Children Of Time Quotes
"This is the future. This is where mankind takes its next great step. This is where we become gods."
"We stand on others’ shoulders, of course."
"Progress is what matters. Fulfilling the potential of humanity, and of all other life."
"The whole point of civilization is that we exceed the limits of nature, you tedious little primitives."
"A journey of twenty light years home. Whilst thirty years drag by on Earth, only twenty will pass for Fallarn and Medi in their cold coffins."
"We will seed the universe with all the wonders of Earth."
"For we are gods, and we are lonely, so we shall create …"
"How did we ever get so far with so many fools in the gene pool?"
"Even if we die, we will live on in our children."
"Even if the powers-that-be refuse us, Doctor Kern, then we will fight."
"If we must wrest mankind’s destiny back by force, then we shall."
"With your hands have I built, with your eyes have I measured, but the mind is mine alone."
"Sometimes you have to just do the right thing, whatever the cost."
"We’re standing here with the universe in our grasp and, instead of furthering our own destinies, we connive at our own obsolescence."
"We have come so far, and still we fall into the oldest errors."
"Happy birthday! You’re now the oldest man in history!"
"It’s like … Mason, you mentioned extra-solar listening posts before …?"
"More successful variants lead to more successful hosts, who in turn pass on the superior mutated infection."
"The virus began to transcribe learned behaviour into the genome of sperm and egg, transforming acquired memes into genetically inheritable behaviour."
"Mental pathways can be transcribed, reduced to genetic information, unpacked in the offspring and written as instinctive understanding."
"Portia has learned a great deal in her life, but some things she was either born with, or came to her as she developed."
"That is now ancient history, a facility that Portia’s people have possessed from back before their histories began."
"It is a brute language unchanged for millions of years: See how strong I am."
"A larger community like Great Nest has a great many Understandings to draw upon, different lineages passing on their mysteries and trading with others."
"Their individuals can learn—and teach—but their inbuilt knowledge base is limited."
"The danger they pose to one another has been a great civilizing influence, just as much as has that sense of kinship their shared viral heritage gifted them with."
"The locals stare at her. A couple have crept partway towards their injured leader, but Bianca is ahead of them, dropping to drive her fangs into her victim’s cracked carapace."
"It’s a warning," he told them. "It’s saying that we’re transmitting from incorrect coordinates, or something like that. It says we’re forbidden here."
"The Second Brin Sentry Habitat acknowledges your request for assistance."
"Please provide full details of your emergency situation so that habitat systems may analyse and advise."
"This planet is claimed by the … Exaltation Program, and any interference is forbidden."
"You are not authorized here. It says … something about biological hazard."
"We are the ark ship Gilgamesh, carrying five hundred thousand humans in suspension. It is of utmost priority that we are able to establish a presence on your planet."
"You are not to make contact with this planet in any way."
"I am Doctor Avrana Kern, chief scientist and administrator of the Second Brin Exaltation Project."
"I’m sorry, but I cannot permit you to compromise the exaltation experiment at this time."
"They fight in the manner of their kind: they display, threaten, bare their fangs."
"The Earth that they remembered had not looked like this."
You are not my responsibility," Kern pronounced. "This planet is my responsibility.
"I am human. I must be human. Am I the system? Am I the upload? Is there anything of me left? Why can I not feel my body?"
"Their planet’s oxygen levels are higher than Earth’s—lightning-sparked fires are a constant threat."
"Portia assesses the locals. They have adopted a submissive posture, thoroughly cowed."
"Portia’s kin share something with tool-using man: they are very able to harm each other."
"Negotiations with the locals have gone sufficiently well—now that Portia and her party have established their superiority."
"The ice had been retreating. Humanity had sprung back swiftly, expanded, fought its small wars."
"Human eyes had looked to the skies again, which were crossed by so many moving points of light."
"It is an independent arm of the same great ant colony her ancestress once scouted out; a centuries-old composite life form that is taking over this part of the world day by day."
"The advancing colony will meet these dangers as it meets all dangers, by sacrificing enough of itself to nullify them, with the main thrust of its attack barely slowing."
