This operation was being run either by a FAITH faction that didn’t approve of me or by one of the competing nations. Either way, they wanted me dead.… - Dennis E. Taylor

Some problems simply do not yield to reductionist techniques, particularly those that are dependent on emergent phenomena.

Their lives were now less than a footnote in history. As gone, as utterly forgotten as any random individual from the Middle Ages. No longer even a ripple in time, except to the extent that I could keep their memories alive. I sighed to myself. It seemed sometimes that life was nothing more than the accumulation of emotional baggage — memories, regrets, and lost opportunities.

nothing had ever been invented or discovered that beat chocolate —