“He falls further into darkness. The stinging pain of daily torture and the numbing cold hardly bother him now, and he relishes the thought that soon he might disappear entirely. Then Lylitte is there in his thoughts again, and the splitting pain brings him back into this life, and again, only one thing eases the torment: winding further out of existence.””
“Did you splice my”
“So, let me get this right. You invented this groundbreaking medical technology that changes the way we literally do everything in trauma and blood, and you are out here, 30.3 light-years away from Earth, on a planet where everyone involved in the Eden project was a hundred percent sure there’d be no DNA, blood, or anything? And now here we are playing with the DNA of an alien race? What is this? What is actually going on here?””
“We don’t know what you mean, my dear,” Lydia says sweetly, sitting right next to him.Atom puts his book down and looks at Steven. “It’s the unsolved blind spot. Nothing is ever ‘in the bag.’ Look, the problem of Pre-Collapse science was that it insisted on patch jobs, like Husserl’s critique of the Surreptitious Substitution and its god-like conceit, while ignoring the absurdity of measurement bias. All scientific inquiry requires an expulsive approach in order to maintain the involvement variable. This is basic stuff.” He then leans back in his comfortable chair and continues hiding behind his book.“The Riddler has spoken,” Hannah says, moving a bishop forward three squares.””
“Holy Christ, people, we’ve accidentally done what we sold to the public.””
“Clarity of purpose often comes from wandering through mistakes””
“It’s Lylitte, standing on a patio below, all alone, leaning on a baluster at the far end of the castle. She doesn’t notice him at first, nor does it appear she’s doing anything important, as she’s looking out over her land, the acres of pasture hemmed in by rolling ancient walls. Her hair is up, showing her neckline, her light gown revealing curves which, for him, seem to be the only thing holding the galaxy together.””
“The music stops as they walk out of the forest toward the smooth extra-terrestrial spacecraft glistening in the sun on the far side of the meadow. To Atom, the ship feels like a time machine. Steven and Sylvia watch them with deadpan stares as the three astronauts walk with the spectacle of eclectic, colorful characters on feathered horseback following. A breeze picks up and Atom glances back to see stoic faces with vibrant robes and dresses flowing in the wind.””
“At that time, her core burned relentlessly with passion, desire, and complete disorientation. Their union was officiated by a queen she’d only heard of in folklore, and the people of the valleys reached for her and clamored to see the bride like she was their elixir. All of this only intensified the yearnings pulsing through her body and soul. She remembers one young lady, a commoner really, who pushed in from a crowd, sweaty and pregnant, to grab Lylitte’s hand. She locked eyes with her and saw the fever raging inside; it was in all the people in those days, the shamelessness, and a lust for all things of the new world. It was like a hurricane for life that no one could understand who hadn’t felt it.“Only when we experience true loss are we pulled back into our own dreaming,””
“Atom, all life and reality as we know it is created by consciousness… your dream made it probable that we would find life,””
“The supposition was that the difference in energy when n (or v) changes by one is therefore equal to hv, the product of the Planck constant and the vibration frequency was always derived using these pre-revolution mechanics. This was, of course, dependent on gravity having an effect on an atomic level, while acknowledging that it does not. Absurd right? But for a transition from level n to level n+ one due to absorption of a photon, the frequency of the photon has nothing to do with Planck…”“Atom, for god’s sake, stop it!” Hannah interrupts.“Stop? Stop what?”“Why do you do this to people?” Hannah says, causing Lylitte to laugh, and the older woman to look at Hannah curiously.“What he was going to eventually say is that we’re teaching the stem cells to sing their songs louder so that they harmonize and teach their melody to the host, once it’s introduced,” Billy explains.””
“You need to use your damned technology and make us blood. There's a war going on and unless you can do that you're kinda useless," - Hannah Khalili in book one Eden 2:b””
“We!” he emphasizes, pointing at his crew, “get to be the first link in a new chapter in our history. But I want you all to really consider what is going on here…” He takes the tone of a circus ringmaster. “This is bigger than successfully colonizing Mars and Ganymede. It’s bigger than Columbus or Magellan. It’s even bigger than the first homo sapiens leaving Africa.” He raises his voice even more, waving his arms. “Hell, this is bigger than fish crawling out of the fucking water and growing legs! Think about it!” Everyone is quiet, avoiding eye contact with Calvin. Everyone except Captain Taylor looks at him ambiguously.“Why not Cook and Vancouver?” Taylor asks. “Excuse me, sir?”“You said Columbus or Magellan, but that’s preposterous. Magellan was a madman who tortured his crew and never made the whole trip, and Columbus, to be honest, is completely overblown. The dignity alone that Captain Cook commanded…”“Yeah, yeah, OK. Cook and Magellan? Frances Drake? Whoever. The point is…” Calvin walks to the glass and points. “This,” the pudgy showman continues, “is right here, right now. Got it?! Everyone here needs to admit the real reason we want to go down to that mysterious blue planet, figure out the atmosphere, and collect some space plasma. It’s not because it’s our job. No. It’s time we’re all honest and admit we are now part of something much bigger than ourselves. It’s not just our job, it’s our story. It’s our story as human beings, it’s our instinct to explore!””
“I learned the importance of self-care. Breathing correctly, a healthy diet, and forcing myself to exercise. Meditation and prayer were lifesaving. And reading was an elemental way to process my feelings. Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth sat at my bedside, while Kahlil Gibran’s poetry and stories seemed a comfort, and fitting.””
“The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.”
“It's a bit embarrassing but we actually met at a strip club. I was one of her favorite dancers.””
“Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.” –Joseph Campbell””
“He didn’t look at me like I was a mystery solved or someone who’d come back from the dead. He looked at me like his side-piece had come back to her rightful place after some kind of argument. Michael Anderson was the same thing to me as I’m sure he was to Zoe – a disappointment, a dead end.””
“Now, I can believe Professor Michael Anderson might lead a much more interesting life than us, that he has thousands of teenage girls batting their eyes at him all day, but who’d forget something like that?””