Prologue
We are Millennials.
We are Generation Centenarian.
We will live to a hundred and work every day of it.
We part-time painters and temporary troubadours; heroes of the zero hour—we are the grasping descendants of a murderous, sly, conniving, infinitely inventive and self-destructive great ape. He tamed fire to chase away the dark and it hasn’t stopped running since.
When the lights cut out and the earth goes dark and the planes and markets crash, our parents will be long gone but we will be here to tell the young about our age: when the shadow earth stood a shining colossus—a gigantic hive-mind that shared our selves instantly and everywhere. The water was clean and cool and food grew beneath our feet. We were fat and angry, and there were billions of us. We were as ants on the ground.
