🙏🏼❤️‍🩹

if you know me, you know that #richardpowers is one of my favorite authors. his pulitzer-prize winning novel #theoverstory was a formative text for me, one that has informed so much of my work with @atmos. we were already working on volume 06: beyond when i saw that his next book was about an astrobiologist looking for life in space as well as the meaning of it here on earth. i knew that it would be a perfect fit for the issue. i read it in two days and i was right. the stars aligned and we were able to have a conversation about it, one that left me with a single word: #bewilderment. link is in outer space which is to say my bio ✨ special thanks to @michael.hauptman for the out-of-this-world photos and for the amazing team that brought this issue to life: @jakesarge @ranatoofanian @lolabe @anthonybones_ @tessaforrest @yessfun @mgregory7 @michellegolden. more to come 🪐

(37/54) “The meeting was held in the office of the former speaker of parliament. He’d been executed four weeks earlier. It was an office I’d been to many times before. But everything beautiful had been removed: the paintings, the carpets, the furniture. In the center of the room was a single table, and at its head sat one of the leaders of the Revolutionary Council. It was the body ultimately responsible for deciding the fate of the regime’s enemies. My colleague groveled. He read a prepared statement. He thanked the man for his wisdom. He thanked him for allowing us to keep our salaries. Then when he finished his remarks, he motioned to me and said: ‘My colleague would like to say something.’ I was caught by surprise. I had nothing prepared. I could have just thanked the man. But when an injustice has been committed, I must speak. It’s part of my code. It’s something I hold as dear as my own spirit. Because if we don’t live our ideals—then they don’t exist. 𝘋𝘢𝘢𝘥. 𝘕𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘪. 𝘙𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪. Justice, Goodness, Truth. They depend on us. We are the ones who must make them real. They only exist when we are living them. Truth is not some abstract concept. Truth is something you say. Truth is something you do. No matter how great the fear, you must follow your code. You must stay true to your ideals. Because if you do not, that fear will stay with you. It will break you. Every day it will remind you: you weren’t who you thought you were. And I’m not ready to lose the rest of my life to a single moment. There was a burnt match lying on the floor next to my foot. I picked it up off the ground. I looked the man in the eye, and I told him: ‘Maybe you should be thanking us, for not allowing this injustice.’ Then I held the burnt match in front of my face. ‘Even if you’d asked,’ I told him. ‘I wouldn’t have given you this burnt match.’”