[ make sense. he's thought about that, but this mystery was at least not too hard to solve. ]
As far as I can tell, the one who was responsible was killed -- either by those trying to stop him, or he got caught up in the cataclysm himself.
[ because there was no body. or to be more clear: there were plenty of bodies, weren't there, but not one obviously harold jenkins. no one-eyed person near the remains of his siblings, no obvious sign of who they were fighting.
mk's story is -- or maybe just remains -- depressing. it's not hard to imagine, a world where humanity turned on itself and tore itself to shreds. where the worst parts of human nature won out, where war after war after war ravaged the population until there wasn't much of it left. maybe that's what would happen in his world, too, even if his brothers and sisters stop harold jenkins. the handler would say that you can't fight human nature. she'd probably say that this is the inevitable end in a world where jenkins's freak accident never happened.
(so much better to keep removed from it. so much better to let history run its course, for good or ill, and not give a damn. so much better to stay in clean, gleaming offices and carefully handpick who lives and who dies. there's a pension to earn, after all, there's the promised retirement. why get caught up in such messy matters? murder doesn't mean much when it's for a higher cause, and there's no higher cause than the stability of spacetime.) ]
Maybe we are.
[ they have to be, he thinks, if only because of the differences in their apocalypses. ]
no subject
[ make sense. he's thought about that, but this mystery was at least not too hard to solve. ]
As far as I can tell, the one who was responsible was killed -- either by those trying to stop him, or he got caught up in the cataclysm himself.
[ because there was no body. or to be more clear: there were plenty of bodies, weren't there, but not one obviously harold jenkins. no one-eyed person near the remains of his siblings, no obvious sign of who they were fighting.
mk's story is -- or maybe just remains -- depressing. it's not hard to imagine, a world where humanity turned on itself and tore itself to shreds. where the worst parts of human nature won out, where war after war after war ravaged the population until there wasn't much of it left. maybe that's what would happen in his world, too, even if his brothers and sisters stop harold jenkins. the handler would say that you can't fight human nature. she'd probably say that this is the inevitable end in a world where jenkins's freak accident never happened.
(so much better to keep removed from it. so much better to let history run its course, for good or ill, and not give a damn. so much better to stay in clean, gleaming offices and carefully handpick who lives and who dies. there's a pension to earn, after all, there's the promised retirement. why get caught up in such messy matters? murder doesn't mean much when it's for a higher cause, and there's no higher cause than the stability of spacetime.) ]
Maybe we are.
[ they have to be, he thinks, if only because of the differences in their apocalypses. ]
And you're still at war. Is that right?
[ but that was before the war. jesus christ. ]