The Fifth Science

by Exurb1a

Looking back we can see even at such an advanced point in history that the makers still considered their children tools. No, the mInd community said. Whatever this business is, we’re best to stay away from it until we’re ready. The Quandaries are feral and their scratches go too deep. Let it grow an old mystery or better yet a forgotten mystery. We understand everything we need to for now. Let the rest come when it is ready. And that was that. Man had a black corridor he dared not send his intellect down and that corridor was called death. It was too much even to stick a thought out in it. In fear of that corridor man had produced mechanical children that did not age and would never have to face the dark. And so those children did not fear the dark. They feared the light instead. The mInds had a devil in their skies now that raged so white and fearsome it threatened to burn right through to the sense in things: two holes in nature no less. How could a galactic cluster or a theoretic oddity in physics cause a mInd to go on a rampage against itself? Who reviles forbidden knowledge more than the gods themselves? But forbidden the knowledge stayed and the world moved on. All empires have their day and all empires go nightward eventually. Man’s was no exception.