“Ian was the kind of smart that makes your straight A student look like she’d drown in a wet paper bag. Ian was the kind of smart that scares people.”

“Ian was the kind of smart that makes your straight A student look like she’d drown in a wet paper bag. Ian was the kind of smart that scares people.”

“A day ago, the sight of a man removing his face would have blown thick chunks of Aiden’s mind out the back of his head, but not today. Today Aiden was fresh out of shock and running low on wonder.”

“She had been too well-trained to allow her emotions to take control of her at the time, but the feelings were too strong to quietly recede into a regimen of critical thought. Deep inside her they stewed, logic and reason slowly boiling off. Reduced to their essence, her feelings became more potent, condensed into an emotional certainty. I should have saved them.”

“Of course, thousands of years of traditional masculinity weren't going away without a fight. They lingered in the vestigial memories of men, occasionally challenging a decision to read the directions or wear argyle, hoping for a day when a hurtling piece of space rock will send the world back to a time before the advent of styling gels.”

“Ian was the kind of smart that makes your straight A student look like she’d drown in a wet paper bag. Ian was the kind of smart that scares people.”

“There were times he thought he might not want to live the life he saw before him. It was a life of obstacles and hardships—challenges and tests of will he could not yet predict. But he couldn’t stop. He had to endure. The path had not changed. It was he who had changed.”