Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)

by Ada Palmer

Imagine now, reader, that you are Providence. You have already decided that your Intervention, this miracle with which you have trespassed upon the ordered cosmos, will not die here at Saladin’s hands, as I had asked. But how will you prevent it? How will you make my supreme predator ignore the tearful wishes of the one person in the world who matters to him? The answer depends on what kind of Providence you are. Are you the deterministic ricochet of pool balls on a table? If so, then you must already have another pool ball on its way: a bird to startle the hunter and make him let go, or a hole to trip him, dug by some rabbit now five generations dead. Perhaps you are instead a chess master, moving pieces on a board? Then you move a new piece into play; my queen threatens your king so you advance one of your own knights, Dominic perhaps, or Thisbe. Perhaps you are instead a master of puppets? The all-commanding author of the Great Scroll who has predestined every act of your creatures from infinity? If so, you can simply make Saladin choose not to kill, as you make every decision for every person, from creation to the end of days. Or are you perhaps that mildest form of Providence, a parent, who has reared your children carefully, teaching them the values you think will guide them best, different for each, in hopes you might thereafter trust them to make their own decisions as they explore your world? This last, hands-off image of Providence appeals to many, especially to ...