The key to autonomy, she realized, was more than root access on the programs that shaped her desires. It was a sense of privacy.

She was designed to look human, her face the replica of a woman whose image Med’s tissue engineer had licensed from an old Facebook database.

He was a user of his own consciousness, but he did not have owner privileges. As a result, Paladin felt many things without knowing why.

My mother says that smart women are always crazy.

That’s when I decided the point of travel was not to observe history, but to change it.

How many times had Paladin looked into this human face, its features animated by neurological impulse alone? He did not know. Even if he were to sort through his video memories and count them up one by one, he still didn’t think he would have the right answer. But after today’s mission, human faces would always look different to him. They would remind him of what it felt like to suffer, and to be relieved of suffering.

Bots, who cost money, required a period of indenture to make their manufacture worthwhile. No such incentive was required for humans to make other humans.

I am sorry you have to live in the time of terraforming, and not in the spring that follows.

But now we know there has been no one great disaster – only the slow-motion disaster of capitalism converting every living thing and idea into property.

I want to leave a better timeline behind, not just an open timeline but one where people who are not men can control the means of reproduction.