How strange and unforeseeable! The world had been saved, not by great rulers and statesmen, not by mystics and saints and prophets and messiahs , not by any of the holy scriptures, but by an introverted eccentric writer of mathematical texts and children 's books and by the child who'd inspired him. The little girl become a woman , dream-ridden Alice , had inspired the nonsense not really nonsense, and this in circuitous and spiralling fashion had inspired her to do what all others had failed to do, to save eighteen billion souls and the world .
