Jamil Nasir

"A coldness had come over Blaine in the hot, windy, smoky air. It was a chill that never quite left you after it had gotten inside you, he would find out later, but sometimes welled up again from nowhe…"

"But that was only half the story, he reminded himself wearily. What about the government corruption and endless red tape, the heedless economic policies, the lavish life-styles of graft-taking officia…"

"Blaine sometimes wished he lived in a culture where everything wasn’t everybody’s business."

"Ridiculous to trust your life to these senseless AI things, he thought as he uploaded it to the net; but nowadays it was the only way you could find out anything, search through the massive informatio…"

"As it was, deformed and made mad by his hellish life, he had become what prophets had probably always been: not frauds, for they themselves believed what they had seen, but pitiful creatures, dreaming…"