“We have to help them,” said Ezra. “I don’t think we can.” “You have a plasma gun and you’re smart. What else… — C. Robert Cargill

For as long as humankind can remember, it has wanted two things: to play God and to breathe life into the objects around them. And for thousands of years, humans created machines to approximate life and magic and all the things men and women could not do. And then a man stood in front of a roomful of people and had a computer say, “Hello.” That’s it. Hello. It didn’t mean it. It didn’t know what it was saying. But it said it. Hello.

And within thirty years, humans were having conversations with their phones.

“Let me ask you something.”

“Okay!”

“Are we good guys or are we bad guys?”

“We’re good guys.”

“Well, good guys only do terrible things when our lives depend on it. And we have to feel bad about them afterward.”

“Why?”

“Because otherwise, we become the bad guys.”

This must be a field day for the end-is-nigh, compound-dwelling, bullets-and-Bibles folk. They must feel so vindicated. If there was any comfort to find at the end of the world, it was knowing you were right all along and that was about it.