The past was a jigsaw puzzle and you never had all the pieces. - Gregory Benford

The barely awake public, trained to the attention span of a commercial, thought that science had two children: either consumer yummies, served up by the handmaiden of technology, or else awesome wonders like the beauties of astronomy. The unsettling side they largely ignored, unless for the momentary shock value of, say, swollen insects doing disgusting things. But the root promise of science was of a world unshaped by humans. The expanses of time and space that stretched out from the human community were terrifying, and most avoided even thinking of them.

Must admit it felt good. First time in years anybody ever admitted I was right.

The personal was, compared with the tides of great nations, a bothersome detail.