Six Wakes Quotes
"Sound struggled to make its way through the thick synth-amneo fluid. Once it reached Maria Arena’s ears, it sounded like a chain saw: loud, insistent, and unending."
"Blood shouldn’t float. That was the first problem."
"A perfect purple sphere of blood shouldn’t be floating in front of her face."
"Cloning bays were pristine, clean places, where humans were downloaded into newly cloned bodies when the previous ones had died."
"Ceci n’est pas une pipe," muttered a voice above Maria. It broke her shock and reminded her of the captain’s order to check on the crew."
"My speech functions are inaccessible," the computer’s male, slightly robotic voice said."
"The future body was all that mattered. The past shouldn’t be there, staring you in the face with dead eyes."
"We have to learn to adapt sometimes. Fast. I wake up. I assess the immediate threat."
"Penalties for creating a duplicate clone were stiff, usually resulting in the extermination of the older clone."
"Once you were gone, the body meant nothing, had no sentimental value."
"The mind-set remained with many clones even as their bodies reverted to youth, knowing that a computer-built body was closer to a strong ideal than they could have ever created with diet and exercise."
"The only part of the Dormire’s mission that hadn’t gone wrong, apparently, was the state of the cargo."
"Each had the simple motivation of being a criminal attempting to wipe the record clean."
""What courts?" he asked as Maria took the wheelchair by the handles and headed for the door. "There are six of us!"
""Thanks for that warning, IAN, we hadn’t noticed the drive was gone.""
"Legally, the moment I woke up, that became just a shell."
"We are given a number of clone-specific ethical questions in med school."
"Playing God isn’t as exciting as you’d think."
"Like all older clones, he understood how to deal with his own death."
"We're all dead at the end of these clones' lifetimes."
"One of the greatest technologies in history was outlawed because of opportunistic fatcats and outlaw hackers with no principles."
"I don't think it's safe to say anything right now."
"I've lived a long time, before the Codicils, even."
"It's safest for everyone if she stays strapped to the bed."
"Kinda like finding a diamond in a pile of shit."
"If running a food printer could be called 'cooking.'"
"The best mindmapping scientists could figure out that you were a compulsive liar as a child."
"Memories, experiences, or triggered responses go floating off untethered to eventually fade away."
"That backup they all made at the beginning of the journey: If all IAN’s logs had been wiped, where did that specific backup come from?"
"The cloning bay’s consoles were protected against liquid damage, but the helm was not."
"In the wars between science and tradition, even if a machine could make a perfect cup of tea, one still served it in a traditional teapot out of respect."
"She enjoyed preparing the tea and pointedly not thinking about their situation, their future, and their inevitable deaths."
"Katrina reacted to the news about the food printer with grim acknowledgment."
"I’m confused, but too numb for anything else now."
"Captain, with all due respect, if I don’t make jokes I will instead fall into the screaming panic that is lurking behind every metaphorical tree and bush in my psyche."
"Not everyone is going to go all Br’er Rabbit on you."
"Life became so cheap," Joanna said. "Euthanize yourself and just skip over terminal illness."
"I respect the living, Katrina," Joanna said, turning back to her computer. "I don’t know why you don’t want to find out what she knows. She could solve it all when she wakes up."
"I’m not talking your physical prowess," Sallie said. "I’m talking about your battle strategy. You plan everything down to the smallest detail, taking into account food and drink preferences and past love affairs. You have contingency plans. I need someone like you on staff."
"Humiliation is all we have," Katrina said thoughtfully. "Most people surround themselves with clones, especially after a lifetime or two, so you can’t threaten their loved ones. Money is far too untraceable: Ruin one venture and find your rival has several more going. Political or sexual scandal doesn’t even last more than a few decades."
"No, but think bigger. The worst pain these days is disappointment. Brought about by hope."
"Sometimes the best ways of the future involve incorporating the ways of the past," Sallie said seriously.
"I need to blow off steam," he said. "Sweat out the alcohol. I need a workout. Paul’s coming with me."
