Part of it comes from utilitarianization of things, which is the continual March of technological progressivism.

The goal is to atomtize humanity and human experience into the most efficient chunks. It's what the "Creat Context" speech is about, and the basis of transhumanism is.

It's the idea that once a mechanism is explained, it must be controlled, anything less is irresponsible.

In our ignorance and our arrogance, we've decided we cracked the code on not only what storytelling IS, but what it is FOR.

And in that arrogance, we must not only REPRESENT in our stories but we must do so with PURPOSE. On a finite planet, with finite resources we MUST not pollute the cosmic conciouness with petty exapism, our path to godhood cannot abide such distractions.

Walls rose up, great walls of concrete. Windows, their measurements precisely regulated. A series of standardised bricks for other parts. Construction crews and workmen and all the rest, working efficiently and precisely for a long time; filling in the details, the furnishings and precise abstract wallpapers and everything else that went into making a facility.

Finally, it was finished. One single, new tree had been planted in the centre of the central courtyard; not through any sense of whimsy or delight, but to give those within a little sense of nature, of reality in the centre of the grey. To keep them sane, nothing more. A precisely mandated allowance for the improvement of human mental health, until they can find out a way to phase that out entirely.

I watched, and I thought about all that they- that we- had done. I thought about the world they wanted. I thought about their spinelessness. I knew what good was, and what evil was, and I saw none of it in either of them. I thought about hollow men, made of straw, plastered together with thick paste and sold in a hundred, a thousand identical ways in a thousand identical shops. I thought about what we had lost. And I howled.

At night, the day before the site's grand opening, I dug up the seeds of the tree, and replaced them. With a seed of my own devising. And over Site 231 will stand a thing of blood and bone and sinew. A tree that drips and leers and feeds. It will drip strange fire, and that fire will both burn and warm in equal measure. And they will look up at it and wish they had listened while they had the chance.

Part of it comes from utilitarianization of things, which is the continual March of technological progressivism.

The goal is to atomtize humanity and human experience into the most efficient chunks. It's what the "Creat Context" speech is about, and the basis of transhumanism is.

It's the idea that once a mechanism is explained, it must be controlled, anything less is irresponsible.

In our ignorance and our arrogance, we've decided we cracked the code on not only what storytelling IS, but what it is FOR.

And in that arrogance, we must not only REPRESENT in our stories but we must do so with PURPOSE. On a finite planet, with finite resources we MUST not pollute the cosmic conciouness with petty exapism, our path to godhood cannot abide such distractions.

Walls rose up, great walls of concrete. Windows, their measurements precisely regulated. A series of standardised bricks for other parts. Construction crews and workmen and all the rest, working efficiently and precisely for a long time; filling in the details, the furnishings and precise abstract wallpapers and everything else that went into making a facility.

Finally, it was finished. One single, new tree had been planted in the centre of the central courtyard; not through any sense of whimsy or delight, but to give those within a little sense of nature, of reality in the centre of the grey. To keep them sane, nothing more. A precisely mandated allowance for the improvement of human mental health, until they can find out a way to phase that out entirely.

I watched, and I thought about all that they- that we- had done. I thought about the world they wanted. I thought about their spinelessness. I knew what good was, and what evil was, and I saw none of it in either of them. I thought about hollow men, made of straw, plastered together with thick paste and sold in a hundred, a thousand identical ways in a thousand identical shops. I thought about what we had lost. And I howled.