So—I'm a major. New pay grade." She laughed. "My salary has just jumped from nothing to next-to-nothing. What will I spend it all on? - Charles E. Gannon

Riordan surveyed the scene again. Knowing that it could not be other than perfect made it seem less remarkable, much in the way a constructed vista in a theme park could never quite compare with a less perfect one discovered in nature. This was merely a technological achievement, and the price of its perpetual perfection was its inability to inspire a sense of grandeur.

You must remind yourself—hourly—that Caine Riordan is but one human. He is an aberration among them, a flicker of conscience that his own megacorporate kin would have extinguished if he had not run far and fast. Do not let his noble deed seduce you into thinking the rest of his race are capable of something similar….
"And Riordan himself. What do I tell him?"
"Hu'urs Khraam looked at Darzhee Kut closely. "Tell him that his deed was noble and we are grateful for it. And, if you think he is ready to hear it, you should also tell him that we can already measure how much his deed will change the outcome of this war."
"Really? How much?"
"Not at all.

The reality, both now and historically, was that whatever the future held, change was always uneven in distribution and irregular in timing.