Page 79 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Ark Two

The official verdict: Ark Two’s destruction was caused not by
sabotage or mechanical failure but by accident, the sort of
misadventure attributed by insurance companies to an “act of God.”
But in this case I wondered about the gender and name of that deity:
was it Gaia, reacting to accumulated anthropogenic atmospheric
interference by making unexpected and violent adjustments to
ambient temperature, pressure and humidity? That would have
confirmed Vosky’s warnings about the impending ecological
upheaval; a more alert public might have considered his mishap a
wake-up call and pushed their governments to take stronger action.
Or was it evidence for his crackpot theory, the planetary biocide
personified by Atropos? If it were the Cosmic Snipper, then any
sentient organism’s plan to overcome that fate by standing aside
while the rest of his miscreant species fouled its nest irretrievably was
doomed to fail; for us to expect any other outcome would be hubris.
After all, Atropos means “cannot be averted.”

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