PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 10 Blindsight
enemies, like everyone else. I chose them by running through
checklists of behaviors and circumstances compiled from years of
observation.
I may have grown up distant but I grew up objective, and I have
Robert Paglino to thank for that. His seminal observation set
everything in motion. It led me into Synthesis, fated me to our
disastrous encounter with the Scramblers, spared me the worse fate
befalling Earth. Or the better one, I suppose, depending on your
point of view. Point of view matters: I see that now, blind, talking
to myself, trapped in a coffin falling past the edge of the solar
system. I see it for the first time since some beaten bloody friend
on a childhood battlefield convinced me to throw my own point of
view away.
He may have been wrong. I may have been. But that, that
distance—that chronic sense of being an alien among your own
kind—it's not entirely a bad thing.
It came in especially handy when the real aliens came calling.