It is difficult for anyone born and raised in human infrastructure to truly internalize the fact that your view of the world is backward. Even if you fully know that you live in a natural world that existed before you and will continue long after, even if you know that the wilderness is the default state of things, and that nature is not something

Dex did not look at Mosscap as they said it, but out of the corner of their eye, they could see Mosscap slowly turn its head toward them, its gaze glowing brighter and brighter.

“Okay. Mosscap. I’m Dex. Do you have a gender?” “No.” “Me neither.”

“That’s true for all life I’ve observed. Why would it bother me?” Mosscap’s eyes glowed brightly. “Do you not find consciousness alone to be the most exhilarating thing? Here we are, in this incomprehensibly large universe, on this one tiny moon around this one incidental planet, and in all the time this entire scenario has existed, every component

“How will you know when you’re satisfied?”

God of Constructs?

their head resting on Mosscap’s leg.

Find the strength to do both,’”

“So, the paradox is that the ecosystem as a whole needs its participants to act with restraint in order to avoid collapse, but the participants themselves have no inbuilt mechanism to encourage such behavior.”