“I’d like to know,” I said, “why this thing wasn’t destroyed a long time ago.” David said nothing. He just smoothed his tie, and looked uncomfortable. “Because you realize,” I said, “that you’re talking about a mechanical plague. That’s what you’ve got here. It’s just like a bacterial plague, or a viral plague. Except it’s mechanical organisms. You’ve got a fucking man-made plague.” He nodded. “Yes.” “That’s evolving.” “Yes.” “And it’s not limited by biological rates of evolution. It’s probably evolving much faster.”
