Dan Simmons

There is something about raising a child that helps to sharpen one’s sense of what is real.

“Sometimes,” said General Morpurgo, taking her hand, “dreams are all that separate us from the machines.”

Words bend our thinking to infinite paths of self-delusion, and the fact that we spend most of our mental lives in brain mansions built of words means that we lack the objectivity necessary to see the terrible distortion of reality which language brings.

“Gold,” says the Consul, knowing that this is the only syllable that has held its power over the ages.

“I ignore religions,” said Brawne Lamia. “I do not succumb to them.”

He knew what had to be done. It is not always the same as knowing what to do.

There would be no more offerings. Not this day. Not any day. Humankind had suffered enough for its love of gods, its long search for God. He thought of the many centuries in which his people, the Jews, had negotiated with God, complaining, bickering, decrying the unfairness of things but always—always—returning to obedience at whatever the cost. Generations dying in the ovens of hatred. Future generations scarred by the cold fires of radiation and renewed hatred.

Not this time. Not ever again.

Listen! There will be no more offerings, neither child nor parent. There will be no more sacrifices for anyone other than our fellow human. The time of obedience and atonement is past.

Another friend, a child psychologist from the college, once commented that Rachel at age five showed the most reliable indicators of true giftedness in a young person: structured curiosity, empathy for others, compassion, and a fierce sense of fair play.

If our society ever opted for Orwell’s Big Brother approach, the instrument of choice for oppression would have to be the credit wake. In a totally noncash economy with only a vestigial barter black market, a person’s activities could be tracked in real time by monitoring the credit wake of his or her universal card. There were strict laws protecting card privacy but laws had a bad habit of being ignored or abrogated when societal push came to totalitarian shove.

My own guess is that it’s a myth fueled by the same hunger for superstitious verities that drives other religions.

It no longer matters who consider themselves the masters of events. Events no longer obey their masters.