The Chronoliths
“That didn’t mean Ash was pleased to come home and find two of these worthies occupying her living-room sofa.
It had seemed obvious to me, after Portillo, that I would have to choose between my life with Ashlee and my work for Sue. Sue persisted in her belief that the advance of the Chronoliths could be turned back, given the right technology or even the appropriate degree of understanding. Privately, I doubted it. Consider the word itself, “Chronolith”—an ugly portmanteau word coined by some to...ne-deaf journalist shortly after Chumphon, a word I had never liked but which I had come to appreciate for its aptness. Chronos, time, and lithos, stone, and wasn’t that the heart of the matter? Time made solid as rock. A zone of absolute determinacy, surrounded by a froth of ephemera (human lives, for instance) which deformed to fit its contours.
I did not wish to be deformed. The life I wanted with Ashlee was the life the Chronoliths had stolen from me. We had come back from Tucson, Ash and I, to lick our wounds and to take from each other what strength we were able to give.MoreLess
It had seemed obvious to me, after Portillo, that I would have to choose between my life with Ashlee and my work for Sue. Sue persisted in her belief that the advance of the Chronoliths could be turned back, given the right technology or even the appropriate degree of understanding. Privately, I doubted it. Consider the word itself, “Chronolith”—an ugly portmanteau word coined by some to...ne-deaf journalist shortly after Chumphon, a word I had never liked but which I had come to appreciate for its aptness. Chronos, time, and lithos, stone, and wasn’t that the heart of the matter? Time made solid as rock. A zone of absolute determinacy, surrounded by a froth of ephemera (human lives, for instance) which deformed to fit its contours.
I did not wish to be deformed. The life I wanted with Ashlee was the life the Chronoliths had stolen from me. We had come back from Tucson, Ash and I, to lick our wounds and to take from each other what strength we were able to give.MoreLess
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