Jessica’s Reviews > Agency > Status Update

had had no idea that it had been that close to midnight to begin with, but Ash had explained that that setting, during 2018, reflected climate change and increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy.

Klept. What runs the world that isn't China, up the line where Lowbeer is. Hereditary authoritarian government, roots in organized crime. The jackpot seemed to filter that out of what was already happening, made it dominant.

But I don't trust that some last convulsive urge to short-term profit, some terminal shortsightedness, mightn't bring an end to everything.

China, too?

We do still share a biosphere with China. And trade with them, to what extent they'll allow.

No brakes magically appeared then, and I don't see them appearing now, absent someone free to act, with sufficient agency, against their worst impulses. The biosphere only survives, today, by virtue of what prosthetic assistance we can afford it. The assemblers might keep that going, were the klept to founder.

The klept's tedious ambition and contempt for rule of law would bring everything down, around their ears and ours. They managed to do that with the previous world order, after all, though then it was effectively their goal. They welcomed the jackpot, the chaos it brought. The result of our species' insults to nature did much of their work for them.

Once again then, the divide between the ambitions of conspirators and the desire, among those brining us word of those ambitions, to preserve whatever aspect of the status quo they themselves hold dear....That's often how this sort of thing comes to my attention.