I loved Molly. Or at least I told myself I did. Or, if what I felt for her was not love, it was at least a plausible imitation, a convincing substitu… - Robert Charles Wilson

The problem was the Voxish prophecies. Our founders had written them into the Coryphaeus as unalterable axioms—embedded truths, permanently exempt from debate or revision. That hadn’t mattered when the rapture of the Hypotheticals was a distant goal toward which we moved in gradual increments. But now we had come to the blunt end of the question. Prophecy had collided with reality, and the obvious inference—that the prophecies might have been mistaken—was a possibility the Coryphaeus was forbidden to consider.

Evolution can’t be predicted, Julian used to tell me; it’s a scattershot business; it fires, but it doesn’t aim.

I gather we’re not the most craven species in the galaxy, but we’re not the most angelic by a long shot.