The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain

bonds that link themselves endlessly, chaining you to the dead, to the living, to me, for One is a River. Everyone is a Sea.

The web extended throughout the Fleet, through stone and slag, through dirt and leaf and fur and milk and water, electric, coiling, hard as diamond, pliable as flesh, impressible and fluid, gathering in waves. He did not know what would happen if he dared to pull this chain. Would the force of it shock the phones to death?

Can the University be a place of both training and transformation? she thought, and tears pricked her eyes as she answered, No. No, because it’s not possible to do both of those things at once. But

How long was the chain? He did not know, and the not-knowing was no longer a source of dread but of expansive comfort and strength.

The child stared, then slowly reached to touch the old man’s cheek. And the boy realized that he had found the River that was a Sea.

because he was so ordinary and yet so strange, an ordinary boy who had made himself strange through a Practice so simple anyone could take it up, because everybody breathes.

And who named the structure, who got to pick?

“One: scarcity. Limited space and resources. Two: the need to maintain order, which, when things are scarce, is always under threat. Three: surplus. Too many people, not enough stuff: the result is extra people. What are you going to do with all these extra people? If you’re smart, you’ll turn them into a business. That’s the Hold. So there will al

To know that these people counted for so little that anyone holding a phone could intervene in their lives, as if ordering a meal to be delivered, could type and sign a quick letter authorizing the transfer of any chained person from one Ship to another, just as Marjorie had done.