“Precogs are notoriously unreliable. I tell many of my customers that when they express interest in seeing the future. I think I even told you. Or was it Alexandria that I discussed it with?”
“It was,” Alexandria replied.
True, given the choice-based futures in this setting. Dinah is one that sees (as far as we know) all the various branches rather than just the most likely one, though.
“You’re right,” Legend said, “Most precogs are vague. They have to be, because the future is vague. But all reports point to this precog being veryspecific. Jack Slash was mentioned as the catalyst for an event that occurs in two years. More specifically, she said this occurs if Jack escaped Brockton Bay alive, which he did.”
That’s not quite what she said. There’s a correlation, sure, one that’s a bit uncomfortable for my theory due to the amount of time between Jack talking to Theo and Jack leaving the city and the various times he could’ve been killed before leaving (if I’m right, many of the timelines where that happened should still lead to the apocalypse… though maybe not if the news made it back to Theo in time). But that’s not necessarily a causation.
There were nods around the table.
“What do you mean when you say the world ends?” Eidolon asked.
“Thirty-three to ninety-six percent of the population dies in a very short span of time. I assume the aftermath of this scenario leads to more deaths in the long run.”
Probably, yeah. Just the population reduction in itself might cause that (hospitals getting understaffed, etc.), but the aftermath of the thing causing the population reduction almost certainly makes things worse. Post-apocalyptic settings are rarely very comfortable.
The Number Man spoke. “Depending on the circumstances of death, the demise of even one in three individuals would lead to further casualties. Lack of staff for essential services and key areas, health, atmospheric and ecological effects of decomposition on a massive scale, destabilized societal infrastructure… The best case scenario is that Earth’s population drops steeply over twenty years, until it settles to forty-eight point six percent of where it currently stands. Three billion, three hundred and ninety-one million, eight hundred and three thousand, five hundred and four. Give or take.”
Well, I see why they call you the Number Man.
So is his power feeding him this info, in a manner similar to a cross between Dinah and Tattletale?
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