“Until recently we were a trio. Before that, a quartet. Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m beginning to detect a… — Alastair Reynolds

Auger could not help marvelling at the experience of being inside the ALS sphere and seeing her world as it should have been. This was an earth that had never known nuclear war, or runaway climatic catastrophe, or smart weather, or a Nanocaust. The sight of it made her want to weep. No image had ever come close to the heartbreaking beauty of this small blue world, a beauty all the more acute now that she knew how exquisitely fragile it was. It was the beauty of a butterfly’s wing.

There was something about the cocksure confidence of that statement that gave Auger goose pimples. It was like an invitation to fate.

It was bad, but it was some other slightly less piquant flavour of bad.