They dug too far into physics and it bit them. Physics will do that. It's an ungrateful piece of shit. It's a fickle lover that will always betray yo… - Alastair Reynolds

Then all this," Chromis said, gesturing at the vista before them, "everything we've lived for and made, everything we've dreamed into existence—you firmly believe it won't always be here?" "It'd be egocentric to think otherwise. Almost every sentient being who ever lived belonged to a society that doesn't exist any more. Why should we be any different?" "But our deeds will remain." "If we're lucky. There's every chance they won't survive either." "That's so bleak, Rudd." "Bracing, I prefer to think." "But if nothing we do here has any guarantee of lasting, if even the best gestures have only a slim chance of outliving us—is there any reason not to just give up?" "Every reason in the world," Rudd said. "We're here and we're alive. It's a beautiful evening, on the last perfect day of summer." He turned and nodded at the waiting cauls. "Now let's go down there and make the most of it, while it lasts.

Auger could not help marvelling at the experience of being inside the ALS sphere and seeing her world as it should have been. This was an earth that had never known nuclear war, or runaway climatic catastrophe, or smart weather, or a Nanocaust. The sight of it made her want to weep. No image had ever come close to the heartbreaking beauty of this small blue world, a beauty all the more acute now that she knew how exquisitely fragile it was. It was the beauty of a butterfly’s wing.

It was a numbers game, not a guaranteed method of avoiding being killed, but Clavain had been a soldier long enough to know that this was, ultimately, what most combat situations boiled down to.