James S. A. Corey

“It’s good being young,” he said, “but some people wear it better than others.”

Computers, it seemed, could be programmed to do almost anything but sense when someone was up to no good.

Sometimes when we make these distinctions, we’re really creating them more than describing anything that’s already there.

She could remember the girl she used to be with fondness, but it wasn’t a youth she cared to recapture.

“My own kind,” she said. “Let me tell you about my own kind. There are two sides in this, but they aren’t inner planets and outer ones. Belters and everyone else. It’s not like that. It’s the people who want more violence and the ones who want less. And no matter what other variable you sample out of, you’ll find some of both.”

“See, that’s what civilization is,” he said. “Bunch of stories. That’s all.”

“So what if it is?” Peaches said. “We’re really good at telling stories.”

“You look old, Fred.”

“I feel old. But it’s better than the alternative.”

It was beautiful at this distance. The cities nothing but firefly twinkles on the dark side. Where the sun struck the Earth, almost nothing man had made was visible from the lunar orbit. The planet looked clean, unspoiled.

It was a pretty lie.

Seemed like a fact of the universe that the closer you got to anything, the worse it looked. Take the most beautiful person in the solar system, zoom in on them at the right magnification and they were an apocalyptic cratered landscape crawling with horrors. That’s what the Earth was. A shining jewel from space, up close a blasted landscape covered with mites living by devouring the dying.

Something in the back of her head shifted. The serpent of learned helplessness long asleep starting to wake. She pretended it wasn’t there, in hopes that if she denied it enough, it wouldn’t exist.

The aliens that sent the protomolecule hadn’t needed to destroy humanity. They’d given humans the opportunity to destroy themselves, and as a species, they’d leaped on it.

“Sometimes you don’t get redeemed,” she said, and here voice made it clear she’d thought about the question. Tired and strong at the same time. “Not every stain comes out. Sometimes you do something bad enough that you carry the consequences for the rest of your life and take the regrets to the grave. That’s your happy ending.”

History’s made of surprises that seem obvious in retrospect.