Enjoy it, kid. Enjoy feeling that you can make a difference.' Floyd flashed him a smile. 'It won't last for ever.

Looking at where the planet is now, we could screw things up massively or we could wise-up on a species level and actually make things better. If I had to put my money where my mouth is, I think we'll wise up globally but there will still be outbreaks of local stupidity.

You worry that we're becoming monsters. Merlin, we already were monsters. You didn't make us any worse.

Nightside, cities glistened in chains, and a spray of tinkertoy habitats girdled the planet. Gossamer starbridges reached from the equator towards orbit.

Autocratic governments are masters of self-contradiction. They say one thing, do another.

It looked like a biology lesson for gods, or a snapshot of the kind of pornography which might be enjoyed by sentient planets.

At one time, the treatment for a certain kind of psychosis had been to push an ice pick up through the orbit of the eye, into the frontal lobe; the ice pick was then stirred around until it reduced the problematic brain tissue to non-functioning porridge.