Maybe you reach a certain point in evolution where boredom is the greatest threat to your survival. Maybe this isn't a planetary takeover at all, but a game. Like a kid pulling wings off flies.
Rick YanceyI assure you, Constable Morgan, I am quite sane, as I understand the word, perhaps the sanest person in this room, for I suffer from no illusions. I have freed myself, you see, from the pretense that burdens most men. Much like our prey, I do not impose order where there is none; I do not pretend there is any more than what there is, or that you and I are anything more than what we are. That is the essence of their beauty, Morgan, the aboriginal purity of their being, and why I admire them.
Rick YanceyPrayers and promises. The one his sister made to him. The unspoken one I made to my sister. Prayers are promises, too, and these are the days of broken promises.
Rick YanceyBut if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.
Rick YanceyThere was, like, this black hole where the world used to be, and we were both falling toward it. What could we hold on to?
Rick YanceyThe beautiful wooden board on a stand in my father's study. The gleaming ivory pieces. The stern king. The haughty queen. The noble knight. The pious bishop. And the game itself, the way each piece contributed its individual power to the whole. It was simple. It was complex. It was savage; it was elegant. It was a dance; it was a war. It was finite and eternal. It was life.
Rick Yancey