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6b8ca50
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That's your solution?' asked Wardani in a small, cold voice. 'Take drugs and watch it all slide out of view?' 'Do you have a better idea?' She turned away.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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383b7ed
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According to the psychosurgeons, we act more in keeping with our true selves in a dream than in any other situation, including the throes of orgasm and the moment of our deaths. Maybe that explains why so much of what we do in the real world makes so little sense.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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b540118
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Your helmet is red hot," Ringil told him. And watched as the man screamed, dropped his ax and grabbed his helm with both hands, screamed again as his fingers touched the metal and melted from the heat, went to his knees still screaming. The skirmish ranger spasmed to the cobbles and thrashed and rolled and arched in agony, scream on scream on scream, until it was done, and finally lay there twitching, eyes poached white in their sockets. Fa..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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34f884d
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The human eye is a wonderful device," I quoted from Poems and Other Prevarications absently. "With a little effort, it can fail to see even the most glaring injustice."
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Richard K. Morgan |
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dc6bc32
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On Harlan's World, you don't see many mandroids. They're expensive to build, compared to a synthetic or even a clone, and most jobs that require a human form are better done by those organic alternatives. The truth is that a robot human is a pointless collision of two disparate functions: artificial intelligence, which really works better strung out on a mainframe, and hard-wearing, hazard-proof bodywork, which most cyberengineering firms d..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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574efa0
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The laugh tagged on the end of it is forced as well. I smile fractionally. Edged with old pain, but there's a strange comfort to the way it hurts.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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1602c3c
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So where the fuck are you, Isaac? I can hear your breathing, I just need to see you so I can stop it.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0c59910
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Fortified with self-loathing, with the reserves of sardonic contempt he'd absorbed in his time spent around Milacar, he'd gone to the gate tight-lipped and filled with a strange, queasy energy, as if walking to his own execution as well as Jelim's. He'd known at some deep, cold level that he would cope. He was wrong. Utterly.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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1aeea48
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No way. You won't catch Notley working weekends. Calls it the American disease, working all the hours God sends you.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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4b95485
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Angels and demons, heaven and hell, god, morality, law and language. Sutherland's right, it's all metaphor. Scaffolding to handle the areas where base reality won't cut it for you guys, where it's too cold for humans to live without something made up. We codify our hopes and fears and wants, and then build whole societies on the code. And then forget it ever was code and treat it like fact. Act like the universe gives a shit about it. Go to..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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c3f6c09
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I am home, you soggy-faced, entitled little prick, he barely stopped himself saying. You think it took northern sorcery to make me the way I am now? You think it took a war? Those things were tonic compared to what came before. Desperation and deception were waiting for me at the nursery door, took me by either hand as I walked out into my youth, have been my constant companions since.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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5c85079
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I said--do you want to kill a fucking dragon?" More yells, and more punch behind them this time. Egar eased up out of his crouch and filled his lungs. "I can't hear you! Do you--or do you not--want to kill--a motherfucking dragon?"
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Richard K. Morgan |
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820eaad
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but fuck it, you've got to make a stand somewhere. And a man can stave off his own death wish for only so long.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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eb00d05
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People envy me, people hate me. It is the price of success.' This was news to me. People hate me on a dozen different worlds and I've never considered myself a successful man.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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72dc3bf
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I was young and stupid," I said simply. "I was used. I killed for people like you because I knew no better. Then I learned better. What happened at Innenin taught me better. Now I don't kill for anyone but myself, and every time that I take a life, I know the value of it." "The value of it. The value of a human life." Kawahara shook her head like a teacher with an exasperating student. "You are still young and stupid. Human life has no valu..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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cca05d3
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The only problem they had ... was in drawing the fine differences between war-mass murder of people wearing a uniform not your own; justifiable loss-mass murder of your own troops, but with substantial gains; and criminal negligence-mass murder of your own troops, without appreciable benefit.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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686dd4e
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Shopping is physical interaction, exercise of decision-making capacity, sating of the desire to acquire, and an impulse to more acquisition, a scouting urge. It's so basically fucking human when you think about it. You've got to learn to love it,
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Richard K. Morgan |
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5807d83
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Kovacs, I hate these goddamn freaks. They've been grinding us down for the best part of two and a half thousand years. They've been responsible for more misery than any other organisation in history. You know they won't even let their adherents practise birth control, for Christ's sake, and they've stood against every significant medical advance of the last five centuries. Practically the only thing you can say in their favour is that this ..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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832c4fa
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It's not an easy thing to put a gun to your own head, even if you do want to die. To do it when you want to live must take the will of a demon.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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2509027
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There are ruins, steeped in shadow, and a bloodred sun going down in turmoil behind distant hills. Overhead soft-bellied clouds panic toward the horizon like whales before the harpoon, and the wind runs addict's fingers through the trees that line the street.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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3ff9b60
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Soldiers follow orders. Regardless. The moment you refuse to carry out an order, you're no longer a soldier. You're just a paid killer trying to renegotiate your contract.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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35ccfa2
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There's a sameness to streetlife. On every world I've ever been, the same underlying patterns play out, flaunt and vaunt, buy and sell, like some distilled essence of human behaviour seeping out from under whatever clanking political machine has been dropped on it from above.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f442bab
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I twitched a smile, resisting the temptation to kick his teeth down his throat, and folded myself into the deck chair.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f6478ba
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It is true, I spend some of my leisure time in purchased sexual release, both real and virtual. Or, as you so elegantly put it, whorehouses.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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e67ff1b
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Is Sullivan at Bay City Central right now?