"That crisis just took my drinking buddy," Hiro complained.
"You are totally testosteroned, Hiro. You’re the testosteronedest," she said.
"A speakeasy that serves only hemlock? Be my guest," Maria said.
"Captain, the inability to murder someone on the ship is pretty far down the list of problems we have," Hiro said mildly.
"People need eggs at a time like this," Hiro agreed.
"This is exercise. It’s bonding," Wolfgang said.
"I'm starving," Wolfgang said, swaying slightly.
"You didn’t need to challenge him. Are you so dedicated to making Paul an enemy on day one of the journey?" Joanna asked.
"I wish we had a proper morgue," Wolfgang said.
"IAN, are you in here?" Hiro asked. "Yes, but I can't see you well. I can see your heat signature."
"Well, no, it’s synthetic," Maria pointed out.
"You were supposed to help me today. You’re abandoning me to IAN and a monster of math!"
"IAN, did you know Bebe could message me?" she asked. "Of course. I helped it connect to you."
"Everyone craves comfort food after waking up. It’s pretty easy to please them. And Bebe seems to always know."
"No, it’s wasted time. I will talk to her tomorrow when she’s sober," Hiro said.
"That was fast," Hiro said when she got back in. "I just didn’t have the energy to do it, I guess," Maria said.
"I’ve handled enough meat today, thanks," she said, frowning with distaste.
"You always take the moral high ground. Aren’t you Miss Perfect?"
"I’m blaming the hangover for as long as I can."
"You were the only one I figured wouldn’t make fun of me."
"Hiro Sato, Piloting Sheriff of Outer Space. Hiro. Space Sheriff."
"I’m not supposed to allow that drive out of my sight, right? By law?"
"I know I didn’t do anything. And if there’s an illegal clone out there, it’s him, not me."
"The creation of an unlawful clone is worse than the death of a normal person."
"It’s not just because you seem to be a soon-to-be erased clone, if the other two were woken after you."
"I am remembering terrible things, things I haven’t let myself think about."
"Self-preservation is one of the signs of sentient life."
"If you’re doing something illegal, then isn’t this contract pointless?"
"I like to keep track of my clients and be able to remind them what we had agreed to."
"I am not in the habit of letting my partner’s matrix out the door, much less out of the state."
"I had a feeling I would be going on a trip today, so they already know."
"People are like dogs, every moment teaches them something."
"I like giving to people who really need it, and those who earn it, not lazy people who won’t work."
"Does every encounter need to teach them something?"
"You can’t own buildings in Pan Pacific if you don’t ever go there. It’s bad investing."
"I’m not going to take away your family’s lollipops."
"Too dangerous. Anyway, commenting out the code means that it’s still there, so if I mess something up, I can revert to the old code."
"Every hack I do to a personality is dangerous."
"You can’t have a first until you have a second."
"I hired you for a job. You didn’t do the job."
"It’s a little late for you to worry about ethics."
"I am not a scalpel for you to threaten people with."
"Even if we had four hundred years of happy flying, we don’t know what we will face on the other planet."
"The ship can withstand unavoidable pieces of space debris hit when we’re going hundreds of thousands of miles per hour. A bullet isn’t going to have that much force."
"I’m going to need you to get some food and water for the three of us. It’s going to be a long night, I’m afraid."
"I guess you heard that a lot in your lifetime."
"Just say good-bye, let me die, wake me up in the morning."
"Paranoia was not the way to deal with things."
"The muscles were tight, with very little fat."
"An allure. A lure. Unspeakable temptation to a world of abomination."
"I have to find that journal. Before someone else does."
"No more dry heaves, please. No more any of this."
"Our third day with possibly our final bodies and we ruin everything."
"If you meet a man who tells you he is a clone, pity him."
"They took my faith from me. I didn’t think that was possible."
"One thing I remember is that we’re not meant to be God. I don’t know if cloning kills the soul or not, but I do know the act of cloning is against His will."
"Anything we do to modify our lives in a way that we were not born into is playing God."