Meronym said Old Georgie weren’t real for her, nay, but he could still be real for me.
Then who, asked I, tripped the Fall if it weren’t Old Georgie?
Eerie birds I din’t knowed yibbered news in the dark for a beat or two. The Prescient answered, Old Uns tripped their own Fall.
Oh, her words was a rope o’ smoke. But Old Uns’d got the Smart!
I mem’ry she answered, Yay, Old Uns’ Smart mastered sicks, miles, seeds an’ made miracles ordinary, but it din’t master one thing, nay a hunger in the hearts o’ humans, yay, a hunger for more.
More what? I asked. Old Uns’d got ev’rythin’.
Oh, more gear, more food, faster speeds, longer lifes, easier lifes, more power, yay. Now the Hole World is big, if it weren’t big ‘nuff for that hunger what made Old Uns rip out the skies an’ boil uptake seas an’ poison soil with crazed atoms an’ donkey ‘bout with rotted seeds so new plagues was bored an’ babies was freak-birthed. finally, bitterly, then quick sharp, states busted into barb’ric tribes an’ the Civ’lize Days ended, ‘cept for a few folds’n’pockets here’n’there, where its last embers glimmer.
I asked why Meronym’d never spoke this yarnin’ in the Valleys.
Valleysmen’d not want to hear, she answered, that human hunger birthed the Civ’lize, but human hunger killed it too. I know it from other tribes offland what I stayed with. Times are you say a person’s b’liefs ain’t true, they think you’re sayin’ their lifes ain’t true an’ their truth ain’t true.
Yay, she was prob’ly right.
p. 272-3, Cloud Atlas, David Mitchell