At first, Rosemary had assumed that it was some sort of tech lingo, but no, Jenks had quietly confirmed that this was Kizzy’s own special way of staying organized. Rosemary squinted at the screen. 5500 credits (ish)–WRSS. She made a flicking motion with her left hand, pulling up a file entitled ‘Kizzyspeak,’ her cheat sheet for acronyms that she had deciphered. ES (Engine Stuff). TB (Tools and Bits). CRCT (Circuits). But no, WRSS wasn’t there. She made a note to ask Kizzy about it.

He’d only said what he meant, which was, when you thought about it, a minor superpower, because so few people ever did.

…Binned–a word which had come, over the millenia, to mean: carefully, lovingly recorded for posterity by the Elakhon and preserved against the ravages of time, war, and the children’s disrespect for history.

It blossomed all over again into cosmic grief at the ultimate impossibility of communication between two living beings.

I’ll put this in words you can understand: humans are hideous, pain-guzzling, pollution-spouting space monsters who might threaten our way of life.