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“Soldiers follow orders. Regardless. The moment you refuse to carry out an order, you’re no longer a soldier. You’re just a paid killer trying to renegotiate your contract.”
― Broken Angels
― Broken Angels
“Then let me tell you something instead. When they make an Envoy, do you want to know what they do? They burn out every evolved violence limitation instinct in the human psyche. Submission signal recognition, pecking-order dynamics, pack loyalties. It all goes, tuned out a neuron at a time; and they replace it with a conscious will to harm.” He stared back at me in silence. “Do you understand me? It would have been easier to kill you just then. It would have been easier. I had to stop myself. That’s what an Envoy is, Curtis. A reassembled human. An artifice.”
― Altered Carbon
― Altered Carbon
“The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.”
― Altered Carbon
― Altered Carbon
“It has been a messy week, and I blame myself as much as anyone else. I feel like a behaviourist who has designed her rat’s maze poorly.”
― Altered Carbon
― Altered Carbon
“I was young and stupid,” I said simply. “I was used. I killed for people like you because I knew no better. Then I learned better. What happened at Innenin taught me better. Now I don’t kill for anyone but myself, and every time that I take a life, I know the value of it.” “The value of it. The value of a human life.” Kawahara shook her head like a teacher with an exasperating student. “You are still young and stupid. Human life has no value. Haven’t you learned that yet, Takeshi, with all you’ve seen? It has no value, intrinsic to itself. Machines cost money to build. Raw materials cost money to extract. But people?” She made a tiny spitting sound. “You can always get some more people. They reproduce like cancer cells, whether you want them or not. They are abundant, Takeshi. Why should they be valuable? Do you know that it costs us less to recruit and use up a real snuff whore than it does to set up and run the virtual equivalent format? Real human flesh is cheaper than a machine. It’s the axiomatic truth of our times.”
― Altered Carbon
― Altered Carbon
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