I know he is important Meat because he is dressed like a fool and doing no work. - Jay Lake

Horn could hear the click of the dice that made up the multiverse. Beneath the struggles of gods and men and monsters, behind the powers of magic and prayer and bared blade, chance governed all.

Nothing ever built could truly match the pattern-recognition and free associative skills of human (or post-human) wetware collectively known as “hunches.” Strong AIs could approximate that uniquely biological skill through a combination of brute force and deeply clever circuit design, but even then, the spark of inspiration did not flow so well.

Springfield McKenna didn’t place much faith in rumors. She’d traded in them far too long to lend credence to someone else’s social munitions.