Heaven's River Quotes
"Space is… big. But when you're looking for a single spaceship over literally interstellar distances, space gets right in your face with its bigness."
"Every single Bob is my descendant, because that's what Von Neumann probes do. We make copies."
"In VR, I had a body and pets and a home. And before the addition of the personal VR, four out of five replicants went insane."
"We’re immortal, being computers, but we also operated millisecond resolutions, so several hundred years would be an eternity to me."
"If Bender had noticed something and turned to investigate it, perhaps someone following his path would see the same thing."
"We normally approach to system at a tangent rather than diving straight for the star but we retained enough velocity to turn in system in minimal time."
"We've made great strides in restoring the Pav homeworld. About a third of the planet is actively growing things once again."
"The prevailing attitude now seemed to be that WE had done it, and lied about it for no reason that anyone could come up with."
"We can't do everything ourselves. For instance, without Bridget, the androids wouldn't be anywhere near as advanced as they are."
"We’re a monoculture - specialists. And that's not healthy."
"One of the many interesting aspects of the design was that a river ran the entire length of the section we’d scanned, and that was more than 100,000 miles."
"The way the river loops and splits and meanders, no part of the inner surface seems to be very far from water."
"Earth has, or had, anyway, about 330 million cubic miles of water. The river in the topopolis averages may be a half-mile wide and one tenth of a mile deep."
"The Earth contains about 90 billion cubic miles of iron. To build this, based on the cross section we see, you’d only need 20 billion cubic miles."
"So, what now?" "Well, we have well-established and tested procedures for picking up culture and language surreptitiously, thanks to Jacques."
"You're talking to the Skippies?" "Yeah, they don't have an AI yet, but they do have a generalized self-programming expert system with enormous processing power."
"And honestly, if they started using strong-arm tactics, I don't think it would go well for them. As a group, Bobs aren’t tolerant of that kind of thing."
"We have at least a partial answer to that," I said. "There are radiator surfaces along the entire shaded side of the outer shell, which are radiating way more heat than can be accounted for by solar absorption."
"It's not completely wrong," I said, "but it assumes that we have a goal of some kind with sufficient motivation to mandate cutting off contact with humans."
"I guess I have three choices. I can drop out, and I’d never forgive myself. I can simply bite the bullet and go into this full time and do short visits with Howard and the kids when the opportunity presents."
"I'm most interested in finding corpses. Emergency management sounds like something that would be staffed right up until the end."
"If this is a set of stairs, as it appears to be - oof!"
"Yep, and locked at ground level, just as they would be on Earth."
"I, uh… I have to do this other thing over there."
"Don't break something. An excellent motto for any age."
"You’d think being dead would free you from the dictates of politics, but apparently it's even more inevitable than death or taxes."
"I’d been living in real in a Manny for so long that virt have become a foreign experience."
"It is, in that we have all the technology required to build one, just not the knowledge."
"No, nothing like that. Just ground-level belligerence, I think."
"Which brings me to the reason for my visit. You’ve drawn up plans for any number of megastructures over the years."
"I can see a transport system right there. Vacuum monorail, or something similar."
"Quinlans solved it by being born animalistic but pretty much fully mobile almost right away."
"I’m surprised they managed to get to this stage, technologically."
"And no one seems to be surprised. Quinlans are just naturally belligerent."
"Intercom the rest of us if you think of something else."
"All I really have is what Howard told me and he hadn't been at the moot."
"You're very carefully not saying something. Is there a potential danger to the citizens of Poseidon?"
"Look, there's not much they can do to us in virt, so if something goes down, it'll be in physical space, which means you’ll get at least some fallout."
"I have a little more leeway where actual threats are concerned. I’ll still have to tread carefully, but I can at least get a few projects bumped up in priority."
"Seemed people liked being in physical contact with their coworkers, and felt alienated when they were constantly on their own."
"The technological defenses kept the ocean predators so completely at bay that a new ecosystem was evolving on the mats, based on the lack of predation."
"Rush hour was no longer even a concept for most humans, so the economic and social cost of going to work was nearly nonexistent."
"There was no chill, no feeling of shivering dampness. The Quinlan fur with its waterproofing kept me nice and toasty."
