“She couldn't disappoint the whole village. There were no wallscreens here, no newsfeeds or satellites bands, and touring soccer teams were no doubt few and far between. (...), that made stories a valuable commodity, and it probably wasn't very often that a stranger dropped in from the sky.”

“She wasn't here to gawk. She was an infiltrator, a sneak, an ugly. And she had a mission.”

“That's how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.”

“And the worst thing was, there were no mirrors out there in the wild, so the princess was left wondering whether she in fact was still beautiful... or if the fall had changed the story completely.”

“Tally-When you looked around at everyone else how come you didn’t notice they were brain damaged?Az - We didn’t have much to compare our fellow citizens with. Only a few colleagues who seemed different from most people, more engaged, but that was hardly a surprise.History would indicate that the majority of people have always been sheep. Before the operation there were wars and mass hatred and clear cutting. Whatever these lesions make us, it isn’t a far cry from how humanity was in the rusty era. These days we’re just a bit easier to manage.”

“God, you mean I lost my virginity to the apocalypse?"Morgan sighed again. "The whole thing was really embarrassing; my parents sent me to Brooklyn when they found out." She shrugged. "I thought I’d be safe in a gay bar, okay? What were you doing in there anyway?"Lace looked at me sidelong. "You were where?"I took a sip of beer, swallowed it. "I, uh, hadn’t been in the city...very long. I didn’t know.”

“Apparently textbooks were an endangered species here in Bixby, Oklahoma. ”