They might have their airships and machine guns, but superstition wasn’t something that went away just… — Alastair Reynolds

This was a watering hole, and watering holes drew the hungry as well as the parched.

“I take it you’re not a believer, Meroka?”

“Are you?”

“I don’t believe.” He paused theatrically. “In anything. I question. I doubt. I doubt and I doubt consistently and systematically. It’s called thinking scientifically.”

“I hope you understand what the fuck that means,” Meroka said, because I sure don’t.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, my dear. The world isn’t exactly conducive to scientific thinking. Not in its present condition. But it’s changing, and so must we. Those of us who can, anyway.”

I’m not asking you to open your mind to all manner of nonsense, Doctor, merely to allow for the possibility of things you might previously have dismissed, or failed to give any consideration to whatsoever. Such as the fact that the world was not always this way, and by implication doesn’t have to be this way in the future.