It was nobody’s idea of luxurious travel, but then I’d known luxurious travel once or twice in my life and found that it just got me to places at the… - Adam-Troy Castro

Any messages?"
Oscin said, "Just a lot of people dreading whatever you plan to do next.

All of this had seemed so obvious and vital to them once. But then it changed, in the timeless time since putting their vessel together; some might even say, they’d degenerated. They were no longer the beings who’d set themselves an impossible task and built themselves a miraculous vessel to help them accomplish it. In that time they had forgotten all of their arcane and hard-won knowledge and become passengers, instead of engineers. Now the bubble piloted itself, without their input; and the glorious mission that had once been the whole reason for their existence now seemed nothing but an ancient folly, too far gone to change.
They wouldn’t have understood Vietnam, but they would have sympathized.

Are you refusing a direct order?"
"Tell me to die for no good reason and I'll do more than refuse, I'll shove the order up your ass.