Camp Zero Quotes
"Snow has scrubbed the landscape clean, capped the roof of the run-down mall that is one of the few buildings still standing on this frozen stretch of highway."
"She takes off a glove and watches a flake vanish in the palm of her hand. She’s never seen snow before, and the snowflake feels refreshing on her skin, like a cool cloth pressed to a feverish forehead."
"Judith lowers her voice. 'I wanted to let you girls choose your names for yourself. But Meyer likes things his way.'"
Nothing is illegal in camp," Judith says. "That’s why we live off-grid. We’re lucky enough to make our own rules here.
"A small victory, but an essential one. Reading what Meyer thinks and feels will be the first step to gaining his trust."
"The snow is so pure you can eat it with a spoon," Judith says.
"Rose wonders if the rules of the camp are like the rules of the Floating City, created to benefit those who made them."
"Damien, her former client who set her up with this job, warned her that the camp would be spare, but he said nothing about squatting in a derelict shopping mall."
"The truth is that he has no experience teaching and has woken up at three a.m. every day for the last two weeks stricken with deep and abiding feelings of inadequacy."
"We once imagined fleeing here during times of political unrest, but what we’re doing is much more altruistic than nation-dodging. We will build a new way of life here. A new home."
"Everything that is saved in our station is encrypted into code, which is why we didn’t understand it at first. But once we were able to break the code, we accessed the file and understood everything perfectly."
"I’ve spent my entire life working in a place that refuses to let go of the past. Every season, I’ve cleaned and prepared nine antique cottages for guests who are comforted by the relics of a bygone era. But I want a different life than the one I was born into. I want to see the future the Floating City is building."
"Men will build lies if it makes them feel safe. Even a radar station that has no purpose."
"The moment I stepped foot in the station, I knew this mission was compromised. Why do you think I trained each of you so intensely? Why do you think I never rested? I feared we would someday meet a decision like this."
"Your father was a mirror. He saw what he wanted to see, not who I really was."
"You don’t need to eat when you’re in love."
"The truth is, there are too many humans on this planet competing for the same resources. It’s just not reasonable for us all to get what we want, when we want it, how we want it. Very few have the privilege of choice."
"This is the most ambitious project I’ve ever been a part of. And the most important. We will build a new way of life here. A new home."
"You could take any book off the shelf just to feel its pages, and then check it out to read at home."
"Each server holds the data of a thousand people. Millions of feeds are now stored in that one reading room."
"The Floating City is organized into four concentric sectors."
"Our job is to look around us and see how we can leave our mark."
"A soul is more than an algorithm. A soul exists beyond code and can never be replicated."
"It turns out you can’t create a soul, but you can suppress its desire and longing if you redirect it."
"There’s power in the past. And you’re going to help me unleash it."
"Willow turns on the speaker system, and the store fills with sugary pop music."
"Because we have no other choice. This is where we are."
"I was wrong to think of myself as an outsider, as somehow different or better than my family."
"We could see that sun, hear that bass, taste that heat, and we would close our eyes tighter, hoping the images would stay a moment longer before burning away."
"Our daughter’s knowledge of animals had been limited to the books in the library that featured Arctic mammals."
"A decent percentage of Flick users are online full-time. They have no interest in the past. All they care about is their present feed."
"What we needed was oil. And lots of it."
"Stupid cunt. I wasn’t going to tell you, but Damien never intended for you to return to the Floating City. He told me to get rid of you in camp once the survey is complete. Looks like we’re right on schedule."
"It is the sound of one world ending. And another world begins."
"In the dim fluorescent light, his corpse looks more like an animal than a man."
"He’s dead, girls. He can’t do anything now."
"Drink, darling. I know what you're going through, and you have to believe me that this will pass."
"The biological fact that men are stronger and larger than us was used as a tool for oppression."
"One dead man is nothing compared to the destruction men have caused to this world."
"Do you know there is a better life than the one you’ve been condemned to?"
"We're no better than animals. We're no better than dirt."
"You’re too privileged not to die on your own terms."
"I’m growing used to the way I sound when I cry in the dark."
"As we walked through the pilfered aisles of the Stop N Save, we found ourselves missing the villagers of Dominion Lake."
"The end of oil brought our life in White Alice into crisis."
"A city," Sal said skeptically. "But the land is gutted from extraction."
"We all agreed that we needed to adapt to green energy and find a new supply chain."
"Twenty-seven years. We had spent nearly three decades surviving in the station."
"Gone were the visitations from a past life lived in the South. Gone were the memories of the people we once loved."
"We were given the code name White Alice by our sergeant, who claimed to read books as much as he claimed to see us as his equal."
"Her power was rooted in her curiosity, and she possessed just enough schoolgirl naïveté not to fear what she discovered."
"All we had was the station and our daughter."
"But we suddenly realized there, in the hotel lobby, that it didn’t matter how we lived or how we conducted our lives. All that mattered was that we remain alive."
"We’ll name him Exodus—the one who allowed us to leave everything behind."
"Sal lights a match, and the orange spark arcs onto the oil trail, erupting across the ground in a single breath."
"She’ll never know his name now. Never see him awash in sunlight."
"She is not red sauce and the wet mouths of Meyer’s children. She is not his wife, his daughter, his plaything, his mirror. She is not Rose. She is Nari."
Of course it’s shit." Nari squeezes her hand. "But it’s the only world we have.