the_experimenters [Contagion]

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====== The Vast Experiment ======

A collection of fragments. They seem to relate to one another.
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> "//It's just that -- and I'm trying to get to the nub of things, here, so bear with me while I stumble around searching for a lightswitch, because they all seem to be on the wrong side of the doorframe nowadays -- and, you know, I don't want to give the impression that I'm searching for places to pick holes, because I'm not. Far from it, even."// 
>
>//**[Host pauses for caller response.]**//
> 
> //"I agree, it's a beautiful story, so self-contained, and it's tempting; it's the sort of thing you **want** to be convinced of. A world made by a greater being, or, as you say (though I've heard it told both ways, don't get me wrong), a whole host of them, to fulfill a particular purpose, and that too a purpose greater than itself, so a purpose we can't conceive... \\ \\
... it's almost convenient, to conclude that we can't possibly have all the answers about it yet, and we may as well not worry our pretty little heads about anything, and just sit back and watch and wait on things to end before the next stage begins. It's a relief, in times like these, to put it bluntly, to be told not to worry, big whitecoat in the sky has it all handled. No one wants to think bad things are happening because **we** brought bad things about. Nor does anyone want to think bad things don't happen for a purpose, and if we can nod our heads and say, yep, there's a purpose, nobody panic, because we don't have to think too hard about it to know it's there, then all the better..."//
>
>//**[Pause.]**//
>
>//"W-well, I wouldn't say it's a stretch. From my perspective, it's calling a dabra a dabra. If I can be honest here, I want to ask you the same thing, reversed. I'd say, for example, the average Second-Stage Prepper is pushing it a bit far, surfing tidal waves in 'preparation'... I mean, this isn't a game show, or, or a video game. This is real life, and I rather think calling earthquakes -- I mean, **70,000** displaced. 70 thousand. I don't think it's a stretch to say those are bad things happening to real people. In fact, my question back to you is -- isn't calling this sort of thing a 'challenge' just a tad bit more of a stretch than calling it a crisis nobody wants to have to live through, let alone use as training splits?"//
//-- Excerpt.//

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> "//A disturbance of any nature, provided it is of sufficient magnitude, can bring about systemic collapse. It would be a tremendous waste of resources, therefore, for the experimenter, to run an experiment so varied and so prolonged as the world that we inhabit, to amalgamate said resources into forms rich and multifarious, into beings self-cognizant and capable of meta-thought such as ourselves, and then once it had simply "had enough", to place its entire hand on the scale, finger by finger, causing crisis after crisis until the world collapsed inward, unless there were some ulterior objective. One could fathom an ending for the sake of ending, if one believed for a moment that the destruction of the world were leading up to a final implosion, to be followed by some particularly interesting genre of supernova, but this planet is not a star, and we are not glittering stardust but composite beings. To crush us would create not sparkles but paste, and a very boring paste at that. The destruction of our world, then, must contribute to a purpose larger than an end for endings' sake. There must be more to this experiment. Consider the following: that we can reduce the series of events that have transpired, are transpiring, and will transpire -- the grand plan of experimenters each with a mind of a greater span than an entire world (as conceived by a simple human brain) -- into comprehensibility, by thinking of the sequence as having discrete "stages", and the collection of these "stages" as manifesting into a singular great "plan". This world, then, is meeting a timely, intentional, and well-executed demise, because it is not its own experiment, but the first in a series of many.//"
//-- Excerpt.//