We all know interspecies romance is weird.

Depression isn't a war you win. It's a battle you fight every day. You never stop, never get to rest. It's one bloody fray after another.

I saw the world from the stars' point of view, and it looked unbearably lonely.

We're not words, Henry, we're people.Words are how others define us, but we can define ourselves any way we choose.

Ambulances were cool. “You just want to fondle my extraneous body parts,” I said to the EMT as I picked up a silver gadget that looked disturbingly like an alien orifice probe, broke it, then promptly put it back, hoping it wouldn’t leave someone’s life hanging in the balance because the EMT couldn’t alien-probe his orifices.

What in the blue star-blazes did you see in Jason?" he asked, still forcefully but with his frustration and jealousy under better control."For one thing, Djetth, he wasn't trying to kill me!"

Popularity is teenage heroin.

We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.

How baffling it is that we imagined cities incinerated by alien bombs and death rays when all they really needed was Mother Nature and time.

I frowned as my fingers throbbed. “Wait a sec. There’s a chance I can’t work with fire and you let me do that?”“How else am I going to figure out your limitations?”“What the hell!” I pulled my hand free, furious. “That’s not cool, Blake. What’s next? Trying to stop a moving vehicle by standing in front of it, but whoops, I can’t do that and now I’m dead?

Adolf Hitler! Ken, it makes me furious. Forty million people die to defeat that megalomaniac, and he's the star of the first broadcast to another civilization? He's representing us. And them. It's that madman's dream come true.

It seemed that, after contact with a few human generations, sand hogs would begin to understand human speech. The irony was that after coming to understand their riders fully, the beasts often ended up abandoning them and heading off into the wilderness.

The problem with ID, of course, is that it leaves open the possibility that the intelligence behind nature may have a moral interest in us, having communicated already with humanity in the past, and might try to boss you around in your private af

It illuminated a vision Dante could not have imagined in his wildest nightmares, nor Poe in the grasp of an uncontrollable delirium.

Even if such beauty wasn't meant to be in a world so fallen as ours, that didn't take away from its beauty. It only made it more beautiful.

If you still believe that aliens would travel hundreds of light years to carve temporary graffiti in our wheat, then your imagination is one of the seven wonders of the world, and should be bronzed.

She died without us by her side, and now, we are left with the scars. In time, perhaps they will fade, but for now, they're still hauntingly there reminding us of the loss and pain.

Speak peace unto the world and good souls will stand.

On the inner side of the aquarium of reality, beliefs define the area of the prison.

Pride was the belt you used to hold your pants up when you had no pants.

We are all cursed. We live in the era of the curse. A world that cannot be fixed. The best thing would be an alien ship. Another planet. One with three moons. But you, I saw you in my dreams. I saw you coming. You came to heal my broken heart. That's why I named you Ahlam.

I myself recently dreamed that a UFO came speeding towards me which turned out to be the lens of a magic lantern whose projected image was myself; this suggested to me that I was the figure, himself deep in meditation, who is produced by a meditating yogi.

Not everyone can decode a dream! Dreamers are those abled minds that can read the intent of the dream in terms of energy, frequency & vibration...!

What in the blue star-blazes did you see in Jason?" he asked, still forcefully but with his frustration and jealousy under better control."For one thing, Djetth, he wasn't trying to kil

Women emerging like aliens in a hesitant future, in a men’s world with impervious codes, may feel like dots in an uncharted territory. Discovering the crucial points, which don't line up with the unbearability of reality, may be a key to the right compass in life. ( "Terra incognita")

How ugly we must look to them, spilling light into every dark corner to push back the shadows, blinding ourselves to the true beauty of emptiness.

Note from Alien cookbook: “The more intelligent the human is, the better it tastes.

Well,” Harry said, “look at it this way: Suppose you were an intelligent bacterium floating in space, and you came upon one of our communication satellites, in orbit around the Earth. You would think, What a strange, alien object this is, let’s explore it. Suppose you opened it up and crawled inside. You would find it very interesting in there, with lots of huge things to puzzle over. But eventually you might climb into one of the fuel cells, and the hydrogen would kill you. And your last thought would be: This alien device was obviously made to test bacterial intelligence and to kill us if we make a false step.“Now, that would be correct from the standpoint of the dying bacterium. But that wouldn’t be correct at all from the standpoint of the beings who made the satellite. From our point of view, the communications satellite has nothing to do with intelligent bacteria. We don’t even know that there are intelligent bacteria out there. We’re just trying to communicate, and we’ve made what we consider a quite ordinary device to do it.

Once there were three tribes. The Optimists, whose patron saints were Drake and Sagan, believed in a universe crawling with gentle intelligence—spiritual brethren vaster and more enlightened than we, a great galactic siblinghood into whose ranks we would someday ascend. Surely, said the Optimists, space travel implies enlightenment, for it requires the control of great destructive energies. Any race which can't rise above its own brutal instincts will wipe itself out long before it learns to bridge the interstellar gulf.Across from the Optimists sat the Pessimists, who genuflected before graven images of Saint Fermi and a host of lesser lightweights. The Pessimists envisioned a lonely universe full of dead rocks and prokaryotic slime. The odds are just too low, they insisted. Too many rogues, too much radiation, too much eccentricity in too many orbits. It is a surpassing miracle that even one Earth exists; to hope for many is to abandon reason and embrace religious mania. After all, the universe is fourteen billion years old: if the galaxy were alive with intelligence, wouldn't it be here by now?Equidistant to the other two tribes sat the Historians. They didn't have too many thoughts on the probable prevalence of intelligent, spacefaring extraterrestrials— but if there are any, they said, they're not just going to be smart. They're going to be mean.It might seem almost too obvious a conclusion. What is Human history, if not an ongoing succession of greater technologies grinding lesser ones beneath their boots? But the subject wasn't merely Human history, or the unfair advantage that tools gave to any given side; the oppressed snatch up advanced weaponry as readily as the oppressor, given half a chance. No, the real issue was how those tools got there in the first place. The real issue was what tools are for.To the Historians, tools existed for only one reason: to force the universe into unnatural shapes. They treated nature as an enemy, they were by definition a rebellion against the way things were. Technology is a stunted thing in benign environments, it never thrived in any culture gripped by belief in natural harmony. Why invent fusion reactors if your climate is comfortable, if your food is abundant? Why build fortresses if you have no enemies? Why force change upon a world which poses no threat?Human civilization had a lot of branches, not so long ago. Even into the twenty-first century, a few isolated tribes had barely developed stone tools. Some settled down with agriculture. Others weren't content until they had ended nature itself, still others until they'd built cities in space.We all rested eventually, though. Each new technology trampled lesser ones, climbed to some complacent asymptote, and stopped—until my own mother packed herself away like a larva in honeycomb, softened by machinery, robbed of incentive by her own contentment.But history never said that everyone had to stop where we did. It only suggested that those who had stopped no longer struggled for existence. There could be other, more hellish worlds where the best Human technology would crumble, where the environment was still the enemy, where the only survivors were those who fought back with sharper tools and stronger empires. The threats contained in those environments would not be simple ones. Harsh weather and natural disasters either kill you or they don't, and once conquered—or adapted to— they lose their relevance. No, the only environmental factors that continued to matter were those that fought back, that countered new strategies with newer ones, that forced their enemies to scale ever-greater heights just to stay alive. Ultimately, the only enemy that mattered was an intelligent one.And if the best toys do end up in the hands of those who've never forgotten that life itself is an act of war against intelligent opponents, what does that say about a race whose machines travel between the stars?

