell of them together is sweet and cloying. A table on one wall holds a massive mortar and pestle, and a collection of teapots rings the room on a shelf just below the ceiling.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Okay, guys,” says a voice from the kitchen. “I think we’re good. Come on in.” “Is that Doug?” I ask. “It’s complicated,” says Anders.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Yeah,” I say. “Okay. You know that isn’t what I was asking. That kind of bullshit misdirection might work with Elise, but I’m not interested in riding your magic wand. I want to know exactly how you managed to get through my security without so much as knocking.” Tariq sighs, swerves around an open car door, and sighs again. “I have an affinity for electronics,” he says finally. “Your systems were not difficult to suborn.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“As it turns out, though, it’s like the old bit about trying not to think about an elephant, except that in this case, the elephant is a preternaturally hot naked woman who is currently lounging in my bed, waiting for me to get done in the shower so that she can have sex with me and possibly suck out and devour my soul, all of which I would guess is actually more difficult to put out of your head than some stupid elephant.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Angry Irish Inch: ”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: <???> Sir Munchalot: Angry Irish Inch: Sir Munchalot: ”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Gary—” says Tariq. “Oh, cram it,” I say. “We’re not gonna do it, because, as I have already explained several times, it can’t be done. Anyway, Charity’s not NatSec. And even if she was, they can’t drop a crowbar on you for fantasizing. Although, now that I think about it, they probably can drop a crowbar on you for knowing that your girlfriend got out of Hagerstown alive. Charity—you’re not NatSec, are you?” She laughs again. Her giggle is sweet, but she laughs like a hyena. I find it doesn’t bother me, though, as long as I stay focused on what it does to her breasts.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April

“Wow,” says Charity. “Where has this been my whole life?” “SpaceLab is like the Grand Canyon, or the Mona Lisa,” I say. “It’s always been there, just waiting for you to discover it.”
― Edward Ashton, Three Days in April