Here is an extract from The CRES Code

"That was one hell of a service, by the way," the former businessman remarked.

"Did you like it?"

"How much of it was true?"

"Every word."

"VIX destroyed an entire city because they wanted to improve their lives?"

"Creating technology is not an improvement. VIX has seen it. VIX has seen what humans do when they have the power to dominate their environment. You are incapable of managing it in an effective manner. You destroy it. A thousand years ago you almost rendered this planet incapable of supporting life...."

"We would have restored the planet. As our industrial might grew..."

"Your population was growing faster than your industrial might. Every new birth was a new mouth to feed requiring virgin wilderness converted to farmland which had to be irrigated and fertilised. Every new mouth required the industrial complex to grow even larger, and you encouraged new births because your whole economy was based on having a plentiful supply of people to work in factories and buy your products. People with just enough education to earn money which flowed up to the elite minority but not enough to understand how you were able to control them. The whole planet had become a slave labour camp under the control of people like you."

"That's not true! We were going to restore the planet! We were looking for ways to control the birth rate, to reduce the population. We were keeping as many species as possible in preserves, ready for the day when we'd be able to release them back into the wild. When I emerged from the hibernaculum and saw what the world had become, i genuinely thought that our efforts had borne fruit, that our great enterprise had been accomplished."

"I believe that you are deluding yourself."

"You yourself said that most records had been lost in the war. How do you know that I'm not telling the truth?"

"It was you who caused the war. Enough records remain for us to know the part big business played in stoking up the crisis. You pushed the human race closer to the brink so that you could make a profit."

Randall turned his face away from the priest. "Yes, you're right. I did that. I made a terrible mistake, but it was a mistake. We never meant for it to go all the way to war. Think, man! Why would we want a war? Why would we want to destroy the comfortable lives we'd created for ourselfes?"

"I believe you. I believe it was a mistake, but it merely underlines the point I'm making, that you are too careless and reckless to be trusted with that much power. VIX's way is better. To limit your power to affect the environment. That way, no matter what mistakes you make, you will always have a green, healthy planet to live on. No mistake you make will threaten your very survival. VIX manages human life. He keeps you from straying outside the safe boundaries He has set."

"Which occasionally requires Him to destroy an entire city."

"Sadly, yes."