And at every turn the Ministry’s purview was expanding. The plagues were but the latest insult to the Kingdom’s survival. First came the rising sea levels, the need to construct the dikes and levees. And then came the oversight of power contracts and trading in pollution credits and climate infractions. The white shirts took over the licensing of methane capture and production. Then there was the monitoring of fishery health and toxin accumulations in the Kingdom’s final bastion of calorie support (a blessing that the farang calorie companies thought as land-locked people and had only desultorily attacked fishing stocks). And there was the tracking of human health and viruses and bacteria: H7V9; cibiscoscosis111.b, c, d; fa’ gan fringe; bitter water mussels, and their viral mutations that jumped so easily from saltwater to dry land; blister rust… There was no end to the duties of the Ministry. (Location 2524)
Note: This is the reveal of the history. Really this is the main
Thrust of the book: being able to connect the descriptive dots.
Mizumi-sensei taught that there are two parts to a New Person’s nature. The evil half, ruled by the animal hungers of their genes, by the many splicings and additions that changed them into what they were. (Location 3191)
