And yet, compared to some others, she was fortunate. At least she died in the throes of passionately sacrificing herself for an ideal.

She stared at her father’s lifeless body, and the thoughts she could not voice dissolved into her blood, where they would stay with her for the rest of her life.

It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.

“Anything sufficiently weird must be fishy.”

A Type I civilization can muster an amount of energy equivalent to the total energy output of the Earth. Based on his estimates, the energy output of the Earth is about 1015 to 1016 watts. A Type II civilization can marshal the energy equivalent to the output of a typical star—1026 watts. A Type III civilization’s communication energy can reach 1036 watts, approximately equal to the energy output of a galaxy. Civilization on Earth is currently about a Type 0.7, not even a full Type I.

These are the rules of the game of civilization: The first priority is to guarantee the existence of the human race and their comfortable life. Everything else is secondary.’

Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.