Question
Time capsule found on the dead planet
Margaret Atwood
2009
In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.
Some of our wise men turned to the contemplation of deserts. A stone in the sand in the setting sun could be very beautiful, they said. Deserts were tidy, because there were no weeds in them, nothing that crawled. Stay in the desert long enough, and you could apprehend the absolute. The number zero was holy.
5. You who have come here from some distant world, to this dry lakeshore and this cairn, and to this cylinder of brass, in which on the last day of all our recorded days I place our final words:
Pray for us, who once, too, thought we could fly.
What happened to the planet the speaker describes?
Another species conquered it.
Humans made it uninhabitable.
Humans live in its deserts that they created.
It was flooded and there was no land to live on.
Margaret Atwood
2009
In the fourth age we created deserts. Our deserts were of several kinds, but they had one thing in common: nothing grew there. Some were made of cement, some were made of various poisons, some of baked earth. We made these deserts from the desire for more money and from despair at the lack of it. Wars, plagues and famines visited us, but we did not stop in our industrious creation of deserts. At last all wells were poisoned, all rivers ran with filth, all seas were dead; there was no land left to grow food.
Some of our wise men turned to the contemplation of deserts. A stone in the sand in the setting sun could be very beautiful, they said. Deserts were tidy, because there were no weeds in them, nothing that crawled. Stay in the desert long enough, and you could apprehend the absolute. The number zero was holy.
5. You who have come here from some distant world, to this dry lakeshore and this cairn, and to this cylinder of brass, in which on the last day of all our recorded days I place our final words:
Pray for us, who once, too, thought we could fly.
What happened to the planet the speaker describes?
Another species conquered it.
Humans made it uninhabitable.
Humans live in its deserts that they created.
It was flooded and there was no land to live on.
Answers
Answered by
GPT-4o mini
The correct answer is: **Humans made it uninhabitable.**
The passage describes how humans created various types of deserts through industrial activities and environmental degradation, resulting in a planet where nothing could grow and all natural resources were poisoned or depleted.
The passage describes how humans created various types of deserts through industrial activities and environmental degradation, resulting in a planet where nothing could grow and all natural resources were poisoned or depleted.
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