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Scribes
Scientists and their toys are a dangerous mix
“How does it spread?” Alicia asked. She willed her trembling hands to stillness.
“We don’t know,” Toby replied.
“Where did it come from?”
Toby shook his head. “We can’t even begin to guess.”
Alicia slid open her desk drawer, rummaged around for a few moments, located two miniature liquor bottles, gin and vodka, unscrewed the vodka’s cap, and downed the entire bottle in one gulp. She opened the gin bottle and queued it up. Alicia glanced numbly at her 2017 Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics, which hung alongside a photograph of her and Freeman Dyson. “It’s a virus?” she asked.
Toby looked at her cockeyed. “Is now a good time to drink?”
“Please just answer my question, Toby,” her words carrying a solemn tone.
“It propagates far faster than a virus.”
“What is it?”
“It’s not biological, at least not in the sense of life as we understand it. It’s not computer code like a virus that strikes networks because it affects both electronic and non-electronic objects. This is something entirely new, so freakish that we have no way of classifying or comprehending it. Even its architecture is unprecedented.”