Milkshakes make the world seem less shitty.

History is just a way of keeping score, but it doesn't have to be who we are.

It's a date.""It's a cookie.""It's a cookie date.

Bonding over illegal drugs hadn't magically solved our problems,

The tallest slugger touched my forehead, and I ignited like a sparkler on the Fourth of July. Shards of dazzling light rippled under my skin. I was the constellation Grus. The Trifid Nebula. I was the Big Bang, expanding endlessly through time and space forever."I thought I was dying. That I was going to expire on a cold slab, trapped inside an UFO, my body filled with every light that had ever existed. I couldn't imagine a better way to die.

Just the perfect peace of nothingness. That's what I believed.

The only thing that scares me more than space aliens is the idea that there aren't any space aliens. We can't be the best that creation has to offer. I pray we're not all there is. If so, we're in big trouble.

Man has gone out to explore other worlds and other civilizations without having explored his own labyrinth of dark passages and secret chambers, and without finding what lies behind doorways that he himself has sealed.

Everything's going to be okay', because that's what I wanted him to say and it's what he wanted to say and that's what you do when the curtain is falling — you give the line that the audience wants to hear.

The Buggers have finally, finally learned that we humans value each and every individual human life. We don’t throw our forces away because every soldier is the queen of a one-member hive. But they’ve learned this lesson just in time for it to be hopelessly wrong- for we humans do, when the cause is sufficient, spend our own lives. We throw ourselves onto the grenade to save our buddies in the foxhole. We rise out of the trenches and charge the entrenched enemy and die like maggots under a blowtorch. We strap bombs on our bodies and blow ourselves up in the midst of our enemies. We are, when the cause is sufficient, insane.

We are humanity, the banner read. Wrong. We’re pale reflections of it, weak shadows, distant echoes.

You can’t afford anthropomorphic biases when some of the aliens most like us would rather make human hamburgers than peace.

That's not the same. What happened to you, to your species, it's... it doesn't even compare.''Why? Because it's worse?'She nodded.'But it still compares. If you have a fractured bone, and I've broken every bone in my body, does that make your fracture go away? Does it hurt you any less, knowing that I am in more pain?''No, but that's

No doesn't mean to Marcus what it means to those without money and a car.

Remember Ping-fa, Sun Tzu,’ Art of War—read between the lines: kick ass and take names later.”MadStargirl

Mad, in exasperation, cried out to the unseen force, “Why did you summon us? There must be a reason. Tell us.” She heard a dreamlike voice.“You are Stargirls.” The voice paused, letting the fog and confusion of their nightmare to lift.Lyn found her voice, “But why us?”“You are the chosen ones by prophecy; you have proven your worthiness. A time warp brought you here. The one you opened was no accident. It was left a hundred thousand years ago just for you. Your Star training as children has prepared you well. You are ready for the next stage in your evolution.

Lyn, this was the “Aha!” moment when Desta found another astonishing skeleton. Remarkably, it appeared utterly human but existed before humans walked the Earth. Clutched in its hand a small sphere attached to an elaborate gold necklace. The sphere was not like any material on Earth. Remember when I told you our origins might lie in the stars? Well, I think we found the answer in the Afar desertMax

I wanted her to notice me, to pay attention to me. It was an irrational desire, one I‘d never experienced before.

The sea in all its vastness is its own, real world. Man is nature's sci-fi.

My space chums think reality was once a primitive method of crowd control that got out of hand. In my view, it’s absurdity dressed up in a three-piece business suit.

She died without us by her side, and now, we are left with the scars. In time, they may fade, but for now, they're still hauntingly there reminding us of the loss and pain.- Unlikely Love (coming soon)

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

They were once fairies and elves. Now they are creatures from beyond the stars because you no longer believe in anything but humans.

In my client who had confessed her “alien abduction” experience, an alter had been instructed that if she began to remember the ritual abuse she was to remember the alien abduction, so that nobody would believe her account of the ritual abuse. This program did not work with us, but you can imagine the larger consequences of such a ruse.p55

I think it would be best if, when you’re having suicidal thoughts of stabbing yourself, that you try to think of rainbows instead.”“Rainbows?” Ann said hugging a pillow.“Yeah,” Lisa said, standing back to look at her wall art. “Ya know—happy, bright, refreshing, the calm after the storm, God’s gift to the earth.”“Or the aliens’ gift,” Ann added.“Course,” Lisa agreed. “Can’t rule that out.

In the 4th Wave, you can't trust that people are still people. But you can trust that your gun is still your gun.

This is what the Others have done to us. You can’t band together to fight without trust. And without trust, there was no hope. How do you rid the Earth of humans? Rid the humans of their humanity.

I was surrounded by heaven. The sun, the moon, the earth, and all those living stars. They wen't static like in pictures taken from impossibly far away- they breathed, they glowed. They were future and past, possibility and memory. They were beautiful. "I never knew there were so many," I whispered. We are merely pieces of a grander design, even more insignificant than I imagined. When the earth ceases to be, all those stars will shine on. Out deaths will mean nothing to them."I feel so small." No one replied. I wondered as I watched the stars, really seeing them for the fist time, whether they could see me, too.

I hear you're a conspiracy nut. Well, this is the conspiracy, kid. It ain't ancient gods an' aliens an' coded shit on the dollar bill. It ain't even a secret, it's somthin' ordinary folks do for a livin' every day of the week. It's business.

This thought, this truth, it highlighted the distance between us. We lived in different timeframes. A reminder that, even right now, we didn't share the same moments. We could never truly be together.

