A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk & Robot Book 1)

balance. But elk don’t want to be afraid. Fear is miserable, as is pain. As is hunger. Every animal is hardwired to do absolutely anything to stop those feelings as fast as possible. We’re all just trying to be comfortable, and well fed, and unafraid. It wasn’t the elk’s fault. The elk just wanted to relax.” Dex nodded at the ruined factory. “And t

“I wish I could understand experiences I’m incapable of having.”

You’re not cutting a new trail, or clearing a grove, or … I don’t know, having a party out here. You’re taking a walk with me, and once that’s done, we’ll head right back to the road. I assure you the forest will forget you were here in no time.

I think you are mistaking something learned for something instinctual.”

“That’s very silly,” Mosscap said. “Yep,” Dex said. “And entirely unnecessary.” Dex took a gulp of ale and exhaled with pleasure. “Worked, though.” Mosscap weighed this, then gave an amused nod. “Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.” “Other than fear.”

It was a crazy split, if you thought about it: half the land for a single species, half for the hundreds of thousands of others. But then, humans had a knack for throwing things out of balance. Finding a limit they’d stick to was victory enough.

thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component has been recycled over and over and over again into infinitely incredible configurations, and sometimes, those configurations are special enough to be able to see

Sometimes, a person reaches a point in their life when it becomes absolutely essential to get the fuck out of the city.

You keep asking why your work is not enough, and I don’t know how to answer that, because it is enough to exist in the world and marvel at it. You don’t need to justify that, or earn it. You are allowed to just live. That is all most animals do.”