"The genetic code does not, and cannot, specify the nature and position of every capillary in the body or every neuron in the brain. What it can do is describe the underlying fractal pattern which creates them."
Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is a 4X video game, considered a spiritual sequel to the Civilization series. Set in a science fiction depiction of the 22nd century, the game begins as seven competing ideological factions land on the planet Chiron ("Planet") in the Alpha Centauri star system. As the game progresses, Planet's growing sentience becomes a formidable obstacle to the human colonists.
"The substructure of the universe regresses infinitely towards smaller and smaller components. Behind atoms we find electrons, and behind electrons, quarks. Each layer unraveled reveals new secrets, but also new mysteries."
"Abort, Retry, Fail? was the phrase some wormdog scrawled next to the door of the Edit Universe project room. And when the new dataspinners started working, fabricating their worlds on the huge organic comp systems, wed remind them: if you see this message, always choose Retry."
"Until now the battle had been proceeding smoothly. The enemy was outflanked and had been driven from the reactor housing, but against the reactor itself the matter cannons were strangely ineffective. Rounds simply... stopped. In mid-air."
"I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So wont you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment."
"You waited so long to heed us, EarthDeirdre, Almost we pruned you, as we may yet prune your branches."
"I swear sometimes theyre watching me."
"I do not believe it is in our nature to love impartially. We deceive ourselves when we think we can love two beings, even our own children, equally. There is always a dominant affection."
Napoleon"One world sufficed not Alexander’s mind; Coop’d up he seem’d, in earth and seas confined."
"A good-natured woman...which is as much as you can expect from a friends wife, whom you got acquainted with a bachelor."
"Oh, fame is as the moon above, Whose sun of light and life is love. There is more in the smile of one gentle eye Then the thousand pages of history; Than the loudest plaudits the crowd can raise. Take the gems in glorys coronal, And one smile of beauty is worth them all.—"
"The bright cloud shone on the rivers face, But the death-black waters had not a trace Of the crimson blaze that over them playd : It seemd as if a curse were laid On the grass, on the river, the tree, and the flower, And shut them out from the sunbeams power ;"
"Madness rides the star-wind... claws and teeth sharpened on centuries of corpses... dripping death astride a bacchanale of bats from nigh-black ruins of buried temples of Belial..."
H. P. Lovecraft