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63b7f88
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War is like any other bad relationship. Of course you want out, but at what price? And perhaps more importantly, once you get out, will you be any better off? QUELLCRIST FALCONER Campaign Diaries
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Richard K. Morgan |
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c65c93f
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The eyes, set in jet skin, were a startling pale green. Kadmin had freed himself from conventional perceptions of the physical. In an earlier age, he would have been a shaman; here, the centuries of technology had made him more. An electronic demon, a malignant spirit that dwelled in altered carbon and emerged only to possess flesh and wreak havoc.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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2389d62
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You don't trust me?' 'Now you come to mention it, no. But that isn't it.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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29ae445
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I've talked to the lawyers.' 'Did you disinfect afterwards?
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Richard K. Morgan |
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3be7cb1
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The storage tubes were racked on heavy chains like torpedoes on either side of us, jacked into a central monitor system at one end of the hold via thick black cables that twisted across the floor like pythons. The monitor unit itself squatted heavily ahead of us like an altar to some unpleasant spider god.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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2d881f2
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Look," she told me one day in a Millsport coffeehouse. "Shopping--actual, physical shopping--could have been phased out centuries ago if they'd wanted it that way." "They who?" "People. Society." She waved a hand impatiently. "Whoever. They had the capacity back then. Mail order, virtual supermarkets, automated debiting systems. It could have been done and it never happened. What does that tell you?" At twenty-two years old, a Marine Corps ..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f81ff29
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My gaze slipped out past the breakers. The ocean beyond was black and secret, merging seamlessly with the night a scant distance out from the shore. Even the massive bulk of the keeled-over Free Trade Enforcer was hard to make out. I imagined Mary Lou Hinchley hurtling down to her shattering impact with the unyielding water, then slipping broken beneath the swells to be cradled in wait for the sea's predators. How long had she been out ther..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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396f096
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And he remembered then where he was, remembered how he'd come to be there, the years it had taken, and last of all he remembered he was old.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0286d62
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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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a0821a9
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You're wrong, Hand," I said quietly. "I'd love to have access to all this shit you believe. I'd love to be able to summon someone who's responsible for this fuckup of a creation. Because then I'd be able to kill them. Slowly." *" --
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Richard K. Morgan |
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dc60cd2
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He'd already made her for Kiriath and was backing off like a poet asked to wash dishes. Ringil
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a8c32a6
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she said, a little bitterly, facing him in warm perfumed bathwater one evening,
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Richard K. Morgan |
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00beac8
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Do I look like a fucking slave to you?" he asked them. And though, finally, they would bring him down with sheer weight of numbers, none who heard him ask that question lived to see the dawn."
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Richard K. Morgan |
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732c925
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Forget uniforms or nominal allegiances--if it wears a weapon and scars, it's no safer than the next starving wild dog. Feed and water with care, walk like you're carrying dragon eggs, and never, never get between rival packs.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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a2565cc
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When a forty-minute swim in the Hendrix's underground pool failed to dispel either the longing for Miriam Bancroft's torrid company or the Merge Nine hangover, I did the only thing I felt equipped for. I ordered painkillers from room service, and went shopping.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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564baba
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I feel like a
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Richard K. Morgan |
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57f9708
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the sweat and bloodstained wood of the cross he died on. He kicks in the frosted-glass door of a coffee franchise off Wall Street and beats seven shades of damnation out of the money changers gathered there. Painted, black-stockinged lady brokers twisting prostrate at his feet, red licked lips parted in horror and abandonment, thighs exposed under short, whorish skirts. Fat, big-nosed men in suits braying and panicking, trying to get away f..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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dbeeb0b
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They're brutal, moronic, they have the ethical consciousness of apes and the initiative levels of sheep. But you took the field against the reptiles for them nonetheless. Why?" Ringil"
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Richard K. Morgan |
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817878b
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Knowledge tossed away," she said, shivering a little in the desert chill. "Willful ignorance in the face of something we might have to work to understand." At"
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Richard K. Morgan |
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3d9102f
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The skeins are tangled. Some butterfly shaman up in the north beats his puny fucking wings and the storm gathers before you know it. Chaos gathers, like a bad poet's verse. We run damage control, but the rules of engagement have changed. You think we're any happier about it than you? We've got our balls to the wall here, hero. We're fighting half blind, nothing works, not the way it should, not anymore. Which
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Richard K. Morgan |
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23e7ed3
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I mean." She wasn't listening to him, didn't look at him. Her hand went on clenching and unclenching, making loose, gentle fists in the air one after the other. "If the Chinese or maybe the Indians had come and just chased us out of the driver's seat, you know I could maybe handle that. Every culture has to give way to something in the end. Someone fresher and sharper always comes along. But we fucking did this to ourselves. We let the gras..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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7a0d658
