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" Debbie leaned forward. Her eyes flitted back and forth over the big equation. Her lips moved. Nate looked at her. “Does this mean anything to you?” One corner of her mouth pulled up for a minute, then relaxed. “I’m not a hundred percent sure,” she said, “but part of that looks like a population growth equation.” “What?” “Population growth,” Debbie repeated. She walked to the television and sketched circles around a few figures with her finger. “It’s more elaborate than your basic Malthusian model, but here’s your birth rate, death rate, initial population...” She shrugged. “Not really sure what the rest of this is, though.” Nate looked at the numbers. “So you think this is a population?” He reached up and tapped the big number—1,528,326,500 ± 5000. His fingers left a small smudge on the flatscreen. "
― Peter Clines , 14 (Threshold, #1)