Mate. He’d told Hayden he would stick to his routine. That meant watching the game at her apartment on Sunday and maintaining their friendship. His logical mind fought against his growing urges. Last night, he couldn’t have a simple conversation without touching her. And she didn’t make things any easier. He could smell the desire pouring out of her. It took every ounce of his self-control to hold himself back. At times, it was painful. “I know what I’m doing. I’ve got the situation under control.” Cam laughed. “Like you did yesterday? Dude, we both know it’s only going to get worse. You’re like a ticking sex bomb.” Deep down, Kaden knew he was right. Annabelle would become an irresistible, unquenchable thirst. Ordinarily, she would feel the same pull, but there was no way to know how a human would react. “There’s no such thing as a sex bomb.” Cam spread himself flat across the sofa with his arms crossed behind his head. “Yeah, well, there definitely should be.” “Be serious.” He sat up. “I’m trying to tell you, it’s foolish to fight the bond between you. You’d be better off going with it and letting the panties drop where they may.” And what would happen if he did bond with her? There was no chance it would ever work out between them. He had to hide who he was from the world. A life with him meant Annabelle would have to lie to her friends and family about their relationship. He would never be able to marry her or give her the children she wanted. They’d talked about her dreams for a white picket fence and a family. Even if she were willing to give up those things, wouldn’t he be putting her life in danger? A dull ache formed in the pit of his chest. “You know that’s not possible.” If he could somehow push away these human emotions of his, maybe he stood a chance of keeping her in his life. Maybe someday he could actually be happy for her if she found a suitable mate. He dug his fingernails into the palms of his hands at the thought of her with a human. “I have to go. She’s waiting for me.” “Don’t forget the condoms,” Cam shouted out. “Matter of fact, you might want to double up. With all your pent-up frustration, there’s bound to be an explosion.” “Hilarious,” he replied, shutting the door behind him as he made his way toward his truck. Once inside, he slid his seat belt on and leaned back against the head cushion with his eyes closed. Filled with self-doubt, he worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle it. But he had to. For the sake of everyone he loved, he had to find a way.

Then it’s settled.” He pulled her into an embrace. “It’s been a long night for both of us. How about I drive you home?” Inhaling a deep breath, she was overwhelmed by the woodsy scent of his bare skin. Desire surged through her—a euphoric sensation, vibrating all the way to her core. A second later, her nipples pebbled. Worried he might notice, she pulled away from him, covering her chest with her crossed arms. What was happening to her? “I think that’s a good idea.

The moment she opened the bakery door, his blue eyes had filled with desire. No man had ever looked at her so intensely, like at any moment he would rip her clothes off and ravage her on top of one of the tables. Tension built between her legs as his eyes slowly took in every inch of her. But when he’d kissed her—her body exploded. Everything she’d wanted over the last year had come to fruition. Then, just as fast, he’d disappeared.

He cupped her face in his hands, crushing his lips into hers. Angry and raw after all these months, he couldn’t hold himself back any longer. It wasn’t gentle or sweet. It was powerful and full of need. A quiet moan escaped from her throat, inciting another rushing wave of desire through him. Her lips parted, inviting his tongue inside her mouth.

Nikolai had expected to have to fight the urge to torture the progeny of his father’s murderer, but he had never anticipated fighting the urge to fuck her.

God, fate was a sick, twisted bitch. Doomed. He was certainly and absolutely heading straight for the fiery pits of Hell, he realized, as he lusted for his sworn enemy, the vampire.

For the first time in his centuries of life, doing the right thing didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

She needed him. More than just his blood or the pleasure he offered with his playground of a body, she needed him—and that was far more terrifying than becoming a blood sucking monster.

Seriously, Palta…” He was honestly puzzled, “I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about. What about your ears is supposed to be so bizarre?”“Um…You’d have to be blind to miss them,” I replied sarcastically. “If you’re not, you will be when you poke your eye out on one of them.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.""Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.

Intellectualism is a poor master over passion

The main thing about aliens is that they are alien. They feel no responsibility for fulfilling any of your expectations. (Dark City Lights)

You can face fear, or feel it, her dad used to say. … Feel it, and it eats you alive. Face it, and you get to kick some ugly alien butt. Okay, he never said that. I wonder if they even have butts.

I hate Jesse for leaving me behind. If he asked, I would have walked into the air with him.

I feel alive when you kiss me.

You gonna take the case?"It's not a case. It's a missing person. Sort of."You're gonna have a devil of a time finding him if it was aliens," Grandma said.

With the warmth of an alien sun on his back, Jacob took a deep breath at the door and knocked.

If only I had the speed that my alien boyfriend had, then I could just zip through my senior year and forget about distance and mom’s annoyingly great sense of hearing. But when said alien boyfriend was in my bed, I wanted nothing more than the opposite speed. I wanted to freeze time to keep everything just the way it was.

Ace let out a deep breath, squeezing my hand and then letting go. "I know how hard this all is for you and I'm sorry that I haven't been more receptive. I promise from now on I will try my hardest to let you in more. Tell you more about my world and everything that makes me tick."I took his hand and pulled it up to my lips, barely grazing his knuckles. "Deal.

Alright. So how are we getting down there? Can you turn invisible or something?”“What do I look like? A magician?”“Well, can you fight?”“Can you?”“No,” said Thalcu with a sad laugh. “Zonbiri women aren’t allowed to handle anything bigger than a butter knife. Not legally, anyway. Besides, I could never shoot a gun. My hands are used to pushing remote control buttons, pounding game controllers . . . picking the good chips from the bag.

Superfast beings shouldn't piss off the comics geek-girl.

In the corner of her eye she caught her daughter’s shoulders drop as Alex exhaled with uncommon soberness. “So you trust me, and you understand that I will never do anything I think might hurt you.”Miriam stopped outside the armory and pivoted to her daughter. “Alex, what have you done?

The system is only as good as its leaders. When they fail—when the system fails—you better damn well hope I’m there to pick up the slack.”The man’s glower lost some of its fervor. “No one appointed you humanity’s protector.”“No one had to—and if you don’t understand why that is, then you’re not nearly the man I was told you are. I’m leaving now, and I’m going to assume we’re done. But if you threaten me again, you had better bring help.

Expect an army of Vigil drones, nearly as a many Praesidis guards, a Machim ground detachment of super-soldiers and at least one Inquisitor. Oh, and security barriers everywhere. Possibly some of those mechs we met on Helix Retention, too. You Humans have kicked off a shitstorm of epic proportions.”Alex spread her arms wide in an exagerrated shrug. “It’s one of our best skills.

