If one is to observe, M. Endymion, one must be in the proper place to observe. - Dan Simmons

I ignore religions, said Brawne Lamia. I do not succumb to them.

Entropy is a bitch, I said.
Now, now, said Aenea from where she was leaning on the terrace wall. Entropy can be our friend.
When? I said.
She turned around so that she was leaning back on her elbows. The building behind her was a dark rectangle, serving to highlight the glow of her sunburned skin. It wears down empires, she said. And does in despotisms.

“The Core knows what Teilhard de Chardin and other sentimentalists refused to acknowledge: evolution is not progress, that there is no ‘goal’ or direction to evolution. Evolution is change. Evolution ‘succeeds’ if that change best adapts some leaf or branch of its tree of life to conditions of the universe.