“Let him hurl these pieces of toast like new and radical ideas that must be cast into the world. Pieces of toast like angry children who will hit us and upset us and change our ways of thinking and feeling.”

“Very well," said Bregnest as a piece of toast hit him on the nose.”

“Piece of cake. Or toast, in your case. I'll stuff your toast, baby.”

“Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?”

“I had this idea we would have ordered some good champagne, launched toast after toast to our humanity, which after all had created everything: the opportunities for the bug, the bug itself, and its solution. I think now it might have changed us, softened our failures, made us feel we belonged to—had a true stake in—those lives full of code we had separately stumbled into. I like to think it would have reassured him, saved him: To know that at the heart of the problem was the ancient mystery of time. To discover that between the blinks of the machine’s shuttered eye—going on without pause or cease; simulated, imagined, but still not caught—was life.”

“We’re stepping into a new world, and an entire way of thinking must be changed. But the old ideas can’t be easily discarded. Like a pendulum, new ways must swing to the other side before returning.”