"A laroche was kinda a big wolf but with claws like a grizzly bear."
"You guys have to be convincing though. He has to believe we’re ready to buy into his crazy ideas."
"We can't stop the Administrator, but we can prevent Skeev from brewing more trouble and causing a Scattering in our home."
"There’s many easier and less complex ways of taking out an opponent, starting with stabbing them and working up to a proper pistol with bullets."
"You will be paid well for your risks and pain."
"We can just nuke the current stations if we can't get them back."
"So, assuming I find Helep’s Ending how do I find you?"
"I had given expedition members the run of the place."
"We could eventually get enough drones with SUDDAR scanning into the area, but it might take literally years to find him."
"The Bobiverse war is the biggest single news item in the UFS right now, even eclipsing the Pav threat."
"The number of interacting factors that would have to be integrated is truly mind-boggling."
"I'm not entirely sure if that's good or bad."
"No one starves, there are no wars, medical knowledge is good, and sanitation is well understood so mortality is low."
"I'll update Bob on these items, and we'll see if we can work it to our advantage."
"The question was, why weren't the Resistance everywhere in here?"
"This installation was probably huge, as it would serve many purposes relating to the care and maintenance of Heaven's River."
"I've been frame-jacking myself down to my lowest rate whenever possible."
"It's a rotating structure, 100 hen in radius, composed of segments each 1000 hen in length. The ratio is clearly artificial."
"If I catch you trying that, or anything similar again, I will rip off your head and shit down your neck."
"And how had that worked out for the Quinlans? Still, while I wasn't about to be tackled, I also wasn't about to get a free ride back to Garrick's Spine."
"I wondered what Snidely's cosmology would look like, but having to talk to him would be too high a price to pay to find out."
"You’re a small man, with a small shriveled soul, Mr. Whiplash."
"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose."
"I realized that I was still suffering from a bit of panic mode. I needed to slow down, calm down, take stock."
"I'm concerned about running into someone or something that can wipe out humanity."
"But there's a certain quality of bigness to it."
"I'm getting tired of this campaign. We've been battling high-level beasts since almost the entrance, lost over half our group, and we've sweet diddly to show for it."
"On the list of things that defeat a True Seeing, we can add low-tech tricks like building a wall without mortar."
"Brains…" said the zombies, and advanced on us.
"Shut up, Vern," Gandalf growled. "Kill now, carp later."
"If you’ve got anything in that bag of tricks, Gandalf, now would be the time," I yelled.
"Bippity boppity boo!" Gandalf replied, dancing around and waving his wand.
"You’re right. It's too easy to get myopic and see everything from the point of view of my own priorities."
"Plus I took your Staff of Fireballs, I'm sure that figures into it."
"Shall we just sail right past port then?!" Captain Lisa's voice washed over us.
"Seems like an odd gap. How far away is your home? Maybe they need a missionary visit."
"I think you're reading too much into an unconnected series of conversations, Teresa."
"And the overall problem is still there: mistrust of replicants."
"I work that way. I’d just run. And I'd have to take a chance on getting this wet."
"We need to look in your trunk, sir," the cop said to me.
"I'd invited myself over to Gandalf's VR again, and he was eyeing me suspiciously."
"You have that smug look, Bridget said. "What happened?"
"We pulled into Orchard Hill without incident."
"This is just common goods. Why did you not to show him this?"
"But it won't be with us," the captain replied.
"I've asked Mario to create us a full space station and autofactory in the system."
"I've been popping around everywhere, evaluating damage from the Starfleet attack."
"You have permission. He does not." She turned to Ted.
"We were on our lunch break and were once again sitting around the fish bowl."
"I am Teresa Cycorski, lady of the University of Peach Land."
"It's okay, it's not like we're on a schedule."
"But they still have to tread carefully, because if they make the citizens mad, there will be a revolt."
"This might turn out to be the weirdest ecosystem I've ever seen."
"We all chuckled. Harvey, our new deckhand, said ‘It sounds like I missed an interesting time.’"
"Theodor, please bring Mr. Whiplash’s trunk down."
"That's the best sentence any teacher could hear."
"You’re usually a bit more articulate than that, Enochi. Do you need a slap?"