Beacon 23 Quotes

I call this the Relativistic Weekend Effect. We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future. Our mood is as much expectation as experience.

It's because fear sells. It's because war is sport. And it's also very good business.

Our tears are trying to serve a purpose, but we rarely let them. I don't know how we got started with subverting that purpose.

I’m here because they haven’t made a computer yet that won’t do something stupid one time out of a hundred trillion. Seems like good odds, but when computers are doing trillions of things a day, that means a whole lot of stupid.

funny how easily we forget the good times while the nightmares haunt us. Guess that’s a survival mechanism. We’re not here to be happy; we’re just here to be here.

You die a little inside every time you have joyless sex. Neurons prune back. The good in there withers. And some things never grow back.

This is what happens when they give you medals for breaking the rules: you forget the rules apply to you.

I also very purposefully employ the caps button, because they can, in this way, hear us scream in space:

A soul can’t be pinned and made to heal. It has to be talked into stillness and quietude. It has to want it.

And the only thing that ends a war like this is trust, release, love for those we hate, arms around those who would kill us, forgiveness, forgiveness, forgiveness.

I know it is fiction to imagine, but what would happen if we stood on the rubble of attacks against us, whether literal or figurative, physical or emotional, personal or political, and we chose to forgive rather than escalate? What does that world look like? Maybe we’ll never know. But I like to pretend.

I remember the rule for semicolons; the sentences on both sides have to be full ones.

Fucking NASA. In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, “Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight!

Strange the lengths I’ll go to in order to keep people away from me, considering how lonely I feel most of the time. I guess that’s the strange torment I suffer: dying for company, for someone to talk to, but it’s never the right someone who shows. And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut - this indescribably emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do. Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner.

This is the problem with illusions: They form easy enough, but once they fall apart, they’re impossible to put back together. They’re like humans in that way.

I pull her against me, not to make love to her, but just to love her. To hold something good and imperfect and fucked up, and to feel someone holding all of that in return.

Love comes as fast as shrapnel in the trenches. It’s indiscriminate. It gets whoever’s closest. When it’s your time, it’s your time.

I’m sorry.” Two words that I used to choke on when I was younger, that I only now know the value of, the true worth, and how good they feel to say.

NASA is weird about the things they fear. They get really nervous about unknown life forms, and yet it’s all they talk about. They’re like teenage boys with sex in this way.

In deep space, no one can hear you sob.

That’s all. Just that pocket of warmth in a freezing lake. Just a glancing ray of sunshine. A star that winks once, twice, then turns away. Death without the dying.    

Sometimes the real looks fake, especially when you’ve looked at the fake for so long.

In a horror movie, when everyone is hugging their shins and shouting for the main character to turn and run, or crawl under the bed, or call the cops, or grab a gun, NASA would be the dude in the back shouting, “Go see what made that noise! And take a flashlight!

couldn’t fight anymore. You fight because your squad needs you to. When the last man standing beside you goes down, you don’t need a bullet to take out your knees; the depression does that for you. I’ve seen the biggest troopers felled by the heavy darkness. I’ve watched them curl up in the mud and just stop moving. I remember hoping that’d never be me. And here I am.

They say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming. They don’t stop. They’ll never stop. It’s just too depressing to keep counting, so we start over after the third bad thing.

I can see the scene down in Mission Control right now: a man in a white shirt and black tie checking my vitals on a readout, his chief inquiring if I’ve hit REM sleep yet. “Affirmative, sir. Sleeping like a baby.” “Excellent. Queue up the machine that goes bing!

I suffer: dying for company, for someone to talk to, but it’s never the right someone who shows. And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name.

say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming.

Where's the everlasting peace? Is there even such a thing? Or do we war like alien races war, eternally, against ourselves?

is the problem with illusions: They form easy enough, but once they fall apart, they’re impossible to put back together. They’re like humans in that way.

And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

There aren’t any rules about how long you gotta know someone to know you love them.

By the time you’re reading this warning, you’ve already acted responsibly.

funny how easily we forget the good times while the nightmares haunt us. Guess that’s a survival mechanism. We’re not here to be happy; we’re just here to be here. I

This is the thing about being a hero: It’s all about when you get your picture taken.

And Rocky still sounds angry at me for drilling a hole through his skull. I only did it to keep him close. Woulda lost him otherwise. Do we have to hurt the ones we love to keep them close?

I clamp down on those memories. I embrace fresher torments. But my shrink warned me about this, how anger and depression get misassigned, and how if I don’t work through shit it’ll keep resurfacing in ways I don’t expect.

If he checks the colreg logs, he’ll see that I’m not exactly lying. I am under quarantine. What the logs won’t say is that it was a computer virus, and that the victim was my beacon. Strange the lengths I’ll go to in order to keep people away from me, considering how lonely I feel most of the time. I guess that’s the strange torment I suffer: dying for company, for someone to talk to, but it’s never the right someone who shows. And an unwelcome presence is far worse than miserable silence.

