25. Deadline (35)

Everything had evolved.

Sometimes it was evolution, and at other times it was devolution. When the environment changed, organisms altered themselves to adapt.

Weapons were the same.

Every time a technological breakthrough occurred, and the nature of the battlefield transformed, a plethora of new weapons — from hasty, back-of-the-napkin inventions to those that were the result of long-term technical accumulation — burst forth in abundance. Their evolution was as intricate, diverse, and swift as that of organic life.

But there was a decisive difference between the evolution of weapons and that of organisms — the origin, or the source of evolution.