“Those days are gone, and good fucking riddance to them; unhappiness really meant something back then. Now it’s just a drag, like a cold or having no money. If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier.”
“It’s the Centennial Celebration,” Grandma said. “We’re all going back to the old days and the old ways for a week.”
“Grandma,” I said, “you never gave up any of the old ways.”
“In the old days, when this story took place, time used to run by clockworks. Real clockwork, I mean, springs and cogwheels and gears and pendulums and so on. When you took it apart you could se how it worked, and how to put it together again. Nowadays time runs by electricity and vibrating crystals of quarts and goodness know what else.”
“In the camp we saw our own people kill each other over a crust of bread. In the old days I used to think that religion did not matter much, that people could be good without it. That was not true in the camps.”