He needed to exist only in the present, without guilt, without expectation.

The future of narrative? Built in, part of the human template. Not going away. The future of the codex book, with pages and so forth? A platform for transmitting narratives.

One of the gravestones in the cemetery near the earliest church has an anchor on it and an hourglass, and the words In Hope. In Hope. Why did they put that above a dead person? Was it the corpse hoping, or those still alive?

I am not my childhood,' Snowman says out loud.

I feel despised there, for having so little money; also for once having had so much. I never actually had it, of course. Father had it, and then Richard. But money was imputed to me, the same way crimes are imputed to those who've simply been present at them.

That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before.

My family was scientifically inclined: My brother did turn into a neurophysiologist, and I almost became a scientist myself. I could have gone that way.