Cursion, when they were as legit as they ever really were, lived down — Jackpot trilogy

"“Got a go-bag?” Eunice asked. “I haven’t had my own place for the past year…Living out of a bag. That count?” “We had go-bags in our go-bags,” Eunice said, “depending.” “On what?” “Where we were going,” Eunice said."

"“You might begin by explaining this hobby of yours, Mr. Zubov…‘continua enthusiast.’” “You know about the server?” “The great mystery, yes. Assumed to be Chinese, and as with so many aspects of China today, quite beyond us. You use it to communicate with the past, or rather a past, since in our actual past, you didn’t. That rather hurts my head, Mr. Zubov." "The act of connection produces a fork in causality, the new branch causally unique. A stub, as we call them.” "But why do you call them that?" Lowbeer asked. "It sounds short. Nasty. Brutish.”"

"The peripheral’s eyes opened wide. “Christ on a corndog,” it said, raising large hands until it could see them. It wiggled the fingers of both. "Goddamn. Look at all these fingers.”"

"“It’s not a dream,” Flynne said. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s not a dream. Don’t know that any of us are okay.” “Never sprained anything in a dream,” Conner said."

"“Lead the way then, Mr. Netherton,” said Lowbeer. Netherton did, imagining, as he climbed the stairs, a better world, one in which a relaxing drink would be waiting in the sitting room."

"He imagined her now, stretched on a couch in her elongated Toronto apartment…She’d be wearing a headband, to trick her nervous system into believing the rented peripheral’s movements were hers in a dream."