While searching Ganymede station for Prax's (Meng's? I'm not sure if we're referring to him by his last name or nickname) daughter and the doctor that might know something about the grand protomolecule conspiracy, the botanist notes that the oxygen-scrubbing plants have been fed distilled water, which, of course, is not what a healthy plant ought to get.
If you've never tried, distilled water tastes literally like nothing. It's an odd sensation, but given that water is basically the medium for everything our bodies ingest, when you drink distilled water, there's just no taste whatsoever to it (other than whatever is already in your mouth.)
Prax (I'm going with that one!) notes that on Earth, where there are tons of redundancies, one group of plants dying out isn't going to kill the planet. But in an artificial environment, every piece has to rely on every other piece. And once one part of the system goes, the things that rely on that part will start to go, and you get a cascade.
The Solar System of the Expanse is something of a delicate ecosystem. Sure, there's the threat of war between Mars and Earth (something that the incident on Ganymede threatens to spark,) but the main thing that has prevented the war up until now is the fact that the system requires so much cooperation to function. Mars is on its way, maybe, but it's still a far way off from being a self-sustaining planet where people can actually grow food outside. The Belt has been exploited to provide raw materials for the Inner Planets.
But even Earth, which has been cast as a paradise compared to the rest of the system, is actually struggling. We've seen Earth almost entirely from the perspective of Avasarala, but remember that she is one of the most powerful people on the planet (I don't know if we have a formal title for her, but she's third in line for the leadership of the UN.) Once Bobbie Draper escapes the Martian embassy and goes to explore New York, she comes across miserable masses, barely living off of government assistance and clearly lacking a lot of the medical help they need.
The cause of Earth's problems is not entirely clear - I think you can project your own politics onto the setting - but one thing we've known from the start is that Earth's massive population relies on the resources of the solar system to survive.
So what is the meaning of this scene with the plants?
The arrival of the protomolecule has thrown the already-tense system into chaos. And given that outside Earth, and to an extent even Earth itself, is reliant on an artificial ecosystem with very little room for redundancy, what will the ramifications of these events mean for the human race?
The Expanse is not, I think, utterly cynical. We have heroes worth rooting for, even if they're flawed and broken people. But have we already reached the beginning of a cascade? Will Holden's heroics, Avasarala's brilliance, Draper's integrity, or - fingers crossed - Miller's resurrected blue alien hive mind abilities (a man can hope, dammit!) be enough to keep humanity from collapsing in on itself?
No comments:
Post a Comment