This Is How You Lose the Time War

Although they said they would meet again, everyone knew in their hearts that this was a final farewell. When the Special Contingent of Future Reinforcements headed to the hibernation center, Chang Weisi and a number of other senior space force generals came to the airport to see them off. He handed a letter to Zhang Beihai. “This letter is for my f

Time isn’t an orderly stream. Time isn’t a placid lake recording each of our ripples. Time is viscous. Time is a massive flow. It is a self-healing substance, which is to say, almost everything will be lost. We’re too slight, too inconsequential, despite all of our thrashing and swimming and waving our arms about. Time is an ocean of inertia, drown

“I said, ‘If the birds had such kinship that when one of them died, so did the other one, then what did the second firebird lose? Is there a third thing in this world, at least as powerful as Life and Death?’ ” Smithy sighed and rolled his eyes. “I know where this one’s going.” Mara paid no attention to him. She waved at him to hush. “What was it?”

And whether or not your brain is impelled by the air that once impelled mine, through the act of reading my words, the patterns that form your thoughts become an imitation of the patterns that once formed mine. And in that way I live again, through you.