...there are more terrifying monstrosities in the world than Anthropophagi. Monstrosities who, with a smile and a comforting pat on the head, are willing to sacrifice a child upon the altar of their own overweening ambition and pride.

This thing was what existed before life, before the first stars, before the big bang. It was the emptiness before the universe, and the emptiness that would follow.

You saw what I saw, right? Adrienne doing something nice for Xarissa of her own free will. I think I did, said G.ALunette stared into the unknown. This has to be a sign of the coming apocalypse We are all going to die.

Bodies lay in the sun. Bodies stood in the sun.

When she had died, his anchor was gone and the world had burned from his untethered insanity.

While a number of people have pointed out the various costs and drawbacks of sentience, few if any have taken the next step and wondered out loud if the whole damn thing isn't more trouble than it's worth. Of course it is, people assume; otherwise natural selection would have weeded it out long ago. And they're probably right. I hope they are. "Blindsight" is a thought experiment, a game of "Just suppose" and "What if". Nothing more.On the other hand, the dodos and the Steller sea cows could have used exactly the same argument to prove their own superioirity, a thousand years ago: "if we're so unfit, why haven't we gone extinct?" Why? Because natural selection takes time, and luck plays a role. The biggest boys on the block at any given time aren't necessarily the fittest, or the most efficient, and the game isn't over. The game is never over; there's no finish line this side of heat death. And so, neither can there be any winners. There are only those who haven't yet lost.