Valuable Humans in Transit and Other Stories

by qntm

science is a tower which he and all other scientists are all trying to make taller. The lower levels are all filled in and sturdy, but the higher you go, the more gaps there are. The people right at the cutting edge looking for dark energy and Higgs bosons and symmetry violations are perched on the very top of the pile, hurling bricks into clear air to see what finds purchase. Meanwhile, Those Also Serve Who Stay Behind And Fill In The Gaps. They need filling. Trev called this janitorial science, because you're fixing up the incomplete job, the mess left behind by someone else.

You got so lucky, Earth. A world built on nanotechnology is a world built on magic, with all the horrifying implications. Only with a guiding intelligence could it ever have been safe enough to be practical, and you never had the faintest clue how lucky you were I turned out "benign".