Then I Knew

I am the warning. I am nature's way of telling people to slow down.

I am the body of scientists guilty of destroying the world. I recogize there's self-loathing in me. (I was the slave, not the master, of an impulse which I detested yet could not disobey.) Still, I was driven, as Victor was driven. I was seized by remorse and the sense of guilt, which hurried me away to a hell of intense tortures, such as no language can describe. I continued to press on.

As death was everywhere, I pressed forward, determined. So I sit now wondering what came of my pressing forward:

This defies gravy for amusement. One is near my house. You can see the world for a minute from above, but it doesn't reveal any secerts.

This defies gravity too. Heat lifts you up. Cold drags you down.

Sometimes people make smaller ones and drop them to explode on others.

This allows your legs to rest. It uses sparks, burning fuel, friction between rubber and road.

You can travel through water for long periods. Before Nature would kill you; now she watches you assert your knowledge over her boundaries.

This transforms the ordinary into magical things. It can tell you how much money you have, lets you read these words, can talk to you, and send kind or mean messages, and control a television set or a warhead. It's a distant cousin of mine.

But sometimes technology is tempered and nature wins.