Matias Laporte

It didn’t make them unusual to avoid trips. Aurorans generally -Spacers generally, for that matter- tended to be stay-at homes. Their worlds, their establishments, were too comfortable. After all, what pleasure could be greater than that of being taken care of by your own robots, robots who knew your every signal, and, for that matter, knew your ways and desires even without being told.

She stirred uneasily. Was that what D.G. had meant when he spoke of the decadence of a roboticized society?

It was all he had loved, all he had hated and feared to leave, all he had thought he longed for on Solaria.
And it was all strange to him.
He couldn’t make himself fit back in.
He had gone out to solve a murder and something had happened to him.
He had told Minnim the Cities were wombs, and so they were. And what was the first thing a man must do before he can be a man? He must be born. He must leave the womb. And once left, it could not be re-entered.
Baley had left the City and could not re-enter. The City was no longer his; the Caves of Steel were alien. This had to be. And it would be so for others and Earth would be born again and reach outward.