…He refilled his glass and passed me the bottle. I was enjoying this.
“We want to be the dead matter we used to be. We’re the last billionth of a second in the evolution of matter. When I was a student I looked for radical ideas. Scientists, theologians, I read the work of mystics through the centuries, I was a hungry mind, a pure mind. I filled notebooks with my versions of world philosophy. Look at us today. We keep inventing folk tales of the end. Animal diseases spreading, transmittable cancers. What else?”
“The climate,” I said.
“The climate.”
“The asteroid,” I said.
“The asteroid, the meteorite. What else?”
“Famine, worldwide.”
“Famine,” he said. “What else?”
“Give me a minute.”
“Never mind. Because this isn’t interesting to me. I have no use for this. We need to think beyond this.”
I didn’t want him to stop. We sat drinking quietly and I tried to think of further workable prospects for the end of human life on earth.
Don DeLillo, Point Omega.
