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Any given innovation that empowers the individual will inevitably come to empower the powerful much, much more.

‘You’ll soon learn to do many things, Sancia – and you’ll have to learn to do many things. Because war is coming. It’s already found you and the rest of this city. And when you decide how to respond, remember – the first few steps of your path will decide the rest of it.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Think of the plantations, of slavery. It was to be a sho

Every innovation – technological, sociological, or otherwise – begins as a crusade, organises itself into a practical business, and then, over time, degrades into common exploitation. This is simply the life cycle of how human ingenuity manifests in the material world.

Then words emerged among them – words she could hear. < . . . bring heat, bring it up, bubble it up, and store it away, there it goes, keep the heat there, oh, please, how I love to make the tank hot . . . > < . . . will NOT let anyone in, absolutely NO ONE, they CANNOT enter unless they possess KEY, key is VERY IMPORTANT, and I . . . >

There was a silence as they all considered this. ‘Which means that, if Tomas Ziani figures this process out,’ said Gregor quietly, ‘he can essentially hold the civilised world hostage.’

‘Or they could scrive a soldier’s mind,’ said Gregor. ‘Make them fearless. Make it so they don’t value their own lives. Make them do despicable things, and then forget they’d ever done them. Or make them bigger, stronger, faster than all other soldiers . . .’

Orso rested his head on the table before him. He was talented at putting abstract concepts together. That was essentially his entire profession: he wrote essays and arguments that convinced reality to do some new and interesting things. So if there was one thing he truly despised – one thing that absolutely, positively drove him mad – it was when s

<Don’t hate Captain Dandolo,> said Clef as she set him down. <I think he’s broken, just like you and me. He’s just trying to fix the world because it’s the only way he knows to fix himself.>

<To know myself. I’m a device, Sancia. They took me and they put me inside this thing, and rigs aren’t supposed to be self-aware. It’s like you said when we first met. I sat in the dark for so long. I wasn’t supposed to wait that long.> A pause. <You know what that means, don’t you? I’m a machine that’s falling apart. And eventually, I won