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Time for some back-story.
↓ Transcript
Panel 1: An old video shows an interviewer talking to Sonder Khemani when he was alive. Sonder: "All civilisations come to an end. That curse has been known since the first author set her chisel to clay, in the first city states to develop writing."
Panel 2: Sonder: "Akkad, Babylon, Persepolis, Rome, Chang'an, Pataliputra, Baghdad, London, Washington, Beijing. Mathematics and history agree."
Panel 3: Sonder: "All great empires must one day either use up their resources, or fall to invasion. We can graph this."
Panel 4: Interviewer, looking extremely interested: "And will that not happen to this new nation that you've built? To Mauryapal, in the Western Antarctic?"
Panel 5: Sonder sips tea. Sonder: "Mmm. We achieved our independence mere days ago, and I can already see that ending. Except."
Panel 6: Interviewer: "Except?" Sonder: "Except that I believe with the proper application of crowd physics and cultural engineering, we can create a new thing. A phoenix, not an eagle or a dove."
Panel 2: Sonder: "Akkad, Babylon, Persepolis, Rome, Chang'an, Pataliputra, Baghdad, London, Washington, Beijing. Mathematics and history agree."
Panel 3: Sonder: "All great empires must one day either use up their resources, or fall to invasion. We can graph this."
Panel 4: Interviewer, looking extremely interested: "And will that not happen to this new nation that you've built? To Mauryapal, in the Western Antarctic?"
Panel 5: Sonder sips tea. Sonder: "Mmm. We achieved our independence mere days ago, and I can already see that ending. Except."
Panel 6: Interviewer: "Except?" Sonder: "Except that I believe with the proper application of crowd physics and cultural engineering, we can create a new thing. A phoenix, not an eagle or a dove."
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