The Stars Are Legion

Perhaps every society is a utopia when you fail to peel up all the layers and look at what's underneath

When you understand what the world is, you have two choices: Become a part of that world and perpetuate that system forever and ever, unto the next generation. Or fight it, and break it, and build something new. The former is safer, and easier. The latter is scarier, because who is to say what you build will be any better?

The monsters don't live in the belly of the world like they all say. The monsters live inside of us. We make the monsters.

We all create the stories we need to survive

What is love anyway but a hunger no meal can satisfy?

I once believed that all we were is the sum of our memories,” Das Muni says, “but in this place, I found that it isn’t the memories that made us; it is what we decided to do with them. I tried to build a life down there, in the dark, based on the pain I’ve endured. But you can’t do that, can you? You have to . . . remake it. Transform. We are more than the sum of what’s happened to us, aren’t we?

I have spent my life battling monsters. It was only in realizing that I was the monster, and choosing to destroy her, that I could save the world.

There is nothing I fear more than someone without memory. A person without memory is free to do anything she likes.

The secret to leadership is not to be a particularly intelligent person. It is to surround oneself with those far smarter than oneself. And try not to kill them.

I’m afraid,” I say, and that is partly the truth. I am afraid of what I am going to have to do to this person who claims she is my sister, but who I want to take into my arms and fuck until the world ends.

What if there’s nowhere else to go? What if there’s only the Legion?” “The stars are legion,” I say. “Look at them. All those other suns. There could be many other worlds like ours circling them. Maybe worlds very different from ours. We can learn from them.

I don’t know why desire has to be so complicated. I know what I need and what I want, and there is a place where those two things intersect, but it is a dangerous place. I want it nonetheless.

She holds up the map. “It’s all fine! I have the traders’ maps.” She squints at it. “According to this, there are some pits, a mountain range, some monster herds, and a couple tribes of mutants. It will be fine! A fine adventure!

But I am a great pretender, sometimes so good at it that I convince myself that what I pretend is what is truly real.

All I am, and all I love, is war. I don't know who I will be if I stop. The world, if it is to survive, needs a leader, not a warmonger. The world I want to make does not require me

I listen when people think I don’t. That’s the secret to staying alive. You must know more than you pretend.

No one offers a hand without wanting it filled with something,

We’re all the same thing. We’re all shit. We’re all flesh. We’re all sentient.

I dream of a woman with a great craven face walking along the surface of a massive world. She is a titan. She snatches flying vehicles from the air and crunches them in her diamond teeth. Green lubricant and yellow puffs of exhaust escape her gaping mouth. Little blue insects flitter through the ether, and when they encounter the yellow mist, they fall down dead, like leaves. The surface of the world is covered in wavering tentacles, and the titan grabs on to them for purchase as she strides across the world, snarling and spitting out the corpses of her enemies and poisoning everything she breathes on. She snatches at one of the flying vehicles and stabs herself in the stomach with it. She cuts long and low, and though I expect her to cry out in pain, she only roars and shows her teeth as gouts of blood pour from her body and float lazily to the surface of the world, sluggish and distorted by the low gravity.

independence is one of the greatest delusions of youth

And for the first time, I pity her, because when she says love, I think she really means it. For her, this is love. This is what she does to someone she loves. And I wonder if I am any better, because this is what I did to Zan all those rotations ago. I seduced her until she loved me with all her heart, and when it came time to do what needed to be done, I was willing to sacrifice that love, but she was not.

War makes monsters of us all. But what happens to those of us who no longer wish to be monsters?

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU PRETEND TO BE. IT’S FAR TOO EASY TO BECOME WHAT YOU PRETEND.

It’s easy to force affection. Far more difficult to entice it.

Smile all the brighter for being the villain.

and I realize the words for world and ship are nearly identical.

I found that it isn’t the memories that made us; it is what we decided to do with them.

walks away, back into the halo of light. “I’m not trying to be mean,” Casamir says. “Intent doesn’t always matter,” I say.

It’s not meant to comfort,” she says. “It’s truth.