Cassie had this funny moment where she was talking about how she slightly modifies the names of the bands she likes so her mom wouldn't become disapproving of her choices. She mentioned a few of them, but the one that made me laugh is the one she came up for Nine Inch Nails - Nice is Neat. I just... I mean seriously, what the hell kind of band would have that name? It would've actually been less suspicious if she left it unchanged.
There was a wonderful moment in Visser, too. It's when Edriss 562 lands on Earth for the first time with her companion, and to get a heads-up on what was going on she decides to listen through some of the transmissions going on around her.
And then, to my horror, I began to see evidence that human military potential was far greater than anything I'd expected: In some of the television data they possessed nuclear fusion explosives. And in other data they were shown using highly effective, adjustable-intensity beam weapons they called "phasers."
"Faster-than-light spacecraft? Faster-than-light through real space? Impossible!" Essam said, looking over my shoulder. "And armed with beam weapons?"
"How do they manage to get visual records of ships moving at faster-than-light speeds? See, there! The ship is announced to be moving at Warp-Factor Six, which we know from context is a multiple of light speed. And yet there we see the ship from the outside as though the recording device too, is moving at these impossible speeds."
I just love how it slowly dawned on me as I was reading through that excerpt what it was that they were actually watching!