Читать книгу Orrery - Donna Kane - Страница 14

Its shadow’s been gone since liftoff but it took light disappearing before lonely seemed simply alone, or if not alone then deep in the lab of the not understood, the no-human-scent in its gold dust, the no soot-darkened brows incandescent with plutonium.

Shed of silver, quick, small—our ideas burning off like surplus fuel—Pioneer 10 is a thought clicked shut. Limbs drawn in, it drops like a tick from the brain’s limbic core, like a photon travelling who knows how long before it reaches a body, the way the mind needs an object, something to crack open on, and by its reflection, shine.