Mort(e)

She had underestimated the human capacity for self-destruction.

Humans tended to use the terms free and freedom to indicate states of being that were anything but.

In a way, she was disappointed. She had hoped that somehow the humans would surprise her and show a capacity that she had yet to discover, something that would make them worthy adversaries. But they were merely talking monkeys, an unfortunate anomaly staining the elegance of the animal kingdom, and the entire world was worse off for it.

You are the master over someone who has told you his story.

She made him feel like a normal person. She forgave him for who he was.

The act of speaking felt like shaking his head until the right phrases fell out.

Just remember," he said. "Maybe these guys are nice, and the ants are mean. But that doesn't mean their fairy tales are true.

The nurse cleared her throat and said, “Love is stronger than God.” Mort(e) turned to Sheba for a reaction. The dog merely sat on her hind legs, content. Was this the summation of all that the Queen had learned, or some desperate acknowledgement of the only things that her advanced intellect could never fully comprehend? The only one who knew now was a shivering, half-dead child who had never asked to be a part of this. “Is that true, you think?” the nurse asked. “We have to live like it is,” Mort(e) said.

His strength began as bravery, then quickly calcified into an impenetrable shell. An exoskeleton. Her strength was love, always love, nothing but love. He was not strong enough to live that way but he wanted to be. He would try. He owed it both to her and himself. Anything short of that would be unworthy of all the suffering he had endured. The sadness had no point unless he gave it one.

That was the moment Sebastian died. There had been a time when he understood that people would go away. Now the person he was had gone away. He was trapped in this present with these strangers who already seemed to know who he was, and who he was going to be.

Quiet,” Janet said. She forced herself to face Sebastian. “I hope you find her,” she said. “I’ll be praying for you.” He had no idea what that meant.

Felines were a species that showed promise, though they were prone to bickering, and tended to have the biggest egos. Ordinary house cats always demanded to be in charge of things as if they had hunted humans in the wild before the war. This

It's not a pathogen," he said. "It's a belief. A thought-crime. It may be the most seductive idea that the humans ever came up with. It certainly fooled them for long enough. Still does, I imagine." "Death life," he continued. "Life after death. Afterlife. The Queen didn't even have a word for it." "EMSAH makes you believe in the afterlife?" "The belief is not a symptom of EMSAH," he said. "That's what the Queen wanted us to think. The belief is EMSAH. That's why it can't be cured. The Queen recruited us in her holy war. EMSAH is what will make us like the humans, if we don't eradicate it." "So EMSAH is...an ideology?" "It's religion.