This was what never failed to stir her—the unfathomable gulf between today’s thinking and the way the ancients thought. They were truly alien, not me… - Gregory Benford

A particle detector that ran beautifully was either obsolete or hadn’t been designed close enough to the cutting edge of the technology.

They had a legend about a Chemical pinned to a piece of dead matter and allowed to die that way—Diminished to extinction! Apparently a commonplace among Chemicals. Yet after this fearsome loss, the identity emerged from its full subtraction—to claim life again. Such a desperate story! Elementary knowledge tells us that such things do not happen, of course.

He whispered, “Honey, it’s good ol’ love makes the world go round.”
“Actually, it’s inertia.”