Only a little more time—three seasons, V speculated—until all sense of man’s dominion over them would fade and they’d start taking down stray children and elder folks. Two or three dog generations after that, they’d go wholly wolf. Civilization balances always on a keen and precarious point, a showman spinning a fine Spode dinner plate on a long dowel slender as a stem of hay. A puff of breath, a moment’s lost attention, and it’s all gone, crashed to ruination, shards in the dirt. Then mankind retreats to the caves, leaving little behind but obelisks weathering to nubs like broken teeth,
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On how civilizations crumble
