The Stardust Grail

Another thing she should have told Medix: that grief was a universal thing, no matter what sun you’d been born under. And they were both of them choking on it now, oblivious to the danger around them.

Your life is the one thing that's yours in the entire universe.

She didn’t know. She didn’t know a thing. And that was good, because it gave her hope.

And she was hit by that complicated wave of homesickness and alienation. The feeling of seeing yourself in a display case. Your food, your dress, your whole way of life. Pined and neatly labeled. Like being boiled and reduced on an electric stove to be eaten.

Life is strange, is it not? We move together in synchrony, yet we are unlike. Sometimes we must embrace things we cannot understand.

She hated the insularity of Earth culture, the single-minded pride in its history, the cult of nationalism that managed to persist even when the human perspective had grown so much bigger. But she loved it too, in a deep, biological way: its big skies and canopies of trees and the smell of rich soil after it rained.

You can’t live in the universe without leaving footprints. You leave an impact wherever you go. So how hard can it be to find a thing that once was commonplace? We’ve found memories of the machine embedded in myth and the histories of every people we meet. We’ve chased countless rumors of where it might have been and might be—and nothing. The farther we go, the more I suspect we’re looking in the wrong place. It’s time, I think, to go back to the beginning.

I’ve been wondering what we have in common—humans, Frenro, and everyone else. The thing is, I think it’s that question itself. We’re all looking for the answer to it. Yes, we want to survive, but we also want to be understood, respected, valued by other people. It’s a social thing, I guess. You don’t get to space-faring without that. “Maybe it isn’t possible to get along. We make war, even when we want peace. We fail, and we keep trying anyway. What I've seen is, life seeks other life. Humanity spent so many years looking skyward hoping we weren't alone.

There were no limits to the mysteries of the universe.

You think you're own thoughts and that is beautiful. Haman nature is so delightfully chaotic. You fight with each other, you even fight with yourself in your own mind.

You can't live in the universe without leaving footprints.

Decisions without data are best made by irrational beings,

Life is long, and the way is everchanging.

Discissions without data are best made by irrational beings.

We shall let the universe play it's hand.

Some things were true no matter the people.

That hatred isn't always earned, it sometimes just happens to you. That justice doesn't mean the same thing for different people. That this was a thing that will pass eventually.

Do not worry my friend," said Uncle. "Today is not the day we die. Ahead of us lies happiness. Later there will be more time for stress.

You were right when you said life cannot stay the same and we cannot wait for dreams to come to us.

It is human to worry to much, and you are superior at this skill. We must go forward.

It was beautiful and ominous.

It is a privilege to witness an ending.

When stealing valuable artifacts, there were several important things to keep in mind. First, a diversion is key. Second, always be ready with a story. And third, if you can't be sneaky - be bold.

Water begat all life, and an universal thirst that drove it to return.

My child, we cannot stay here, in this place of infinite regrets and bitter tasting dreams.

Already she could feel the path calling her back. The sugar sweet high of obsession still within reach. She had given up the quest, because she had learned the hard way, it would eat the years of her life ad spit her out old with nothing to show for it but a trail of mistakes.

We went into the cave and found the light. We returned an echo of what had been. Let the ghosts wait there for no one.—From the gravestone of Dr. Paul Nkosi

It was a place that felt so similar to Earth, relatively speaking, that we couldn’t shake the feeling we might have traveled so far only to reach home again. If home were another time, another universe, maybe. It beckoned like an old friend. We knew even before we landed that it must be the place. If our people knew of it, they would flock here. It is Eden.—Dr. Wei Huang, Expedition of the Traveler, A Memoir, vol. 5