“She imagined herself at age nine, running through these very halls, crying out to her older self across the years.”

“As he entered the comm room, Troy wasn’t sure if he should laugh or cry at the realization. Then he remembered how the world was run before, and that nothing had really changed. He chuckled sadly”

“He sounded flustered. Juliette watched him busy about the stove, his movements jerky and manic, and realized she was the one cloistered away and ignorant, not him. He had all these books, decades of reading history, the company of ancestors she could only imagine. What did she have as her experience? A life in a dark hole with thousands of fellow, ignorant savages? She tried to remember this as she watched him dig a finger in his ear and then inspect his fingernail.”

“And now you see why some facts, some pieces of knowledge, have to be snuffed out as soon as they form. Curiosity would blow across such embers and burn this silo to the ground.”

“He could imagine how nice it would be to not understand. To see one's microcosm as the macrocosm. To focus a meter beyond one's own nose.”

“This was the mark of deep infatuation, he thought: the desire to watch a woman talk just to see her lips move, to be around her.”

“Predict the inevitable”, she said, “and you're bound to be right one day.”