At its end, we find that the arc of history is that of a sub-orbital rocket. Once we climbed, further and further from the Earth and soil that birthed us, ever closer to the world of abstracted physics, of photons gleaming on ice-rimed steel, endless orbits and the eternal vacuum. But eventually we were bent downwards, back towards our cradle and its complexities.

Our perspective had changed, though. We left the ground worshipping the richness of nature, fearing the limitless horizon and the mercurial storms that swept in from unknown shores. But at the peak of our ascent, all this could be encompassed in a single glance. The Earth, sea and sky, united and bounded beneath us. We returned, no longer certain that nature could not be conquered, but rather that it must be.

The world that we have made looks much like the one that came before. Gone are all the temporary and unsustainable innovations of the apoapsis of our ascent – they have fallen like shooting stars, unable to hold themselves against the gravity of entropy. Instead, we use that which was here before us: the Sun, the wind, life. Unlike those who lived in that Eden before our ascent though, we do not leave these elements to move unconstrained. We have tasted knowledge, and know nature to be directionless and brutal. Life grows, adapts, manipulates, betrays, ultimately collapses, the Sun burns over all without thought or judgement. It has been our sacred duty to bring higher purpose to this rudderless world, to give meaning to those we have returned to, enlightened and benevolent.

There is not a leaf that falls, an animal that dies in a deep hole, that is not observed, weighed, recorded. Their existence and passage are stored in the great Ledger of Being, the tally of the debts and credits of living. To this book, we bring balance. All life is permitted only under contract – it must bring what is missing, or take what is in excess. We have transcended the petty banking of gold or silver or even belief, becoming instead the bankers of the raw elements of creation, carbon and nitrogen, oxygen and hydrogen, and the shining currency of sunlight. Life has been turned into economics, and we have stabilised the markets.

This is the meaning that we give to the world – all life is made moral, for we ensure that each life is lived to the benefit of all. No other choice exists.