This remains a place of grinding poverty. Misguided aid efforts had flooded the area with cheap Western clothes, and local crooks had use them to und… - Stephen Baxter

Relentless Pleistocene selection was shaping everything that would make up humanity. Even love was a by-product of evolution. Love, and the pain of loss.

A lion takes only the last deer in the herd. She does not dream of having so many cubs that the plains would be full of nothing but lions. There are simple laws. Most species figure them out; you are the exception. An ecology of a single species is not viable. A diverse, stable world would provide for you.

Bex shrugged. “You think anybody’s going to listen to a bunch of scientists? No offense. But nobody has so far.”