Damon’s Reviews > To Sleep in a Sea of Stars > Status Update

"We are all kings and queens of our own dementia. The only question is how we choose to rule. I was in fractures before. I am in fractures now. But the pieces still form the same broken picture."

"Someday," he said, "when I'm old and rich, I'll have my own spaceship. Just you wait."
"What would you do with your own spaceship?"
He looked at her, serious as could be. "I'd make a long jump. As long as I could. Out toward the far rim of the galaxy."
"Why?" she'd whispered.
"To see what's out there. To fly into the deep depths and carve my name on an empty planet. To know. To understand. Why else?"

"Someday," he said, "when I'm old and rich, I'll have my own spaceship. Just you wait."
"What would you do with your own spaceship?"
He looked at her, serious as could be. "I'd make a long jump. As long as I could. Out toward the far rim of the galaxy."
"Why?" she'd whispered.
"To see what's out there. To fly into the deep depths and carve my name on an empty planet. To [i]know.[/i] To [i]understand.[/i] Why else?"

The perfection of the mirrored surface fascinated her. It was more than atomically smooth; it was Planck-length smooth. Nothing smoother could exist, as the bubble was made out of the warped surface of spacetime itself. And on the other side of the bubble, on the other side of that infinitesimally thin membrane, was the strangeness of the superluminal universe, so close and yet so far away. That, she would never see.

When she'd had her implants installed as a kid, her parents hadn't paid for a system that allowed for full sensory recording-- no touch, taste, or smell-- as they'd considered it an unnecessary extravagance. For the first time, Kira wished they hadn't been so practically minded. She wanted to feel what she'd felt that night; she wanted to feel it for the rest of her life.