It’s this positive outlook on life that got me through three and a half tours of duty and the last six months of my first beacon stint. I’m a chipper guy, once you get to know the raw, dark dread and petrified fear that lurks in my breast and that I battle with every waking moment and that sometimes has me sobbing into my palms when no one is around and makes it really hard to be in crowds or to stand any loud sounds and has me thinking I’ll probably never be in a functional relationship again, platonic or otherwise. Once you get that, you have to say to yourself, “Hey, why’s this guy so damn happy all the time?

I also remember catching the eye of the few conscientious objectors in the terminal, the people opposed to the war but afraid to speak up. There was no hate in their eyes, only pity. Sadness. Knowledge that I might be necessary, but that we shouldn’t be proud that I was necessary. That’s how I saw myself and my company by the end of my second tour. I didn’t hate what we did so much as hate the need for it all. No one should applaud this. We should bow our heads not in thanks but in sadness.

Don’t leave a man behind—especially not me. It’s

No one should applaud this. We should bow our heads not in thanks but in sadness.

Maybe prisoners in isolation feel what I feel: they hate their guards, but a beating now and then is at least some human contact.

In every wreck and crash, there is some unseen man rubbing his hands with thoughts of tidy profits.

The fact that the universe can come to this, that anyone finds it normal, is comically absurd.

Crying isn’t simply about opening the floodgates to some private trauma and letting it out—crying is just as much about letting those around you know you’re hurting.

They say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming.

I remember the rule for semicolons; the sentences on both sides have to be full ones. Full people. Whole.

The fact that you are alive is hilarious. The fact that the universe can come to this, that anyone finds it normal, is comically absurd.

The chewy meat center of their big ol’ spacesicle.

The lives lost are of less consequence than the spoils gained.

NASA garb inside out and scattered like a tux on a wedding night,

There's the metallic odor of blood as solders with hope cry for a medic, soldiers without hope cry for their mommas, and soldiers with guns bring tears to the other side.

I call this the Relativistic Weekend Effect. We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future.

just know that it takes a bit of courage to unlearn that shame, and to be there for others when they try to unlearn that shame, and that it all gets easier after you feel how healthy it is.

Not on my fucking head!” the rock says. I apologize but laugh. The rock has what sounds vaguely like a British accent, which makes everything it says funnier than it should. “Sorry,” I say.

That silence seems to build and build, like the darkness I saw once in a cave in West Virginia. Darkness you can chew. Darkness you can feel for miles all around you. Darkness you’re not sure you’ll ever crawl out of.

you don’t need orders when there’s a distress call in space. I served in the navy before I was forced groundside. If anyone hails for help, you help them. None of us could survive out here without a system like this in place.

I’m here because they ain’t made a computer yet that won’t do something stupid one time out of a hundred trillion. Seems like good odds, but when computers are doing trillions of things a day, that means a whole lot of stupid.

Strange the lengths I’ll go to in order to keep people away from me, considering how lonely I feel most of the time. I guess that’s the strange torment I suffer: dying for company, for someone to talk to, but it’s never the right someone who shows.

I’m here because they haven’t made a computer yet that won’t do something stupid one time out of a hundred trillion. Seems like good odds, but when computers are doing trillions of things a day, that means a whole lot of stupid. And I’m supposed to be smart enough to sort them out.

But it’s more than the deaths I saw; it’s the destruction. The noise with which we go seems to make it count for more. I think of my buddies who checked out via hand grenade versus those who died from MRSA back in the VA. We barely notice the latter. They’re statistics. Go quietly, and you’re a number. Go in spectacular fashion, and you’re a name.

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming, could feel another school week all piled up and ready to smother me. How was I supposed to enjoy a day of freedom while drowning in dread like that? It was impossible. A pit would form in my chest and gut—this indescribable emptiness that I knew should be filled with fun, but instead left me casting about for something to do. Knowing I should be having fun was a huge part of the problem. Knowing that this was a rare day off, a welcome reprieve, and here I was miserable and fighting against it. Maybe this was why Fridays at school were better than Sundays not in school. I was happier doing what I hated, knowing a Saturday was coming, than I was on a perfectly free Sunday with a Monday right around the corner.

I debate whether or not to hold my breath. Is the massive, wheezing inhalation that follows worse than all the small little puffing breaths I might take instead? (I often debated this when a squad mate would lay a fart with a howl of laughter. Breathe normal? Or put it off and then risk sucking that fart so deep into your lungs that it stays there forever, little fart cells melding way inside the core of you?)

We don't all make it out the other side, not all of us. But somewhere, there's the click of a pen, a proud signature, a father's hand on a young man's shoulder, and we reload. That's the sound of our collective gun cocking, the click of a pen. That's us racking another round in the chamber. Fire that boy out, hope you hit something. If he gets three before he goes home in his own bag, then the numbers look good. That father gets his medal. No one else to wear it.

