An automaton about the ascent of technological man. The triumph of civilization is exponential population growth. That's the mathematical expression of the reasonable certainty that your children will live which is a hard proposition to reject. But the price is their future - because carrying capacity margins shrink with resource depletion and complexity becomes ever more difficult to maintain. So we are trapped in a global Nintendo game and it will end perhaps by global warming - or cooling; another Krakatoa or smallish nuclear war would be enough. Add the end of big oil and that's all she wrote.
So the hybrid one track engine perches on a precipice with the small figures of our glorious leaders in the rotating crow's nest, pointing the way forward. The crocodilian dog figure in the bow is Satan who knows the way.
