Listen to the Little Voice: Science Fiction

[penthius]

One of the advantages of not saying that you're sorry is a quicker emotional break from all the people you’re leaving behind who would recriminate against you and try to change your mind. Lack of apology is the quickest way out. It will also make the transition easier, because when you're all mad at each other, it's easier to pretend you don't miss each other, and when you're not writing or wanting to correspond, it makes assimilation easier. This is what that sleepy porcupine in my brain tells me, and I wonder if it learned it from my experience, or if it nudged me into that non-action because it already knew that and wanted to facilitate. That's kind of what it's like, living with a porcupine. You never know entirely which urges are your own and which are because a little spine twitched and steered you in one direction or another. I call it a porcupine because of that, and because part of being taught to trust it is personifying it as something that is reasonably sympathetic for you. The others mostly chose little domestic animals like mice or cats or rabbits, though one guy who I am going to keep a sharp eye on chose a hyena. Anyone who intentionally decides to listen to something that he thinks is a psychotic laughing violence freak is not someone I'm going to trust. I'm pretty sure I didn’t need a spine to nudge me in that direction, but then, I didn't get any indication to the contrary.

Inspiration: SciAm newsletter title: "The Advantages of Not Saying You're Sorry"
Story potential: High.
Notes: I like the idea of training hunches and intuition into a weapon, and having fun writing the kind of character who does all these little things for no particular reason and then has them all concatenate into awesomeness at the end.