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Richard K. Morgan |
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e776339
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IN ARCHITECTURAL ECHO of service pyramid theory, the Shorn block had rented out its bottom two levels to a series of shopping and eating units that collectively went under the name Basecamp. According to the Shorn promotional literature that Chris had read, Basecamp provided employment for more than six hundred people and, together with the Shorn-owned vehicle repair shops in the basement, was a working embodiment of the virtues of trickled..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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b81ba2f
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Bullet-proof, right?' 'Mmm.' Kawahara tipped her head to one side. 'Depends on the bullet, I would say. But impact resistant, certainly.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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4a5537f
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I'd rather you didn't smoke in here.' 'Kawahara, I'd rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don't suppose you'll oblige me.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f7fd8bb
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The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, take it personally. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here--it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin...
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Richard K. Morgan |
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c4fe35a
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The lawyers I saw there had about as much in common with the man who had defended me at fifteen as automated machine rifle fire has with farting.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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426321a
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The car boosted up and presumably out because I heard the drumming of rain against the bodywork. There was a faint smell of leather from the upholstery, which beat the odour of faeces on the inbound journey, and the seat I was in moulded itself supportively to my form. I seemed to have moved up in the order of things.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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478dc79
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The personal, as everyone's so fucking fond of saying, is political. So if some idiot politician, some power player, tries to execute policies that harm you or those you care about, TAKE IT PERSONALLY. Get angry. The Machinery of Justice will not serve you here - it is slow and cold, and it is theirs, hardware and soft-. Only the little people suffer at the hands of Justice; the creatures of power slide out from under with a wink and a grin..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f7f77b3
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If they want you, a youngish Quell had once written of the Harlan's World ruling elite, sooner or later they'll scoop you up off the globe, like specks of interesting dust off a Martian artifact. Cross the gulf between the stars, and they can come after you. Go into centuries of storage, and they'll be there waiting for you, clone new, when you resleeve. They are what we once dreamed of as gods, mythical agents of destiny, as inescapable as..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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33f2ca2
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I'd rather you didn't smoke in here." "[...]I'd rather you died of an internal haemorrhage, but I don't suppose you'll oblige me."
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Richard K. Morgan |
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55b8079
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When I looked at the curve of her hips and thighs on the window shelf, I could feel the way she had writhed back against me so clearly it was almost virtual.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a798e24
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He storms down in savage joy, to meet all the waiting blades and hate.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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ab90272
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Screams powering down to sobbing. The sickly stench of charred flesh made it across in ribbons to where I lay. It was like a homecoming.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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7f76091
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And for the moments that the embrace lasted, and a little while after, I felt as clean as the breeze coming in off the sea.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0165f57
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Kristin, nothing ever does change." I jerked a thumb back at the crowd outside. "You'll always have morons like that, swallowing belief patterns whole so they don't have to think for themselves. You'll always have people like Kawahara and the Bancrofts to push their buttons and cash in on the program. People like you to make sure the game runs smoothly and the rules don't get broken too often. And when the Meths want to break the rules them..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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693103c
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You'll let your life, the most precious thing you have, be stolen from you hour by hour and day by day as long as you can eke out the existence your males will let you have.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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271da37
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Anyone who builds satellites we can't shoot down needs to be taken seriously and, if they ever come back for their hardware, be approached with caution. That's not religion, it's common sense. Quellcrist Falconer Metaphysics for Revolutionaries
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Richard K. Morgan |
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06c4d27
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The difference between virtuality and life is very simple. In a construct you know everything is being run by an all-powerful machine. Reality doesn't offer this assurance, so it's very easy to develop the mistaken impression that you're in control. Quellcrist Falconer Ethics on the Precipice
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Richard K. Morgan |
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b0c2127
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In any agenda, political or otherwise, there is a cost to be borne. Always ask what it is, and who will be paying. If you don't, then the agenda-makers will pick up the perfume of your silence like swamp panthers on the scent of blood, and the next thing you know, the person expected to bear the cost will be you. And you may not have what it takes to pay. Quellcrist Falconer Things I Should Have Learnt By Now Vol II
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Richard K. Morgan |
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d320673
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First the hypnos, pulsing their sonocodes until the dull gray ceiling grew abruptly fascinating with fishtail swirls of light, and meaning drained out of the universe like dirty water from a sink. And then I was Elsewhere.
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Richard K. Morgan |