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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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2faa210
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ultimate insult that it's just business, it's politics, it's the way of the world, it's a tough life, and that it's nothing personal. Well, fuck them. Make it personal. QUELLCRIST FALCONER Things I Should Have Learned by Now Volume II There
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Richard K. Morgan |
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16c23d9
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You wouldn't have to be insane to do these things. You'd just have to have a goal and be determined to attain it. Let's get this straight, early on. What we've seen aboard Horkan's Pride are not the symptoms of insanity; they are only evidence of great force of will. Evidence of planning and execution shorn of any socially imposed limitation. Any mental problems this person was suffering by journey's end are going to be a result of that exe..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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252a8af
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Rumor ran in the slum streets of Trelayne like sewage in the gutters, mingled and colorful in its contents, but mostly shit.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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6a887b1
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cordite-reeking
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Richard K. Morgan |
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36d8e8b
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Take what is offered, and that must sometimes be enough.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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da19c13
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officious.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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6f9c0f6
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It was the single forgiving phrase in the syntax of weaponry I had strapped about me. The rest were unequivocal sentences of death. The
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Richard K. Morgan |
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53cf7b7
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Too much virtuality will do that to you sometimes. There's this vague feeling of abrasion in the head when you disconnect, a disquieting sense that reality isn't quite sharp enough anymore, a waxing and waning fuzziness that might be what the edge of madness feels like. The
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Richard K. Morgan |
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c7658f4
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about the blood; it isn't yours. You put this flesh on a couple of days ago, and you'll be taking it off again soon if you can manage not to get killed first. Don't worry about wounds; check your functionality.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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5185d9f
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There were always the stories, of course, the war legends, but who-- other than himself, in Jhesh's tavern, increasingly wearily--still told those?
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Richard K. Morgan |
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626fead
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There's a general hate in the hearts of men. You went to war, Gil, you should know that better than anyone. It's like the heat of the sun. Men like Kaad are just the focal figures, like lenses to gather the sun's rays on kindling. You can smash a lens, but that won't put out the sun.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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ff80281
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No." A look of dawning comprehension. "Ah, that. The regret, is that what you're talking about? This sense of loss? Yes, he always talked about that, too. It's a mortal thing, as far as I can tell. The aspect storm is a warp in the fabric of every possible outcome the universe will allow. It gathers in the alternatives like a bride gathering in her gown. For a mortal, those alternatives are mostly paths they'll never take, things they'll ne..
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Richard K. Morgan |
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87f8f52
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Yes, and had your hotel proved slightly less psychotic, matters would never have got as far out of hand as they have.
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humor
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Richard K. Morgan |
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c206943
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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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0ba87c0
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If they cannot have what might, what could, what should, and perhaps most awful of all what should have been, then they will dream it up instead, imagine it into being in whatever twisted or beautiful form suits, and then drive their fellows to their knees in chains by the thousand and million to pretend in chorus that it is so.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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0d97470
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Around us, the tourist crowd ebbed and flowed like the multicolored idiot tide it was.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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aad3d90
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He picked one at random, a luridly violent far-future crime novel about a detective who could seemingly exchange bodies at will, but the subject matter was alien to him and his attention drifted. It all seemed very far-fetched.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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91c38fc
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spend
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Richard K. Morgan |
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f117e05
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I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me, and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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2e11533
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Common men make a distinction between gods and demons, Poltar, but it's ignorance to talk that way. When the powers do our will, we worship them as gods; when they thwart and frustrate us, we hate and fear them as demons. They are the same creatures, the same twisted unhuman things. The shamans path is negotiation, nothing more. We tend the relationship with the powers so they bring us more benefit than ruin. We can do no more. And
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Richard K. Morgan |
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2b9328d
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Make it personal.
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Richard K. Morgan |
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6ba6f12
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That's right, Dragonbane. And brothers always stood together, the buffalo came when they were called, the grass grew taller and greener, and it never fucking rained. Get a grip, old man.
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Richard K. Morgan |