His vision blurred, his grip on the dash faltered and the cockpit lost definition. Then all the diati rushed back to him in its own shockwave.The physical force slammed him against the cockpit half-wall. He gasped air into his lungs as a crimson aura throbbed above his skin. The world spun around him, and it occurred to him if he wanted to he could control it—not the spinning, but the world.

The Novoloume gazed in interest around the cabin. “So the whispers are true—Kats, SAIs and Humans have come to join with the anarchs in a quest to save us all.”Felzeor returned to Caleb’s outstretched arm and leaned in to nuzzle his nose. “What a grand quest it’s sure to be!

People gravitated here for the open air, the prolific intoxicants and the visual treats. They made the deals here that were later played out elsewhere. They drank and got high. Sometimes they fought, not for money but for sport or grudge.They were the desperate and the daring, the lost and the searching. Tonight, they were his audience. Tomorrow, they would be his front line.

She and Kennedy both dove for the power connector; Kennedy reached it first and yanked out the connection as Alex landed on her stomach beside it.The air settled down until the fine hairs on her arm no longer stood on end. Alex dropped her forehead to the platform and started laughing. “Just like university, isn’t it?”“Almost—nothing’s actually blown up yet.

You have business and pleasure to attend to. As an expert in both, allow me to advise you to put them aside for the next ten minutes. Why? “Because the world is about to transform, and you will want to be able to say you saw it happen. The axes of our little universe are about to flip, and you’ll want to get your magboots set.

Nisi flashed his charismatic, mysterious smile. “Now, with this in mind, are you ready to take the next step?”Despite Caleb’s attempts at caution—at circumspection and even suspicion—the man’s words stirred his blood. They teased the possibilities of the power within his reach, real power extending far beyond parlor tricks and personal protection to a place where the course of life itself could be changed.“I am.

Alex thrust her hand and half her arm into the labyrinth of light. Her stare blanked, and in the halo of the matrix her eyes and glyphs blazed so radiantly she looked as if she were being consumed by a primordial fire.“She just stuck her hand into Machim Command’s central server matrix!”Caleb smiled, watching on in blatant awe. “She does that.

He wasn’t going to be able to deactivate the field, which meant there was only one choice.He’d realized early on that his arcane, profoundly alien passenger came with a cost, possibly one too high to pay and get out the other side free and clear. He’d pay it nonetheless and without complaint if the diati would only come through for him now.Caleb closed his eyes.

No, we absolutely should do it. If we can capture such a motherlode, it could make a pivotal difference in the coming war. We need it. AEGIS needs it, my mother needs it. This is why we’re here.“I’m merely pausing at the precipice of the cliff, peeking down into the chasm and asking, ‘Are we sure?’ So…” Alex eyed him wearing an uneasy grimace “…are we sure?

Caleb shoved back from the table and stood to retreat to the kitchen. “No. Find another plan.”“There is no other plan. This isn’t even a plan, merely a nugget of an idea for the start of a plan that’s certain to fail and end in your deaths.

You look like you’ve been on a month-long bender. Have you?”“No, Ken, I have not. I’ve just had a long week.” Walked the streets of a city bathed in blood and stood amid a hundred thousand corpses. Negotiated a three-way peace treaty among opposing factions of a warring alien species who’d previously held me captive. Bullied the Metigen leadership into doing my bidding. Found out we’re not the real humans, and the real humans are currently enslaving the real universe. Oh, and I think I’m addicted to my ship. How was your week? “Nothing a shower and some food won’t fix.

She skidded around a corner, slamming her shoulder into the wall and bouncing off of it without slowing. Caleb?Silence. Forty-six meters. A long stretch of hallway. She pushed faster, harder. Twenty meters.She burst into the room in unison with a deafening crash of metal shearing metal.

Reluctantly, we had already accepted every challenge at the moment we were born. And as long as we live, we have no right to give up. For we, or at least someone very similar to us, already died once, long ago in a faraway place.

Eyuran,” I addressed his Node. “What was in this one?”He came closer and studied the huge case, which was easily twice the height of an adult Danna and had body slots for some kind of gear.“I don’t know for sure. I haven't seen this before. It resembles a gearbot sarx, but those are usually larger. Must be a new, compact model.” Observing the empty sarx, a wave of bad feelings came over me.“I also saw some of the weapon crates with broken locks.”“If someone is operating a gearbot, a bunch of guns will be the least of our worries. A hull repairer can’t even begin to compete with the power of an assault exomachine.” He looked around and frowned. “By the way, the whole hull repairer rack is empty. Counting the one you took out, we should have seven more roaming somewhere on the ship.

We want to know. We want to know who we are and what we are capable of.I want to know.And yet we were dragged into another war. Another seemingly inevitable and gruesome legacy passed down, along with soma.

I thought carefully as I watched Eyuran treat Uncle Orewen’s wounds. There is no one in their right mind who would assault a Danna, simply because the enemy of an individual becomes the enemy of the whole kennar. Kennar are usually related to each other, which would probably make the unlucky person the enemy of the entire Tue Dannan.And Danna settle things the old way.

Because we were the good guys. We were in the right. The universe looks out for people who act with honor in furtherance of an honorable cause. It must, or we never would have gotten this far as a species.”“We won—this little conflict and a thousand like it—because we were destined to win. The universe will allow no other outcome.

She pointed to the wreckage of one of the frigates in the distance. Half the ship had landed atop one of the towers on the edge of the city, the other half on the flatland beyond. “You didn’t…do that, did you?” He shrugged with proper dramatic flair. “I did say I came to rescue you. They were in my way.

I’ll do whatever I can to help guarantee this plan succeeds, and I’ll try to make sure I’m in the right place at the right time.” “The right place and time for what?”“If I knew that, ma’am, I probably wouldn’t need to be there.

As the sky began to darken she sank down in the chair. She had just watched over a thousand Alliance soldiers die in the space of less than a minute. Yet the encounter would be considered a victory, for the enemy was vanquished. But at such a cost. She considered what Alex had asked of her…and began to understand.

What do you want me to do? Arrest them all?” “When you can, absolutely.” “And when I can’t?” “Do whatever is necessary to remove their ability to act against us—against humanity.” “You mean kill them.” Her expression darkened in what he sensed was sorrow, but her shoulders rose. “If that’s what it takes.

