Changes

[duetsavvy]

[1]
Wow, what was that? I didn't know it could do that! Why didn't anyone tell me?

[Brye is looking over the smoking battered hulls of the Huckebein and Grungust duo. The duo returned from SSR headquarters, even though the seal SSR housed is no longer there - it's in the units now. Somehow.]

I'm terrified, but also excited! Can a human person have so much adrenaline in her system and still live? Is something terrible going to happen now?


[2]
So, that was the "Loni", huh...

[A fair bit later Bryanne is still alive, but instead she's more thoughtful and pondering loudly.]

I knew he was a jerk but now it looks like he's not all right in the head too. But the scary thing is, I think he got one thing right. In very, very general terms.

This world needs to change. Look what happened with SSR and the Cambio thingy. Look what happens to people all the time. This isn't right, this needs to change.

I just don't think Loni's the one who should do it.

Comments

[duetsavvy]

A lot of people are suffering all around the world, don't you think they deserve better? There's violence, sickness, starvation... I'd fix all of that.

[dignity_kept]

Easy enough, isn't it.

Say, are you willing to perform massive brain alterations on a large part of your species, Eriksen?

[duetsavvy]

Eh? What are you... are you saying these are parts of human nature?

[dignity_kept]

I'm saying that's what it would take to "fix violence" tomorrow. You'd need to perform such a brutal change to humanity that I'm not sure you'd recognize what would be left.

And that is why this kind of thing is dangerous. The greater the power, the easier it is for everything to go FUBAR in unexpected directions after you rub the lamp and the djinni gets to work. There are so many factors involved that a human brain couldn't properly keep them all in mind when using this kind of power.

[duetsavvy]

Well... scratch that one, but what about the rest? You give people homes their lost, or food back on their tables, they'll be much happier and I wouldn't be surprised if violence levels went down, too!

[dignity_kept]

Your other two suggestions were to end sickness and starvation, yes?

Now, without sickness, a human could live quite longer than you normally expect to do. And to really eliminate starvation means the ability to feed and maintain a much larger of children per reproducing pair.

Now, problem. With our current social and technological paradigm, it would be half a century before that became entirely unsustainable on several levels. Both on the resource and society front. So you'd need to change that too. Do you have the social studies and technological background to know what levers your magic button will need to touch, as well?

What I'm trying to tell you, Eriksen, is that power of this stripe needs to be wielded extremely carefully. And probably shouldn't ever be a matter of just one person.

[duetsavvy]

It's not a matter of just one person, that for sure! Ask people on the street if they'd want the world to be a place without hunger or sickness, almost everyone'd say yes. That's just common sense.

And that unsustainable thing... people invented vaccines and crop rotation and all kinds of different things, but society didn't suddenly collapse or anything. So there's a precedent for that.

[dignity_kept]

Ah, common sense. Do you know, Eriksen, that in a world with giant robots and orbital weapons, "Common sense" is probably a fair runner-up for the most dangerous sword your species has?

Crop rotation faced fairly significant resistance to its adoption in many places, as it so happens. And common sense was the biggest reasoning used by the opposition to those same vaccines you mention. But that is not quite the point.

Look, I'm not going to go into the fine details of it, because it's long and there's entire books of these things. Basically, there is only so much change a society can take at once. Picture a hot iron bar. If you bend it carefully and paying attention to what you're doing, it will bend into any shape you want. If you simply push the extremes down, it will snap. And in this case, "snap" means violent revolution, retrogradism, supremacism, terrorism, wars, and all such other favorite human pastimes.

[duetsavvy]

So giving an option between saving someone from suffering right now, but with threat that they might also possibly suffer again in the future; or ending suffering very slowly and carefully so it really only ends who knows how many years from now on - the latter is better?

Besides it's not even cultural things I'm talking about. "Not starving to death in poverty because a kaiju flattened your house" is not a novel idea. Many people do it every day.

[dignity_kept]

Shifting your scale back, I see.

Now, fixing damage is far safer than the creation of entirely new societal assumptions by sudden revolution - because don't kid yourself, "no more sickness" is a revolution. There is more chance of doing good without something going horribly wrong, since you are not introducing quite as many unknown factors.

But I still wouldn't want you or me to be administering it.

[duetsavvy]

Why not? And I'm surprised, I didn't expect you to put yourself in the same category as me.

[dignity_kept]

Because I'm smart enough to realize I would make some mistake. Any one person would. And I'm also smart enough to realize you'd crack the world in half.

I was there last time changing the way the world works by what amounted to magic was tried, Eriksen. And in that case, the attempt at an utopia by magic was directed by a supercomputer smarter than the entirety of mankind. So it actually worked... with a terrible price. Because that's the other thing about power of this stripe. It has to come from somewhere. Have you wondered where this one does?

But well, I'm not GARLAND. I don't have the sheer brainpower and extrapolation ability of a computer that makes Mexico City look like a suburb. And I don't have the kind of hubris required to think I have all the solutions for the world.

[duetsavvy]

So - you'd screw up, but everyone else would screw up even harder? Thanks for having faith in hypothetical me.

But, where is the seal's power coming from? SSR used it like a big generator. And it allowed Grungust and Huckey to combine, too...

[dignity_kept]

[The ethereal voices sound amused for a bit] Not everyone else. I know several people who would do much better than I would. I meant you especifically. You have good intentions and a lot of impulsiveness. Which is about as good a combination as matches and fireworks when it comes to these things.

And that is the question, isn't it? Gavin always was deluded, but it wasn't until he started playing around with these seals that he started hearing voices. Whatever it is that wants him to put them all together, I do not have any hope it will be benevolent.