The Core of the Sun

Religion offers easy answers to your problems, ready-chewed moral guidelines, and it has the bonus of getting people to monitor their own behavior.

The future hadn’t happened yet; it lay dormant and pure and untouched just beyond the curtain of time.

Since I’m a married eloi I can’t get them without a doctor’s prescription for valid health reasons, because mascos determine the size of a family. I don’t want a baby. It might be a girl.

I realized some other things, too. At first vaguely, then more and more clearly. That there were people who knew more than I did. People in high places, and from those high places they could see things that ordinary people can’t see. Not just see them, but do things behind the scenes to influence my life in ways I couldn’t predict.

It’s childish and sentimental and stupid, but I’ll let myself pretend anyway. I don’t feel any terrible affinity for religious beliefs, but I understand how some aspects of religion can be a comfort

Marriage and the position of natural dominance and regular enjoyment of sexual intercourse—so important to a man’s personal well-being—that marriage provides are fundamental rights that the state should have granted and protected for the good of society instead of allowing deviant behaviors to foment to the point of acts of murder.

You have to learn to appreciate your spouse just as she is, a creature of instinct, driven by hormones. Repetition, rewards, and reinforcement are the cornerstones of an eloi’s understanding. In token of her gratitude, your wife will be obedient, loyal, and willing to give unceasing love and devotion.

It hurt. But maybe you weren’t afraid to hate me because you knew very well that I would still love you, unconditionally, no matter what you did. Like a little child who can shout at her parents and say she wishes they were dead and still trust that they will never abandon her.
I will never abandon you.

I’m sure it would never occur to them that such things happen all the time. An angry, frustrated, or otherwise dissatisfied masco fulfilling his duty to instruct with a slightly too heavy hand. It’s so common and tacitly accepted that it’s usually punished with a sentence of only a couple of years, and half of that on parole. We could no doubt expect the same for Harri.

I was garbed as an eloi should be when she goes to meet a masco, and I noticed that Jare didn’t recognize me at first among all the other elois who were trying to stand out from all the other elois by wearing nearly identical clothing and makeup