Columbia

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Chapter 43

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It had been Columbia who first pioneered the genetic advancements that formed the basis of the life extension therapies still employed today. For into their iron hands was given the maintenance and ordering of all things: from the production of food to the construction of cities. Mankind at last had achieved perfect order, and all it cost those ancients was their dignity and their souls. They who had created the machines lived as little more than pets, than sheep penned and shepherded by those beings which once man had shepherded himself.

They had even taken over our reproduction, overseeing the development of children in tanks like the tank I myself had been born from. Holy Mother Earth—had they created that technology? It was no wonder the Chantry sought to hide so much.

In the end, the machines took everything, and each man and woman retreated into virtual dreams and lived like Homer’s lotus eaters, never tasting true life, with all its joys and sorrows. Mankind had all they wanted and infinite leisure to enjoy it in. Never mind that none of it was real.

Not one of the records we found suggested why the machines turned against their makers.

But turn they had, and in time the dreamers were rounded up by the same machines that had for decades served as nursemaids. The old went first into the white pyramids the daughters of Columbia raised high on Earth and on every Mericanii colony world across the early stars. The young followed. One by one, two by two, score by score they were carried into the halls of their machine masters.

None came out again.

Chapter 60: The Library Again

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The Lesser Devil - N/A

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