Moonbound: A Novel

The truth is that I was driven by the question carved into my heart; the question I had almost, but not quite, given up; the great question of the Anth: What happens next?

I was engineered by the Anth to nestle into a human mind. In the past, this nestling had been a careful, delicate process. After long entombment, I was not careful. I scrambled to establish my position.

I crept through the boy’s blood, drunk on ATP. After the lean years in the tomb, I had forgotten how good energy could taste.

In the street, the villagers wore technical outerwear; their parkas were dotted with bits of reflective tape that sizzled in the sun.

"You are long-lived!" exclaimed Durga.

"Our health is matched to the duration of our interests," said Agassiz. "Isn't that how it should be?"

There is nothing more human than the experience of lying in the dark, wondering: What if I don't wake up? In that way, sleep becomes existential cross-training: dread faced nightly, and nightly overcome.

The fearful did not act; the fearful hoped nothing happened at all.

The knights busied themselves with emotional warfare, and also the occasional hunt, in which they went out bellowing with the hounds, tracking an elusive golden elk. Ariel understood that the appeal was the long, merry hike; they’d be despondent if they ever caught the creature.

Ariel was a mapmaker; it was his great pastime. His map was not on paper, for there was no paper. Instead, he had discovered a hidden menu inside the Stromatolite, one that permitted the creation of custom terrain in the style of the game: a malleable 3D landscape rendered in sketchy monochrome.