All I ever read growing up was science fiction. I was probably in my late 20's before I ever read anything by choice that was not something about the future. I used to think I only had to wait long enough for these dreams to become reality.

Fast-forward and we all come to find out "conventional science" is mostly a scam, and they were never going to bring us those futuristic things. (And if anyone is thinking, "What about the iPhone and satellite TV and the Internet?", well, that was thanks to engineers, some of whom still know how to dream and how to create.)

On the flip side, I came to find out about Tartaria, an advanced civilization just passed out of living memory, with architecture of heart-breaking beauty and maybe free energy and graceful, comfortable transportation to boot.

And to get really weird, I found out that humans had interacted with a race of powerful aliens, capable of space travel and even possessing the technology of stargates. Most of them eventually left, and one of them predicted the world would fall to ruin, saying, "Religion will be no more; all things will be disordered and awry; all good will disappear."

Which sounds something like what we have now. But then he left his follower with these words:

But when all this has befallen, Asclepius, then the Master and Father, God, the first before all, the maker of that god who first came into being, will look on that which has come to pass, and will stay the disorder by the counterworking of his will, which is the good. He will call back to the right path those who have gone astray; he will cleanse the world from evil, now washing it away with water-floods, now burning it out with fiercest fire, or again expelling it by war and pestilence. And thus he will bring back his world to its former aspect, so that the Kosmos will once more be deemed worthy of worship and wondering reverence, and God, the maker and restorer of the mighty fabric, will be adored by the men of that day with unceasing hymns of praise and blessing.