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17e26da
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Dee Colclough lay watching it all on a flatscreen from a ninth-floor hotel room ten minutes from home, a sheet twisted between her legs, the air-conditioning cool against the film of sweat on her skin. She looked over at Kiernan, said, "Even the anchors look scared." Kiernan stubbed out his cigarette and blew a river of smoke at the television. "I got called up," he said." --
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Blake Crouch |
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19704e9
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everything seems scarier at night. It's just an illusion. A trick the darkness plays on us.
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Blake Crouch |
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a1c91c1
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The three most important people in her life are gone, and she will never see them again. The stark loneliness of that knowledge cuts her to the bone. She is forty-nine, and she wonders if this is what feeling old really means -- not just a physical deterioration, but an interpersonal. A growing silence caused by the people you most love, who have shaped you and defined your world, going on ahead into whatever comes after.
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Blake Crouch |
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6674431
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Can't do this." There were tears in her voice now, her throat clogged with emotion."
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Blake Crouch |
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9ee731f
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AMOR TOWLES,
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Blake Crouch |
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4e7bb36
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Time is what keeps everything from happening at once. --RAY CUMMINGS
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Blake Crouch |
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0778948
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Is this what you want? To drop yourself into a still-life painting of a memory because life has broken your heart?
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Blake Crouch |
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e9b7e4c
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Each day is a revelation, every moment a gift. The simple act of sitting across the dinner table from his daughter and listening to her talk about her day feels like a pardon. How could he ever have taken even one second of it for granted?
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Blake Crouch |
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5a090d0
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But I'll tell you what I do wish. Wish we could live twice, take a different path each time. That at the end of all this, when I finished serving God in the West, I could go back to that day on the beach, put a ring on Eleanor's finger instead.
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Blake Crouch |
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52c9463
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It will be destructive at first, like all progress. Just as the industrial age ushered in two world wars. Just as Homo sapiens supplanted the Neanderthal. But would you turn back the clock on all that comes with it? Could you? Progress is inevitable. And it's a force for good.
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inevitable
progress
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Blake Crouch |
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08ca3e0
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There is no decent place to stand in a massacre. Leonard Cohen
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Blake Crouch |
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67e14c8
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You made me in your image, and now I will remake you in mine.
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Blake Crouch |
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b1e8f12
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Is deja vu actually the specter of false timelines that never happened but did, casting their shadows upon reality?
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memories
reality
science-fictionce
time
time-travel
timelines
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Blake Crouch |
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e0d0f4c
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She could envision a lifetime spent trying to create such flashes of connection.
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Blake Crouch |
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c9ec08c
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Greetings. There is a body buried on your property, covered in your blood. The unfortunate young lady's name is Rita Jones.
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Blake Crouch |
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88e39a2
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Marvels at her love for him. Her loyalty. So far beyond anything he deserves, it only intensifies the shame.
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Blake Crouch |
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c9fab6d
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That's not the way the human heart works. I can't just amputate what I feel.
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Blake Crouch |
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09b6336
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She took him by the hand and led him over.
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Blake Crouch |
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81f213e
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But those other realities don't really exist." "Actually, they're just as real as the one you and I are experiencing at this moment." "How is that possible?" "It's a mystery. But there are clues. Most astrophysicists believe that the force holding stars and galaxies together--the thing that makes our whole universe work--comes from a theoretical substance we can't measure or observe directly. Something they call dark matter. And this dark m..
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Blake Crouch |
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7e79ab1
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It was odorless, but on the tongue the overwhelming note was burn, followed by a strong citrus pucker, and a finish that was mercifully short, like the flavor had just fallen off a cliff.
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Blake Crouch |
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42c507d
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No one tells you it's all about to change, to be taken away. There's no proximity alert, no indication that you're standing on the precipice.
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Blake Crouch |
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4ce4a59
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everything that can happen will happen.
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Blake Crouch |
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65f00a8
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Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here.
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Blake Crouch |
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b14bdde
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Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him.
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Blake Crouch |
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3c7cfc2
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I wish we lived in a world where actions were measured by the intentions behind them. But the truth is, they're measured by their consequences." "Look,"
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Blake Crouch |
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dc04fda
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little shit." Oatha withdrew a scrap of paper from his flap pocket, slid it across the bar. Joss unfolded it, saw where Oatha had scribbled something on a torn-out Montgomery Ward page advertising hobnailed miners' boots. "Fuck is this?"
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Blake Crouch |
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f56239b
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I thought I appreciated every moment, but sitting here in the cold, I know I took it all for granted. And how could I not? Until everything topples, we have no idea what we actually have, how precariously and perfectly it all fits together.
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Blake Crouch |
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387386e
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Aashif stares at him through a hood of black cloth that reveals only a pair of brown, malevolent eyes and a mouthful of smiling teeth too white and perfect to be a product of any fourth-world, Middle-Eastern shithole.
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Blake Crouch |
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0d0c3c5
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It's the beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential. I love my life, but I haven't felt that lightness of being in ages. Autumn nights like this are as close as I get.
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Blake Crouch |
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23dbc52
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Children's laughter--carefree, giddy, maniacal--filled the woods. A nightmare version of some game from his youth.
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Blake Crouch |
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11d3243
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despite having warned himself she wouldn't anticipate his actually making it back to the cavern. He hadn't figured on it, assuming instead he'd run out of light and die of thirst, lost in the granitic entrails of the mountain. He turns away from the barred exit and walks back into the cavern among the bones, fearing his light will expire at any second, wanting at least
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Blake Crouch |
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1ef2f12
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Standing on this work of art and imagination, I feel small in the best kind of way.
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Blake Crouch |
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644b07b
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thought. He
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Blake Crouch |
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f1f8cf3
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It was nothing more than a beautiful prison, run by a psychopath.
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Blake Crouch |
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ef83a6c
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How can something so powerful in one world not bleed through into this one?
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Blake Crouch |
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f351359
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Nearby, another homeless man is standing in the middle of the sidewalk, having a full-volume conversation with nobody. I think, Am I so different? Aren't we both lost in worlds that, for reasons beyond our control, no longer align with our identity?
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Blake Crouch |
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cce2eb5
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It's the beautiful thing about youth. There's a weightlessness that permeates everything because no damning choices have been made, no paths committed to, and the road forking out ahead is pure, unlimited potential
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Blake Crouch |
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e09beca
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It's funny. I don't remember forgetting
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Blake Crouch |
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357363a
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It was the fakeness that killed her.
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Blake Crouch |
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47945fd
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I say, "This whole time, we've been wondering where the controls are--" "But we're the controls." "Yep. And if that's the case, then we have the ability to go wherever we want. Including home."
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Blake Crouch |
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7d0fc97
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I think I know who I am. But there's a part of me that wonders...What if the recollection I have of my real life--husband, father, professor--isn't real?
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Blake Crouch |
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ed18897
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What do you think is happening to you?" "I'm not entirely sure." "But you're a scientist. You have a theory." "I don't have enough data." "What does your gut tell you?" I sip the chamomile tea, savoring the hit of warmth as it slides down my throat. "We all live day to day completely oblivious to the fact that we're a part of a much larger and stranger reality than we can possibly imagine."
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Blake Crouch |
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290f6ad
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We associate reality with the tangible--everything we can experience with our senses. And though I keep telling myself there's a box on the South Side of Chicago that can take me to a world where I have everything I want and need, I no longer believe that place exists
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Blake Crouch |
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8e3d2e6
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It'll be your loss, Ethan. Day'll come, when he's grown and it's too late, that you'd give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn't see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won't last, so you revel in it while it's here.
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Blake Crouch |