"They are far larger than the attackers, both stronger and swifter. Their bite is venomous, but it is a venom best used against spiders, so they now concentrate on using their fangs at the intersections of the insects’ bodies, between head and thorax, between thorax and abdomen."
"Males are replaceable, always underfoot, always too numerous."
"The atmosphere of Portia’s world has an oxygen content a few per cent higher than Earth’s, enough for the searing mixture to spontaneously ignite."
"And you’re Doctor Holsten Mason. I remember reading your papers back when… Back when."
"We brought our own time with us, and we stopped the clock while we slept, and started it when we woke."
"They are of many castes, each to its own speciality."
"This is one way that the mega-colony grows, by co-opting rather than destroying other ant hives."
"Generations of ice-dwellers, forgetting and forgetting who we ever were, wasting away and never seeing the sun except as just another star."
"You are currently within the prohibited zone about a quarantined planet. Any attempt to interact with Kern’s World will be met with immediate retaliation."
"That is not consistent with your current course and speed. This is your final warning."
"Eliza, please may we speak to Doctor Avrana Kern?"
"The doors to the cargo hold had closed automatically."
"Portia’s people have no fingers, but her ancestors were building structures and using tools millions of years before they attained anything like intelligence."
"Bianca is fussing over her males as the butchers set to work killing and dismembering her pets."
"The collection of Paussid beetles that Bianca had accumulated have been driven here from Great Nest."
"The ant column has stopped for the night up ahead, forming a vast and uniquely impregnable fortress."
"Portia and her cohorts are twitching and stamping nervously."
"It is Portia and her fellows who will undertake the impossible task of infiltrating the colony while it sleeps, taking their secret weapon with them."
"The null scent persists even through death, but not for very long, hence this massacre of the beetles at the eleventh hour."
"We have devised a weapon to defeat the ants, no matter how many of them there are, and make them our allies."
"I am awaiting news of that, but perhaps, when you have shed that ungainly second skin, you may wish to investigate. I believe that something has fallen from the sky."
"We’re here now, and it’s survive outside or die inside," Scoles snapped.
"I have a plan. There is a plan. With what we’ve found here, we can go and take our birthright."
"I will not give you access to the Messenger’s crystal."
"You want the same thing as me, only not quite enough."
"There is no speaking back to the Messenger anyway."
"It has long been known that certain chemicals react with metals in curious ways."
"This toy of mine is at the heart of an invisible web."
"What one knows, any can know, for a price."
"Spider has always killed spider. From the start, the species has had a streak of cannibalism, especially female against male."
"The nanovirus that runs through each of them forms another web of connections, reminding each of the sentience of the other."
"For a species that thinks naturally in terms of interconnected networks and systems, the idea of a war of conquest and extermination does not come easily."
"God has other ideas, however, and the superiority of God’s ideas has become a major point of dogma for the Temple."
"The history of the Messenger’s contact with Her chosen is the enactment of a plan."
"That it served the Temple to argue God’s corner is something Portia is aware of."
"God’s work is not to be entrusted to males, but Fabian is special."
"It is the age-old limiting factor: the ants are slow."
"Fabian possesses everything a male might desire, and yet he is unhappy."
"If only he was not so useful … but it is more than that."
"I am not ready, he replies dismissively. There is more to learn."
"Your great discovery, she prompts. Fabian is a volatile genius."
"The temple scientists try to build a network of lightning according to God’s designs."
"God is in love with the same force that burns in the radios."
"The ability to preserve human minds electronically would certainly be advantageous."
"Holsten, this isn’t just about me not liking Guyen."
"It’s up to me—it’s up to me and my crew."
"The burden of knowledge in his head burned like an intolerable coal."
"Because we’re going to war, and it’s important that we are ready for it when we arrive."
"I have to save the species," Guyen confirmed.
"The human race stands on my shoulders, Mason. I am the shepherd."
"You’re ... what? You’re denying it? You’re saying Lain faked it?"
I don’t trust Lain," he snapped. "She has ideas.