{"quotes":[{"text":"We want all possible things made actual, the perpetual possibility of perfection, the best of all futures all at once.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["dexter-palmer","futures","perfection","possibilities","the-dream-of-perpetual-motion"],"id":8721,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"That's one of our speculations, by the way. That the prior version of history that this one overwrote was horrible. Complete geopolitical mayhem; half of New York City is underwater. The United States is headed toward civil war, or ruled by an artificial-intelligence construct, or some such other thing. Real end-of-days stuff. That the instances of ourselves who existed in that history figured out what we have: that the invention of the causality violation device was the cause. That in that prior version of history, Rebecca did not die in a car accident. That she went back to the past on a mission, as a volunteer, well aware of her sacrifice.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["alternate-history","dexter-palmer","dystopian","science-fiction","time-travel","version-control"],"id":16024,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"In fact, although I am not aware of it (and I am never aware of it, no matter how many times I have the dream) her suicide is a foregone conclusion. It is this way in dreams: when decisions are being made, they have already been made.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["decisions","dexter-palmer","dreams","foregone-conclusion","predetermined","recurring-dreams","the-dream-of-perpetual-motion","unstoppable"],"id":16258,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"But we think that if a human were to violate conventional causality—''By time traveli.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["blackout","dexter-palmer","lost-memories","lost-time","time-travel","version-control"],"id":23934,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"But who, in these modern times, slept well?","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["dexter-palmer","insomnia","modern-times","sleep","version-control"],"id":26959,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"In the middle of all the world's incessant noise, her message was music, and music was a thing that I'd mostly lived my life without. In the ten years since I'd last seen Miranda she'd come to somehow stand in for all the things I didn't have in life that were thought to make us human, all the absent music and touch and sympathy; in my mind she lived a separate life apart from her real one, and there she grew more pure and perfect with each passing day . . . In my mind Miranda had become a miracle.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["dexter-palmer","fantasy","ideal","idealized","put-on-a-pedestal","symbol","the-dream-of-perpetual-motion"],"id":29643,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"But the hair on her arms did not stand on end; she did not experience any strange instances of déjà vu; she did not see the ghosts of future selves shimmering before her, shouting stock picks back through time.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["dexter-palmer","déjà-vu","time-travel","version-control"],"id":35204,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"Be the time he finds his way out of the chamber and the planetarium, he has become me.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["change","coming-of-age","dexter-palmer","life-changing","narrator","the-dream-of-perpetual-motion","transformation"],"id":43907,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"There was a graduate student in my cohort, this guy I dated, who told me he came to realize that doing physics is like this: there's a concrete wall twenty feet thick, and you're on one side, and on the other side is everything worth knowing. And all you have is a spoon. So you just have to take a spoon and start scraping at the wall: no other way. He works in a bookstore now.But I think of it this way. There is a jigsaw puzzle. It's infinitely large, with no edges or corners to help you out. We have to put it together: it's our duty. We will never finish, but we have to find our satisfactions where we can: when we place two pieces together that suggest we may have found the place where the sky touches the sea, or when we discover a piece that is beautiful in and of itself, that has an unusual color or a glimpse of an unexpected pattern. And the pieces that do not join together also tell you something. If there are very few eureka moments, then at least there are a thousand little failures, that point the way toward a hundred little joys.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["dexter-palmer","metaphor","never-ending","physics","rewarding","science","simile","version-control","work"],"id":45592,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"},{"text":"The machines of this place are failing, and the woman and I are here all alone. The perpetual motion engine, as brilliant and beautiful as it is, is running down—nothing lasts forever. But before this little world falls out of the sky there still might be time enough for redemption. There is still time for me to say the words that I should have had the courage to say at the beginning.There is still time, perhaps, for one more miracle.Hello, Miranda.","author":"Dexter Palmer","tags":["beginning","bittersweet","dexter-palmer","ending","hello","impermanence","miracle","nothing-lasts-forever","perpetual-motion","poignant","redemption","sad","science-fiction","steampunk","the-dream-of-perpetual-motion"],"id":54062,"author_id":"Dexter+Palmer"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":61,"pages":7,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}