Necessity, they say, is the mother of invention, but it is the mother of any number of other things as well: sacrifice and monstrosity and metamorpho… - James S. A. Corey

You're not picking a fight with the things that made the protomolecule. You're picking a fight with whatever killed them. Orders of magnitude above the things that were orders of magnitude above us. You've got to know this is going to escalate if we keep using these technologies.
We were always going to keep using these technologies. That was inevitable the moment we opened the gates," Duarte said. "If you've studied any history at all, you know that. Never in human history have we discovered something useful and then chosen not to use it.

I’m going to go obsessively run diagnostics on systems I know are solid so I can feel like I have control of something.

“It’s reading as an incredibly strong magnetic field focused down to a narrow beam.”
“Is that possible?” the duty officer said, her voice small and tight.
“Only if you define ‘possible’ as things that have already happened,” Naomi said, not turning to look at her.