Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos Official

He smiled. It was a terrible expression. “I am the one who could have stopped it. I chose not to.”

The Consul told me the old story: the priest who crucified himself on the tesla trees, the soldier who fell in love with a cyborg, the poet who sold his soul for a single perfect verse. He told it well—with the hollow music of a man reciting a litany he no longer believed. Dan Simmons - The Hyperion Cantos

Ouster, it said. Not with sound. With the shape of pain yet to come. He smiled