While a number of people have pointed out the various costs and drawbacks of sentience, few if any have taken the next step and wondered out loud if the whole damn thing isn't more trouble than it's worth. Of course it is, people assume; otherwise natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. And they're probably right. I hope they are. "Blindsight" is a thought experiment, a game of "Just suppose" and "What if". Nothing more.On the other hand, the dodos and the Steller sea cows could have used exactly the same argument to prove their own superioirity, a thousand years ago: "if we're so unfit, why haven't we gone extinct?" Why? Because natural selection takes time, and luck plays a role. The biggest boys on the block at any given time aren't necessarily the fittest, or the most efficient, and the game isn't over. The game is never over; there's no finish line this side of heat death. And so, neither can there be any winners. There are only those who haven't yet lost.

Do you ever wonder if--well, if there are people living on the third planet?''The third planet is incapable of supporting life,' stated the husband patiently. 'Our scientists have said there's far too much oxygen in their atmosphere.

The kid is scary.

Glacier blue plasma rippled and sparked across the interior of the portal. “It seems keeping secrets is what you do.”“Secrets are merely the necessary means. Survival is the end goal. Survival of ourselves, survival of species who do not deserve to be eradicated from the universe. Survival of the universe itself.”“Survival’s noble and all, but what good is it without the freedom to live as you choose?”“A question you have the luxury to ask because you survive.

Varzo looked with shame at her boots. “Look, I wasn’t serious, alright? It was just a thought.”Mercy shook her head. “Shitty thoughts become shitty actions, kid. You really gone your entire life without recognizing there's ah link between the two?

Quinn dropped her hand and avoided Thalcu’s eye. “I . . . I don’t want to kill you,” she said to the floor. “Not if I could save you.”The woman smiled gently at Quinn, her lips curling behind her oxygen mask. “I will not really die,” she said, drawing Quinn’s surprised gaze. She looked at Quinn contently a moment and went on, “Do you know how worlds are born? From the first breath of a star. We are made of starlight. We can not bear to look into the sun, into the thing that birthed us, anymore than we can bear to look upon our parents in the throes of passion. It is our point of origin, and to it, we all must return.

Yeah!” Quinn said defiantly. “And I’m about to destroy your sick little plan here! And when I’m done doing that, I’ll tell the humans how your people are planning to betray them --!”“As if that will make much difference,” said the general calmly. “Humans can’t agree on how to run individual countries, let alone their entire planet. When the harvest begins, they won’t stand a chance against us. I’ve already given Dr. Zorgone permission to execute his plans for abduction. He has also been given strict orders to return you to me alive. Both of you. You must simply walk outside. There is nothing to fear.”“Yeah, I bet,” Quinn muttered sarcastically.

Varzo shrugged. “My people have given them good reason to be biased. The last time you were open and trusting . . . we invaded,” she said unhappily. “Yeah,” muttered the boy just as unhappily. “But while there is good reason for caution, there is never a good reason for hatred, hmm?” He glanced at Varzo and lifted his brows meaningfully.

Therm-bombs! Drop ’em right on us! I been roasted before—it’s nothing!

The woman’s gaze sent chills racing down his spine. The diabolical, aberrantly predatory arch of her lips curdled his blood. Seriously, his blood must be curdling back at the lab right now.“Nice illusion. I’m definitely feeling the evil vibe here.”She stood and rounded the desk with perfect grace. “There is no illusion. Explain yourself quickly now, before I grow bored by your presence and dispense with it.

Anyone who tells you life has greater value when it comes with an expiration date is full of shit. Immortality is worth the fortunes of galaxies.”She regarded him too intently. “But it’s not worth everything. You gave it up for your freedom.”His forced bravado faltered. That truth still petrified him today. “I did.

Mia stood between the bed and the broken window, holding an active plasma blade at waist-height in front of her. A thick coat of blood stained the plasma nearly from hilt to tip, hissing as it dribbled from blade to floor.“Are you all right?”Mia gave her a wan, distant smile. “It’s okay. I’ve done it before.

Laches faded away, leaving Miriam standing facing Hyperion, the Metigen who had orchestrated the slaughter of over fifty million people a short year ago.There were limits to even deals with the devil, lines which should never be crossed…but she was beginning to wonder when she might find one.

I’ll ask you to look at the ships arrayed against you and consider what weaponry they might possess. Weaponry strong enough to crack your hulls? I know what weaponry you bring to bear, and I assure you it will not crack ours. “Are you willing to risk the lives of thousands under your command to find out? Are you willing to risk your own life?”The silence hung across space like a shroud.“This is not over, Admiral Solovy.”“That is the first true thing you’ve said today.

Alex screamed and lashed out at the points of light from within, desperate for something tangible to rage against. Caleb wrapped his arms around her from behind and coaxed her out while glaring at the Metigen in loathing.Then he lessened his hold on her to a single hand. Together they turned their backs on the alien and began walking away.

Crushed sandstone sifted through Caleb’s fingers, insubstantial as dust. A breeze caught the debris mid-fall and spirited it away before it could join the ashes blanketing the ground. He stopped in the middle of what had once been a street, his arms pulled in at his sides, his fists balled in barely restrained fury.

We’ll go along with it for now. Valkyrie, keep close watch and be ready to swoop to the rescue.”‘Hopefully swooping will not be required, nor rescue. But I am ready to do both.’He squeezed her hand. “Alex?”“I’m ready, too.

The alien reached out her hands to hold Alex’s tightly. “Please. Some of what I want to express, it may be difficult to locate the right words.”“Of course.”Pure alabaster eyes stared back at her. “Child, there is a hole in your mind.

You ask me to make peace with the monsters who did this?”She didn’t even look around at ‘this.’ “Yes. The alternative is extinction. There’s no coming back from that—no new weapon to fire when no one is left and you’ve no universe left to fire it in.

Her perception was propelled backward, as if it were being pulled into a vortex. She slammed into her body, and her eyes flew open with a gasp.“Alex?”She sat straight up in the chair and grabbed Caleb by the shoulders. “We have to save them.

Sci-fi doesn't show me much about alien's nature but shows a lot about North American nature.

It felt somehow comforting to return to the sparkling lake tucked into the mountains on Portal Prime. But why, when everything about Mesme made her the antithesis of comfortable?Because here was where desperation had become hope. Where helplessness had become purpose.

Semantics, Admiral. I’d appreciate an honest answer.”“I’d appreciate a multitude of honest answers, but I rarely expect to receive them.” Miriam sighed; the verbal tete-a-tete was growing tiresome. Time to bring an end to it with, ironically, honesty.

Evening had turned the sky a deep persimmon. The remaining sunlight enriched the colors of the ubiquitous flowers and foliage to even greater vibrancy, as if the saturation filter had been notched up several levels.Caleb noted all this in passing as he strode deliberately forward. He didn’t know how he was going to do this, only that he had to make the attempt.

