pen name of SF writing duo Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck
Long story, but the point is that if you hear hoofbeats in the distance, your first guess is that they're horses, not zebras. And you're hearing hoofbeats and jumping straight to unicorns.
So what are you saying?
I'm saying let's go see if we can find some horses or zebras before we start a unicorn hunt.
But under it there was a faint, not-unpleasant odor of rotting seaweed and salt. The ocean, just outside, seeped into everything. An olfactory reminder to everyone passing through the Ellis Island of the space age that Earth was absolutely unique to the human race. The birthplace of everything. The salt water flowing in everyone’s veins first pulled from the same oceans right outside the building. The seas had been around longer than humans, had helped create them, and then when they were all dead, it’d take their water back without a thought.
That, at least, wasn’t a lie.
It was beautiful at this distance. The cities nothing but firefly twinkles on the dark side. Where the sun struck the Earth, almost nothing man had made was visible from the lunar orbit. The planet looked clean, unspoiled.
It was a pretty lie.
Seemed like a fact of the universe that the closer you got to anything, the worse it looked. Take the most beautiful person in the solar system, zoom in on them at the right magnification and they were an apocalyptic cratered landscape crawling with horrors. That’s what the Earth was. A shining jewel from space, up close a blasted landscape covered with mites living by devouring the dying.
Like the roaches and the rats, ants had learned to live with their human neighbors without much trouble. When the concrete of human cities spread across the globe and half the animals on Earth were on endangered lists, no one had worried about the ants. They were doing fine, thanks, and spilled fast food was just as plentiful and delicious as dead forest animals had once been.
Adapt or die.