"It was all love on my side, and all good comradeship and friendship on hers. When we parted she was a free woman, but I could never again be a free man."

-- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle from The Adventure of Abbey Grange

I see.

Watch for those Unexpected Lateral Shifts in Gravity, he says. Getcha every time.

Yes but Technology only responds (how often this argument has been iterated, dogged and humorless as a Gaussian reduction, among the younger Schwarzkommando especially), "All very well to talk about having a monster by the tail, but do you think we'd've had the Rocket if someone, some specific somebody with a name and a penis hadn't wanted to chuck a ton of Amatol 300 miles and blow up a block full of civilians? Go ahead, capitalize the T on technology, deify it if it'll make you feel less responsible--but it puts you in with the neutered, brother, in with the eunuchs keeping the harem of our stolen Earth for the numb and joyless hardons of human sultans, human elite with no right at all to be where they are--"

-- T. Pynchon from Gravity's Rainbow