A wispy murmur in the blackness. Blackness, where before there was only nothingness. It was dark, inky and thick, but there now existed the palpable sense of tangibility. She gasped in alarm, but no sound came out of her throat. "Where am I?," she shouted, but no words made it past her lips.

I believe my judgment has never been clearer. I have seen firsthand their potential, their strength of will, in a way you have not.”“You have loosed a chaotic, unstable variable into the Mosaic. They will destroy everything.”“It is a risk. They also may save everything.

I frankly expected a far more negative reaction from you on discovering…” she glanced around the lab “…the situation. Why are you helping?”“I’m not helping—I’m merely not hindering in as strenuous a fashion as I am able.

He checked her over while mentally checking himself. “Environment suits sealed up. Breather masks in hand. Daemons. Blades. Transmitters. Healthy respect for the adversary—you’ve got that, right?”One corner of her mouth curled up. “Absolutely.

If there was anything the last year had taught her—if there was anything Caleb had taught her, the Metigen War had taught her—it was that perspective was everything. If you wanted to understand your enemy, you must understand that they were the hero in their own story.

Maybe they seeded life on Earth millions of years ago, and now they're here to punish us for turning out to be such a lame species and inventing reality TV and shit?

You have to think if we've been visited by extraterrestrial life, it was like a zookeeper walking into the chimp enclosure: He looks around, takes some pictures, then leaves without interacting significantly with the environment. Meanwhile the chimps have no idea what the fuck just happened.

Noah gave an exaggerated eye roll. “Just out of curiosity, is this the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?”“It wouldn’t be fair to rank them.” Caleb gunned the engine.

Alone for a few precious seconds, he drew in a deep breath. He stood on a ruined street in a ruined city. Destruction stretched for kilometers in every direction, all caused by a single man for whom vengeance had devolved into madness.

He made sure his tone remained casual. He was trying to keep his son unaware of the encroaching alien invasion for as long as he could, be it another day or another hour. Once innocence was lost it was never regained.So he took his son fishing and strolled along the river and pretended as though the galaxy wasn’t on fire.

Well, I hate to admit it, but it is possible that there is (one) such a thing as telepathy and (two) that the CETI project's idea that we might communicate with extraterrestrial beings via telepathy is possibly a reasonable idea--if telepathy exists and if ETIs exist. Otherwise we are trying to communicate with someone who doesn't exist with a system which doesn't work.

The t'ca [ship] left them, rolled and slewed off in a maneuver that made sense to a multi-brained snake.--from The Kif Strike Back

I’m surprised you haven’t come to hate humans,” Rose said with hesitation. “I mean, given all that happened to you here. I’m pretty sure assimilating wasn’t easy either. You have a sort of foreign look for an American, and Americans are notorious for their xenophobia.”Zita laughed softly. “Me? Hate humans?” She darkly shook her head. “I fought in the Midnight War for thirty years, Rosie. I know what happens when people let hate make decisions for them.

In order to be a better writer, one must always write.

Wait awhile, and everything will change."~'Griblich

Blacker than the night, the wedge penetrated the darkness. An F 117 raced by, the roar from its engines screaming through the interior of the chopper, and then it sliced away a piece of sky and disappeared into the void.-Narrator, Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project

The moon shines like a freshly unwrapped cheese ball at the holidays.”-William Harrison in Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project

And like a good neighbor, Alpha Centauri is there.”Touched by an Alien

They were afraid the longer we pretended to be human, the more human we would become.”“And who would want that?”“I didn’t think I would,” he admits. “Until I became one.”“When you…‘woke up’ in Evan?”He shakes his head and says simply, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “When I woke up in you, Cassie. I wasn’t fully human until I saw myself in your eyes.”And then there are real human tears in his real human eyes, and it’s my turn to hold him while his heart breaks. My turn to see myself in his eyes.Somebody might say that I’m not the only one lying in the enemy’s arms.I am humanity, but who is Evan Walker? Human and Other. Both and neither. By loving me, he belongs to no one.He doesn’t see it that way.

There’s a fascinating frailty of the human mind that psychologists know all about, called “argument from ignorance.” This is how it goes. Remember what the “U” stands for in “UFO”? You see lights flashing in the sky. You’ve never seen anything like this before and don’t understand what it is. You say, “It’s a UFO!” The “U” stands for “unidentified.”But then you say, “I don’t know what it is; it must be aliens from outer space, visiting from another planet.” The issue here is that if you don’t know what something is, your interpretation of it should stop immediately. You don’t then say it must be X or Y or Z. That’s argument from ignorance. It’s common. I’m not blaming anybody; it may relate to our burning need to manufacture answers because we feel uncomfortable about being steeped in ignorance.

It did occur to him that perhaps he’d gone to the wrong Academy – the guys in the Space Fleet always had more interesting stories to tell at the spaceport bars. You know, tales about the dude who got vaporized in a plasma accident in the engineering section, or the fella who got turned into a blob of weird space jelly by some alien virus – or the time someone flew a starship into an astor-field at warp four by mistake (they were still trying to find the black box on that one). The Imperial Space Fleet’s recruiting office sure didn’t go around advertising ‘Join up, see the universe, meet interesting aliens and die screaming’, but it was known there were risks involved. It was part of the job after all, and yet somehow, they still got recruits signing up in droves. Yes, indeedy – the stories were far more interesting than his – took a load of ore to Gorda, took a load of mining equipment back to Tordrazil. Took a load of Florpavian Flame-birds to a zoo on Deanna, took a load of machinery to Salus. Picked up and dropped off a few passengers on the way. Still, Florpavian Flame-birds were a risky cargo… and damned tricky to transport – which is probably the only reason he’d had any entertainment at all on the last trip.

The universe is more than thirteen billion years old. What is the value of a single kiss compared to that?

We ain't alone in this universe.We just don't wanna be disturbed.

The modern belief that highly advanced civilizations from other planets are visiting the Earth via spacecraft is a ruse. If real, they are beings created apart from the procreative processes established for life on Earth (Gen. 1). And since they are not direct creations of God Himself, their origins must be sought from other sources.

There can never be a clock at the center of the Universe to which everyone can set their watches. Your entire life can be the blink of an eye to an alien who leaves Earth traveling close to the speed of light, then returns an hour later to find that you have been dead for centuries.

