“But then I remembered: the universe was closed, and so very small. There was really nowhere else to go.”

“I was just a tattletale for small minds back home.”

“I really wanted to talk to her.I just couldn't find an algorithm that fit.”

“If you have to go up unarmed against an angry T rex with a four-digit IQ, it can't hurt to have a trained combat specialist at your side. At the very least, she might be able to fashion a pointy stick from the branch of some convenient tree.”

“Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all— raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire.”

“Stars, everywhere. So many stars that I could not for the life me understand how the sky could contain them all yet be so black.”

“How do you say 'We come in peace' when the very words are an act of war?”