Ice Nine

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“…suppose, young man, that one Marine had with him a tiny capsule containing a seed of ice-nine, a new way for the atoms of water to stack and lock, to freeze. If that Marine threw that seed into the nearest puddle…?”
“The puddle would freeze?” I guessed.
“And all the muck around the puddle?”
“It would freeze?”
“And all the puddles in the frozen muck?”
“They would freeze?”
“And the pools and the streams in the frozen muck?”
“They would freeze?”
“You bet they would !” He cried. “And the United States Marines would rise from the swamp and march on!”
—-Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut

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Just like the Inuits of the North have thirty-four names for snow, so do the denizens of Arkansas have seventeen names for misery.
—-Xander Redwood

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