[There was] only one news channel, overseen by a bland and complexly multicultural board of advisors. It broadcast in fifteen languages and was, as a… - Robert Charles Wilson

Must be a full moon," she said."Lawrence is turning into an asshole.

Guilford thought he knew what science was. It was nothing more than curiosity...tempered by humility, disciplined with patience.
Science meant looking—a special kind of looking. Looking especially hard at the things you didn’t understand. Looking at the stars, say, and not fearing them, not worshiping them, just asking questions, finding the question that would unlock the door to the next question and the question beyond that.

The attacking piece displaces its victim. The vanquished piece leaves the plane of the board entirely. But it does not, in a higher sense, cease to exist.