Drive

From when Moses saw the promised land that he could never enter, people have been on their deathbeds just wanting to see what happens next. He wonders if that’s what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can’t quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction.

Solomon relaxes, and the expanse folds itself around him like a lover.

He tried to imagine what it was like for the marines in those ships. Out almost all the way to the new world, and then back without ever having seen it. Over half a year of their lives gone in an act of political theatre.

There were several chapels in the research centre, and this one was actually quite lovely. Everything, even the altar, had been carved from native stone and then covered with a clear sealant that left it looking wet and rich and vibrant. Lines of white and black ran through the red stone, and flecks of crystalline brightness. The air was thick with the scent of lilacs that Voltaire had bought by the armful from the greenhouses.

“Will you marry me?” he asked.
“Oh, please.”
“No, really. Will you marry me?”
“Why? Because we’re about to get into a war that’ll kill us and everyone we know and there’s nothing we can do to affect it one way or the other? Quick, let’s do something permanent before the permanence is all mined out.”
“Sure. Will you marry me?”
“Of course I will, Sol.”

It was some of Solomon’s favourite music because it was dense and intellectually complicated and he wasn’t expected to dance to it.

Voltaire raised her hand. “I nominate paradigm-shiftingly as the adverb of the night.”

They lost because even though one of their tanks was worth five of the other guy’s, America could build ten.