So are they some form of life, or are they machines?" "At the chemical level all living things can be construed as machines. - Robert Charles Wilson

To fire a bullet into the heart or brains of one’s fellow man—even a fellow man striving to do the same to you—creates what might be called an unassimilable memory: a memory that floats on daily life the way an oil stain floats on rainwater. Stir the rain barrel, scatter the oil into countless drops, disperse it all you like, but it will not mix; and eventually the slick comes back, as loathsomely intact as it ever was.

And death?
I don’t fear death.
I dread the absence of it.

Violence is the great attractor of human history, Dr. Iverson. A force almost as irresistible as gravity.