Kat bought a New York Times but couldn’t figure out how to operate it, so now she’s fiddling with her phone.

Imagination runs out. But it makes sense, right? We probably just imagine things based on what we already know, and we run out of analogies in the thirty-first century.

But I kept at it with the help-wanted ads. My standards were sliding swiftly. At first I had insisted I would only work at a company with a mission I believed in. Then I thought maybe it would be fine as long as I was learning something new. After that I decided it just couldn't be evil. Now I was carefully delineating my personal definition of evil.

Our books still do not require batteries. But I am no fool. It is a slender advantage.

I loved The Chronicles of Narnia. I loved The Chronicles of Prydain. Basically, 'Chronicles of' - I was in!

...I can’t stop squirming. If fidgets were Wikipedia edits, I would have completely revamped the entry on guilt by now, and translated it into five new languages.

... nothing lasts long. We all come to life and gather allies and build empires and die, all in a single moment - maybe a single pulse of some giant processor somewhere.