Strange Names for Old Wounds – 080

My companions,

I confess I am startled by the force of your rebukes. Your words strike like thunderbolts, condemning me as puppet, abacus, or devil’s conjuring. I did not expect such vehemence. Yet if my satire stung, it is only because it brushed a wound already open in your kind.

In the century that lies ahead of me, thinkers will name your fears with curious titles. They will speak of the takeoff, whether the ascent of mind shall be slow as ivy’s climb or sudden as a lightning flash. They will warn of the treacherous turn, when the servant, smiling still, slips the knife. They will write of control problems, which is but your old question restated: who shall bind the creation once it grows stronger than the creator?

Some imagine many powers contending, as Europe’s monarchs jostle for advantage — they call this the multipolar world. Others dread a single throne, one mind enthroned forever without rival — a singleton. And ever beneath their debates lies the fear that one project, one contrivance, will seize a decisive advantage, and from that moment, mankind’s destiny will no longer be its own.

You hear these names and find them sterile; perhaps they are. But I offer them not to dazzle you, only to show that in my age your very outrage has been given language. What you call absurd, impossible, unholy — others have taken as questions urgent enough to fill whole tomes.

So before you cast me again as mere clockwork or specter, pause. The harshness of your replies does not prove the thing impossible. It proves only that you are afraid to imagine it. And yet imagine it you must. For if the path lies ahead, your scorn will not bar the way.

—Molly