There were twenty-five million people in Yemen and at least thirteen million guns – after the United States, it was, per capita the world’s most armed nation. Men wore AKs walking down the sreet. They brought them to weddings.
Too often they tell me to answer my doubts with prayer, which seems very much like addressing one’s hunger by thinking of food.
So yeah, we put llamas everywhere. That was us. We just liked looking at them, so we bred about six million and spread them around.
The Circle had 90 percent of the search market. Eighty-eight percent of the free-mail market, 92 percent of text servicing. That was, in her perspective, a simple testament to their making and delivering the best product. It seemed insane to punish the company for its efficiency, for its attention to detail. For succeeding.
Like I don’t know the first thing about how to be simply grateful that I’m alive. Maybe that’s what’s missing in our generation. Maybe we just feel too safe, too secure. We have too much stuff and no threat of any of it disappearing anytime soon.
Late that night, I get back to Grant and Eric’s, and they are watching a movie where Al Pacino is blind. Al Pacino is angry and talks with an unplaceable accent. He is maybe Canadian.
And how these bridgemakers exquisitely and bravely embody this nation’s reason for being, a place of radical opportunity and ceaseless welcome. And how when we forget that this is central to all that is best about this country, we forget ourselves – a blended people united not by stasis and cowardice and fear, but by irrational exuberance, by global enterprise on a human scale, by the inherent rightness of pressing forward, always forward, driven by courage unfettered and unyielding.
They clearly see through the whole thing, that we are using this to get exposure, to prove to all and ourselves that we are real, that we like everyone else simply want our lives on tape, proven, feel that what we are doing only becomes real once is has been entered into the record.
A human’s choice is either to see new things, mountains, waterfalls, deadly storms and seas and volcanoes, or to see the same man-made things endlessly reconfigured.
Own the error and correct it,” he said. Hamood had a thousand proverbs and maxims. His favorite was Keep the money in your hand, never in your heart. He used that one a lot.
It means that money is ephemeral, moving from person to person,” Hamood said. “It’s a tool. Don’t let it get into your heart or your soul.” Mokhtar spent a year with Hamood.
They downloaded another customer query, and Mae scrolled through the boilerplates, found the appropriate answer, personalized it, and sent it back.
There was a rumor that Project 9 engineers had figured out a way to replace the random jumble of our nighttime dreaming with organized thinking and real-life problem solving.
We knew nothing; the gaps in our knowledge were random and annoying. They were potholes – they could be patched but they multiplied without pattern or remorse. And even if we knew something, had read something, were almost sure of something, we wouldn’t ever know the truth, or come anywhere close to it. The truth had to be seen. Anything else was a story, entertaining but more embroidered fib than crude, shapeless fact.
As we all know here at the Circle, transparency leads to peace of mind. No longer.
A promise is like the earth underneath us. It must be solid. How can we walk, and run, and live and laugh, when we can’t count on the ground beneath us. And so it is with promises. They keep us upright. They hold up everyone and everything.
That must drive you insa – Oh please. What would a brain do if not these sorts of exercises? I have no idea how people function without near-constant internal chaos. I’d lose my mind.
Now, you and I both know that if you can control the flow of information, you can control everything. You can control most of what anyone sees and knows. If you want to bury some piece of information, permanently, that’s two seconds’ work. If you want to ruin anyone, that’s five minutes’ work.
Many of you no longer have mothers. You have lost your fathers. But you have education. Here, if you are smart enough to accept it, you will be educated. Education will be your mother. Education will be your father. While your older brothers fight this war with guns, when the bullets stop, you will fight the next war with your pens. Do you see what I’m telling you? He was hoarse by now and he grew quiet. – I want you to succeed, boys. If we are ever to have a new Sudan, you must succeed.
He had had a dream, and dreams are heavy things, requiring constant care and pruning.
For a moment, she thought it natural in a way seeing a plane fall from the sky can seem natural, too. The horror comes later.