How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
"They like to try out medicine on poor people. Especially brown people and black people. Inmates in prison too." (14.35)
Mattapoisett uses science to try to make society more equal. Connie here suggests that science in her own time is a way to make society more unequal—to hurt and weaken people who are already marginal and oppressed.
Quote #8
"In your time, I think people talked about effects and side effects, but that's nonsense." (14.36)
Luciente is arguing that talking about "side effects" is a way to pretend that there's a main scientific effect and then other accidental effects that don't matter as much. She wants to see science more holistically. That is, you need to consider everything that science does, not just bracket off what you want from what you don't.
Quote #9
"We weren't together at the front? Fighting?"
"Not in my life, Connie. Not in this continuum…With that device in your brain, maybe you visioned it." (19.32)
This is another bit of sci-fi techno-burble. Connie saw a future in which Luciente was at the front; Luciente says that didn't happen, but that it might have been in another continuum, or time path.