I’m a chipper guy, once you get to know the raw, dark dread and petrified fear that lurks in my breast and that I battle with every waking moment and that sometimes has me sobbing into my palms when no one is around and makes it really hard to be in crowds or to stand any loud sounds and has me thinking I’ll probably never be in a functional relationship again, platonic or otherwise. Once you get that, you have to say to yourself, “Hey, why’s this guy so damn happy all the time?

Tex would introduce himself to every goo-green kid who joined the squad, every piece of farm-fresh. He’d put his arm around their shoulder, tell them his life story, his real name, ask them all about their hometowns, so that even those nearby had to learn shit we’d rather not. We’d get hit by these frag grenades of nicety. He took people in, Tex. Got close to them. Cried like a baby when the smoke cleared and the tags were tallied. And I thought he was fucking crazy, going about war like that. Not learning what the rest of us learned.

We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future. Our mood is as much expectation as experience. Just like in the army, where life in the trenches worked the same way. It was the quiet that jangled the nerves. It was the lead-up before the push more than the push itself. To this day, I grow more faint at the scent of gun oil than I do at the sight of blood.

They say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming. They don’t stop. They’ll never stop. It’s just too depressing to keep counting, so we start over after the third bad thing. We hold our breath. We wait. We hope the universe will wait with us.

We didn’t argue. We debated. We discussed. It’s what civilized people do.

Maybe prisoners in isolation feel what I feel: they hate their guards, but a beating now and then is at least some human contact. I

To hold something good and imperfect and fucked up, and to feel someone holding all of that in return.  

I also very purposefully employ the caps button, because they can, in this way, hear us scream in space: GWB FULL FAIL. ZERO TRANSMIT. CARGO AND LUX LINER IN TRANSIT. HARD REBOOT NO GOOD. Get

We live in the present, but our happiness relies heavily on the future. Our mood is as much expectation as experience.

A soul can’t be pinned and made to heal. It has to be talked into stillness and quietude. It has to want it. “I’d

There’s no up or down to the cosmos, just a whole bunch of fucking sideways. Just people loving and hating. And no rules on how long it takes.

Maybe this is the ideal remedy for depression: a gun that can read your mind and is forever pointed at your head.

How do cynics find joy in even the simplest of things anymore?

Our brains can fool us. Mine makes a fool out of me.

this violent, terrible, treasonous, glorious eruption of peace.

Drunks are an asset on the front line, the army taught me. In the air, we’re a nuisance.

I hated Sundays as a kid. From the moment I woke up, I could feel Monday looming,

I should mention here that I really don’t like guns pointed at my head. Not unless I’m the one doing the pointing.

They say bad things come in threes, but I don’t think that’s true. I think bad things keep right on coming. They don’t stop. They’ll never stop. It’s just too depressing to keep counting, so we start over after the third bad thing. We hold our breath. We wait. We hope the universe will wait with us. But then something else bad happens, and with dread and short memories we utter to ourselves, “Okay, that’s one,” and we brace for what’s next.

As a boy growing up in Tennessee, you learned never to cry where anyone else could see. Crying was a sign of weakness. When we were kids, tears made the other boys around us brave.

I know it is fiction to imagine, but what would happen if we stood on the rubble of attacks against us, whether literal or figurative, physical or emotional, personal or political, and we chose to forgive rather than escalate? What does that world look like? Maybe we’ll never know. But I like to pretend

Reluctantly, with tears rolling down my cheeks, I gaze up at her. She’s holding up her shirt. A web of scars peeks out above the waistband of her sweatpants—a tangle of lace-like flesh that wraps clear around her hip. I glance from this up to her face and see that she’s looking at my own exposed stomach. I look back at her wound. I’m the asshole. I’m the guy who thinks he’s uniquely miserable, who thinks all the world’s woes are his, who sees the pure in everyone else and the dilapidated within. Only I have suffered. Only I know pain. How do you share what you think no one else can hold? Why do we all do this to ourselves and each other? Why can’t we just fucking cry like men?

Bad things come in threes—but then they stop. And start all over again.

but the last part that goes is the little sliver of hope that thought you’d get through this mess, that thought you’d live to see the other side, that it’d be your name on the war memoir, on the cover, not in the dedication.

outer

Cockroaches hatched from eggs laid in cardboard.

clamp

It’s a selfish craving, desiring a partner in misery.

I didn’t hate what we did so much as hate the need for it all. No one should applaud this. We should bow our heads not in thanks but in sadness.

A rupture between the part of us that pulses and the part of us that breathes.

grounded

what happens when they give you medals for breaking the rules: you forget the rules apply to you.

You die a little inside every time you have joyless sex.