What kind of story am I going to give them next? Because that's what we are to other people, boy, we are… — Kim Stanley Robinson
What kind of story am I going to give them next? Because that's what we are to other people, boy, we are their gossip. That's all civilization is, a giant mill grinding out gossip. And so I could be the story of the man who rode high and fell hard, and had his spirit broken and crawled off into a hole like a dog, to die as soon as he could manage it. Or I could be the story of a man who rode high and fell hard, and then got up defiant, and walked away in a new direction.
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History till now has been like women's periods, a little egg of possibility, hidden in the ordinary material of life, with tiny barbarian hordes maybe charging in, trying to find it, failing, fighting each other—finally a bloody mess ends that chance, and everything has to start all over.
Plague was plague, and could not be treated lightly. And this plague was obviously worse than most, having killed everyone in the region.
A sudden gust: How big the world seems in a wind.
