Waking Gods (Themis Files, #2)

by Sylvain Neuvel

What I do, it is…It takes a particular mindset. It is not unlike law enforcement in that regard. I started out thinking I could remove the bad from the world one piece at a time until there was none left. The world, unfortunately, does not work that way. Perhaps it needs a certain equilibrium to function properly. Whatever the reason, it soon became obvious that what I had set out to do was very much like digging a hole in the mud. Remove a bad man from power, and a year later the person you put in his place is just as corrupt. If a policeman stops a drunken man from beating on his wife, what are the odds he will never have to go back? Can he really prevent anything, or is he just delaying the inevitable? I came to realize that good and evil were out of my reach, that time was the only thing I had any control over. I could buy time, create intervals. I could not truly make the world a better place, but I could make part of it a better place for a short while. I came to peace with that. Some cannot. As I said, it takes a particular mindset. But as you grow older, you realize there will come a time you cannot keep digging, and the idea that your hole in the mud will fill itself completely, as if you never existed, becomes harder to bear. Permanence is the Holy Grail in my line of work. I saw this as an opportunity to leave a mark.