We are silent, considering shortfalls. There's not much time left, for us to become what we once intended. Jon had potential, but it's not a word that can be used comfortably any more. Potential has a shelf-life.

Science fiction is filled with Martians and space travel to other planets, and things like that.

I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.

Money as such is, as Oscar Wilde said, perfectly useless. You can't eat it, drink it, shelter yourself from the cold with it, wear it, or make love with it unless deeply disturbed. In and of itself, it has no emotions, no mind, and no conscience. It doesn't put out flowers or have children, and it makes a lousy pet. It has meaning only when it circulates, and is exchanged for other things; and money doesn't do that for itself. People do that, using money as a symbolic token.

I'm not an activist by nature. I am suspicious of Utopian thinking and equally suspicious of its alternate.

...and nostalgia swept through Jimmy like a sudden hunger.

My good intentions are completely lethal.