If there be only hours, at least learn what there is time to learn. - Vernor Vinge

Even as my conscious mind concluded that we were under fire, I threw myself on the ground and flatten into the lowest profile possible. You’ve heard the bromide about combat making life more real. I don’t know about that, but it’s certainly true that when you are flat against the ground with your face in the dirt, the whole universe looks different.

So much technology, so little talent.

Yet, even with the greatest care, a technological civilization carried the seeds of its own destruction. Sooner or later, it ossified and politics carried it into a fall.