Endymion

I began to understand. “A Faustian bargain...,” I said.

“The Faustian bargain,” said the girl. “All the church had to do to gain the universe was sell its soul.”

The universe is indifferent to our fates. This was the crushing burden that the character took with him as he struggled through the surf toward survival or extinction. The universe just does not give a shit.

Why am I seeking logic or sanity here? I'd asked myself at the moment. There hasn’t been any so far.

Information is always to be treasured, Raul. It is behind only love and honesty in a person’s attempt to understand the universe.

“Humanity has evolved—as far as it has evolved,” continued the old priest, “with no thanks to its predecessors or itself. Evolution brings human beings. Human beings, through a long and painful process, bring humanity.”

“Empathy,” Aenea said softly.

I heard the hiss and felt the blessed numbness spreading. If there is a God, I thought, it’s a painkiller.

“Entropy is a bitch,” I said.

“Now, now,” said Aenea from where she was leaning on the terrace wall. “Entropy can be our friend.”

“When?” I said.

She turned around so that she was leaning back on her elbows. The building behind her was a dark rectangle, serving to highlight the glow of her sunburned skin. “It wears down empires,” she said. “And does in despotisms.”

The future is never written...only penciled in.

I realized that night the import and the terrible difficulty in the task ahead of me—in keeping this child safe from the sharp edges of a strange and indifferent universe.

I think that is was on this alien and storm-tossed night that I first understood what it might be like to be a parent.

I was not surprised to wake up alive. I suppose one is surprised only when one awakens dead.

One of the men in the boat—I could not remember which character—had moved through all of the circles of theological supposition: praying, believing that God was a merciful Deity who sat up nights worrying about him, then believing that God was a cruel bastard, and finally deciding that no one was listening.

Life is brutal that way...the loss of irrecoverable moments amid trivia and distraction.

De Soya blinks. “Suicide is a mortal sin,” he says.

On the screen the girl nods seriously. “Yes,” she says, “but I am not a Christian. Also, I'd rather go to hell than go with you.”