Last-Minute Message For a Time CapsuleI have to tell you this, whoever you are:that on one summer morning here, the oceanpounded in on tumbledown breakers,a south wind, bustling along the shore,whipped the froth into little rainbows,and a reckless gull swept down the beachas if to fly were everything it needed.I thought of your hovering saucers,looking for clues, and I wanted to write this down,so it wouldn't be lost forever - -that once upon a time we hadmeadows here, and astonishing things,swans and frogs and luna mothsand blue skies that could stagger your heart.We could have had them still,and welcomed you to earth, butwe also had the righteous oneswho worshipped the True Faith, and Holy War.When you go home to your shining galaxy,say that what you learnedfrom this dead and barren place isto beware the righteous ones.

It’s just snow,” Lesa said, rolling her eyes. “It’s not going to hurt you.”Kimmy smoothed her hands over her blond hair. “Sugar melts.”“Yeah, and shit floats.” Lesa took her seat, yanking out last night’s English homework.

Do not judge a book by its price!

Sometimes I think gravity may be death in disguise. Other times I think gravity is love, which is why love's only demand is that we fall.

I could write my name across the sky, and it would be in invisible ink.

As human beings, we're born believing that we are the apex of creation, that we are invincible, that no problem exists that we cannot solve. But we inevitably die with all our beliefs broken.

Dreams are hopeful because they exist as pure possibility.

We aren't just defined by who we are, but by who are friends are. It's funny that we put so much importance on something that wont mean shit once we graduate.

She's the gristle stuck between Time's teeth, and I love her for it.

And I stood there and took it because I was an object. We were all objects to Marcus McCoy.

I'm a little panicky when I realize he's not here. It's a lot easier to push down my doubt when he's with me. When I can see those eyes the color of melted chocolate and hear his deep voice that falls over me like a warm blanket on a cold night.

I don't think I'm being harassed by little green stalkers. I don't know what's really going on, but I'd rather try to eliminate all rational excuses before blaming intergalactic monkeys from the fourth dimension who are somehow interested in this really boring town.

The sense of alienation that inspires wonder, awe and fear in us is enough of a proof that life does not belong to the planet Earth.

Earth girls aren’t easy.

Humanity could be clutching the frail barque of an outmoded world view while the wind of the mind is swaying the stars into very real craft, and out of them is coming… a faint call for help from a lady in a flowered dress.

Except they kept asking me questions like 'What is your biggest source of conflict about the Pope?' Or 'Has the Pope ever tried to suppress your scientific work?' Completely out of left field!"They didn't want to hear me tell them how much Pope Benedict supported the Vatican Observatory and its scientific work. So, finally, frustrated that they weren't getting the story they wanted out of me, one of them asked, 'Would you baptize an extraterrestrial?'"What did you answer?""Only if she asks!""I love it! How did they react?""They all got a good laugh, which is what I intended. And then, the next day, they all ran my joke as if it were a straight story, as if I had made some sort of official Vatican pronouncement about aliens.

Humans and animals regard each other across a gulf of mutual incomprehension. With aliens, that has to go double.

Of course. I died today, and now I'm going to fight aliens with a light saber. Maybe after that we can look for mermaids. Or unicorns.""No," he says. "Just aliens."Was that the barest hint of humour in his tone?

In the next place, wonderful as it seems in a sexual world, the Martians were absolutely without sex, and therefore without any of the tumultuous emotions that arise...

There was an electric buzzing sound that was constantly on, acting as background music like a million cicadas in the forest. A constant white noise.

Why should I mind?” She drummed her fingertips against his knee. “Because you got asked to play baseball, while I got a lecture on circumspection, Jezebels, and leading men into sin?” “Did you really?” He managed to sound annoyed, fascinated, and amused all at once.“It’s not funny.” “Of course it’s not.” He was quick to try and placate her. “But we can do something about those lectures real quick. All you have to do is marry me.”Coyote Bluff had too many secrets that weren’t hers to share. She couldn’t put him in that position. He was a federal marshal. And she’d seen what all the lies her father told had done to her mother. She’d died hating him.The last remnants of her earlier contentment vanished. “I like my independence.” “Then I guess you’ll have to get used to the lectures, Sheriff Jezebel,” he replied.

He is the biggest asshole on the planet,” Jarod says. “And in a planet that’s currently drowning in assholes, that’s saying a lot.

I don’t really believe in aliens. I like to think of them as planet challenged.

As she reached the stairs, she made a quick detour and stepped outside. A crescent moon hung in the midnight blue sky along with trillions of twinkling stars. Out here there were no streetlights to wash out the view. She loved being able to see the stars. Tonight, the mountains were etched deep purple against the night sky. The white snowcapped tips gleamed silver. Nearer, silhouetted pine trees swayed in the breeze as if in a slow dance. “You are such a romantic,” Trask had once told her. “Are you sure you want to open a bar? You should be writing poetry.” She’d laughed. “How do you know I don’t?

Lillie woke to darkness an instant before a large warm hand clamped down over her mouth…

Damage report, sir?” Skotchdopole asked, climbing off his console into his seat.“To hell with that!” he roared, this was no accidental side-effect of arriving – it was clear they were under attack by hostile aliens. “Fire! Shoot the crap outta them!

[O]ver the years I travelled to another universe. However alert we are, however much we think we know what will happen, antiquity remains an unknown, unanticipated galaxy. It is alien, and old people are a separate form of life. They have green skin, with two heads that sprout antennae. They can be pleasant, they can be annoying--in the supermarket, these old ladies won't get out of my way--but most important they are permanently other. When we turn eighty, we understand that we are extraterrestrial. If we forget for a moment that we are old, we are reminded when we try to stand up, or when we encounter someone young, who appears to observe green skin, extra heads, and protuberances.

I feel pretty sure I know why the dinosaurs went extinct. They were waiting for Sam to pick out a cell phone case.

There was less than I’d expected in the rainy-day fund that Mom had kept in the bottom of an underwear drawer in a panty hose egg labeled ‘DEAD SPIDERS.’ As if I hadn’t always known it was there. As if I wouldn’t want to look at dead spiders.

We are not alone!Everything has been orchestrated.If you think that the meteor that killed of the dinosaurs was natural. Think again!What use would a world of greed be if we had to worry about getting eaten by dinosaurs every minute of the day?It wouldn't be good for the economy, now would it?Think about it!

Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn’t come out.

You were abducted by space aliens. Of course you want egg rolls.

That these people are wandering around, looking for aliens to justify the emptiness inside them and let them feel special without effort, creeps me out.

If it took eons to get to the edge of one's galactic yard, she could not imagine the neighbors dropping by for a casual visit, especially since the heavenly houses were uninhabitable well into the next state.

