"Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. At 0946 GMT on the morning of September 11 in the exceptionally beautiful summer...most of the inhabitants...saw a dazzling fireball appear in the eastern sky. Within seconds it was brighter than the Sun, and as it moved across the heavens—at first in utter silence—it left behind it a churning column of dust and smoke.
More than a million people had their hearing permanently damaged. They were the lucky ones.
Six hundred thousand people died, and the total damage was more than a trillion dollars. It was as if a great war had been fought and lost in a single morning.
After the initial shock, mankind reacted with a determination and a unity that no earlier age could have shown. Such a disaster, it was realized, might not occur again for a thousand years—but it might occur tomorrow. And the next time, the consequences could be even worse.
Very well; there would be no next time."
Rendezvous with Rama, Arthur C. Clarke, 1973
Is it possible that September 11th was destined to be a day when destruction would be wrought, or is it merely coincidence?
Is it possible that someone who hated America with a passion that cannot be conveyed once read a science fiction novel and decided that the opening paragraphs exactly described the evil in his heart?
Is it a coincidence that a plane crashed into the Pentagon at 9:43; 3 minutes off Clarke's imagined travesty? Probably. It all is likely a coincidence, but still, it kind of freaked me out.
