Babylon's Ashes

We’re spending our whole lives together, so we need to be really gentle.

Because that was always true. The Abbey and Eudoxia were small enough it became impossible to ignore it, but even among the teeming billions of Earth, they were spending their lives together. They needed to be gentle. And understanding. And careful. It had been true in the depths of history, and at the height of Earth’s power, and it would still be true now that they were scattering to the more than a thousand new suns.

And then Liliana’s doing the section on the technological ratchet, where the thing that changes is how well we understand how to make things like medicines and nuclear bombs and Epstein drives, and that everything else about history is cyclic. The same things happen over and over again, but it just seems different because we have different tools.”

But as in astronomy the new view said: “It is true that we do not feel the movement of the earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,” so also in history the new view says: “It is true that we are not conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws.”

She was as much a monster as Clarissa or Amos had ever been. She was someone who’d found a way to save her little chosen family when everything seemed lost. The two didn’t balance, but they existed together. Pain and relief. Sorrow and contentment. The evil and the redeeming could sit together in her heart, live together, and neither one take the edge off the other.

But she didn’t want the moment to end either, any of the moments with these people in this place, even though eventually they had to. No, not even though. Because.
Because eventually they had to. Nothing lasted forever. Not peace. Not war. Nothing.

had known since he was too young to remember learning that atoms were made from more space than material, and that at the lowest levels, the things that made atoms could bounce in and out of being. He’d never seen it before. He’d never been so aware that he was a vapor of energy. A vibration in a guitar string that didn’t exist.

don’t know that those mattered,” Jim said. “Did they do anything?”

“You don’t get to know that,” Naomi said. “They did or they didn’t. You didn’t put them out so that someone would send you a message about how important and influential you are. You tried to change some minds. Inspire some actions. Even if it didn’t work, it was a good thing to try. And maybe it did. Maybe those saved someone, and if they did, that’s more important than making sure you get to know about it.”

feel like I understand what I have to do in the next … I don’t know. Five minutes? Maybe ten? Then after that, things get muddy.”

He’d wondered, watching the newsfeeds, how so many could go missing in a station with people and cameras everywhere. He understood now.

All they had to do was make it too dangerous for others to watch.

They marched him out through the front office. When they passed Brice in the hall, she looked away, pretending not to notice. The front desk was abandoned, everyone suddenly called to the restroom or a coffee break at the same moment. None of the people he worked with would actually see him leave. That’s how quickly the right kinds of power could make someone disappear.