It is altogether reasonable to conclude that the heavenly bodies, alias worlds, which move or are situate within the circle of our knowledge, as well all others throughout immensity, are each and every one of them possessed or inhabited by some intelligent agents or other, however different their sensations or manners of receiving or communicating their ideas may be from ours, or however different from each other.

Even if the aliens are short, dour, and sexually obsessed—if they’re here, I want to know about them.

We conquer the Independence Day aliens by having a Macintosh laptop computer upload a software virus to the mothership (which happens to be one-fifth the mass of the Moon), thus disarming its protective force field. I don’t know about you, but back in 1996 I had trouble just uploading files to other computers within my own department, especially when the operating systems were different. There is only one solution: the entire defense system for the alien mothership must have been powered by the same release of Apple Computer’s system software as the laptop computer that delivered the virus.

I know for a fact the first UFOs reported in modern times, just before the crash at Roswell, were boomerang shaped and were reported as 'flying saucers' to describe the motion of their flight, like a saucer skipping over water. Yet immediately after, people saw and photographed saucer-shaped objects. Boomerang-shaped objects were rarely seen. Now people mostly report seeing large triangles instead of discs or boomerangs, because that is what they are told to expect to see.

If only Myrtle would pay attention to the Boy's Own Journal, Blackwood's Magazine, etc., she would know that these creatures were Threls, who come from a worldlet called Threlfall on the far side of the asteroid belt. This Threlfall is a cheerless, chilly spot, and the whole history and religion of the Threls has been concerened with their quest to knit a nice woolly coverlet for it.

Look, lady, I’m not going to bullshit you. I need to smoke enough crack cocaine to communicate with aliens. Give me all the money you got!

Sometimes I think that we're the aliens.

But aliens? There are TV shows about them. There are books and movies and more. The media indoctrinates you to them until people are so desensitized they don't flinch at seeing aliens on TV or having their children buy plastic versions for a quarter.

Given their current circumstances, things would have to be very bad indeed for Tilly to think the situation had gotten worse. Sure, they were all trapped in orbit around an alien space station that periodically changed the rules of physics and had killed a bunch of them, but now they’d decided to start shooting each other too.Yes, very bad.

For a being more advanced than I am, he sure has a hard time answering a simple question

Do I really run like that?" (Kitty)"Yup," Martini confirmed. "Don't worry, I think it's sexy.""Thank God. I think I look like a cheetah on drugs.

Kitty, do you have the bottle?" "In my purse. Which is in my room. Not that I think I can find my room from here." "I'll get it," Martini said. He stood up and disappeared. Ten seconds later he was back, bottle in hand."What kept you?""That purse gets worse every time I look inside.

What song would lull a snake into submission? "John Mayer?""Over my dead body.""Could be, Tim, could be.

You ever flown something before?" (Christopher)"I hold the highest score at A.S.U. for Star Wars: Starfighter." (Kitty)"I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that I'm going to regret this." (Christopher)

I was on the floor. "Um, a little help?" Christopher put his hand down. Martini cleared his throat and Christopher's hand retracted. "I can handle it, thanks." "There's nothing amorous about pulling someone off the floor," Christopher muttered. "There is when I do it.

We lifted up and then bobbed."Back! Pull it back!" (Christopher)"It's hard." (Kitty)"The ground is harder!" (Christopher)

I'd always known that when you went through one of these doors, you went to another planet, and that that other planet might be so far away, you couldn't fly there in spaceship in a million years. Somehow, the whole thing had never seemed strange before today.

A head began emerging out of the darkness. It had two large antennae growing out of its forehead, with nothing recognizable as eyes. A mouth in the middle of its face opened in what I hoped was a smile. At least there weren't any sharp teeth.

On this planet are every kind of deadly animal from across the stars. The only people that come here are hunters looking for the most dangerous of trophies. No rescue. You either get your prize or you die.

You think this is a walk in the park, that it’s all beauty pageants and tea parties? Come on girl, wake up! This is survival at its most intense.

All those years of lurid magazine covers showing extremely nubile females being menaced in three distinct colors by assorted monstrosities; those horror movies, those invasion-from-outer-space novels, those Sunday supplement fright splashes—all those sturdy psychological ruts I had to re-track. Not to mention the shudders elicited by mention of 'worms,' the regulation distrust of even human "furriners,” the superstitious dread of creatures who had no visible place to park a soul.("Betelgeuse Bridge)

Because there wasn’t anything else to do, he settled at the kitchen tablewith a bottle of mead and nearly emptied it. The anesthetic effect he hoped for hadn’t happened, though. At least not yet.

Freedom isn't an illusion; it's perfectly real in the context of sequential consciousness. Within the context of simultaneous consciousness, freedom is not meaningful, but neither is coercion; it's simply a different context, no more or less valid than the other. It's like that famous optical illusion, the drawing of either an elegant young woman, face turned away from the viewer, or a wart-nosed crone, chin tucked down on her chest. There's no “correct” interpretation; both are equally valid. But you can't see both at the same time.“Similarly, knowledge of the future was incompatible with free will. What made it possible for me to exercise freedom of choice also made it impossible for me to know the future. Conversely, now that I know the future, I would never act contrary to that future, including telling others what I know: those who know the future don't talk about it. Those who've read the Book of Ages never admit to it.

The physical universe was a language with a perfectly ambiguous grammar. Every physical event was an utterance that could be parsed in two entirely different ways, one casual and the other teleological, both valid, neither one disqualifiable no matter how much context was available.

Who is watching the Watchers?

Did I tell you what happened at the play? We were at the back of the theatre, standing there in the dark, when all of a sudden I feel one of 'em tug at my sleeve, whispers, "Trudy look!" I said, "Yeah, goosebumps. You definitely got goosebumps. You like the play that much?" They said it wasn't the play that gave 'em goosebumps, it was the audience!I'd forgot to tell them to watch the play; they'd been watching the audience! Yeah, to see a group of people sitting together in the dark, laughing and crying at the same things...well that just knocked 'em out! They said, "Trudy, the play was soup, the audience, art."So they're taking goosbumps back with 'em into space. Goosebumps! Quite a souvenir. I like to think of them out there in the dark, watching us. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll laugh. Sometimes we'll do something and they'll cry. And maybe, one day we'll do something so magnificent, the whole universe will get goosebumps.

When I cry - when I let myself cry - that's who I cry for. I don't cry for myself. I cry for the Cassie that's gone.And I wonder what that Cassie would think of me.The Cassie who kills.

How would you rather die?" she snapped. "Hiding under your bed or riding Thunder Mountain?