Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [759]

I picked a few more lemons and some oranges and wondered what she would do if she knew I was also planning to leave next year. Would she run to her mother again, frightened for me, and eager to have someone protect me from myself? She might. She wants a future she can understand and depend on—a future that looks a lot like her parents’ present. I don’t think that’s possible. Things are changing too much, too fast. Who can fight God? — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 759

Note

The chapter’s best paragraph for the way ordinary labor (picking lemons and oranges) carries the whole meditation — hands busy while the mind runs its calculations about betrayal, friendship, and time. The final question is not rhetorical in the way it looks: it caps a chain of reasoned predictions with a theological shrug, and Butler earns it by keeping the syntax of the preceding sentences plain and declarative. Note also the em-dash apposition that defines Joanne’s desire as an anachronism (‘a future that looks a lot like her parents’ present’).