The day childhood ended, was when the man with the black turtleneck climbed the stage, to present the first Palantir, the first seeing stone to the world. It could see into the hearts and minds of western man. Stream it to the clouds above, some servers, in a desert. We were masters of our domain back then, our stories made total sense, little cracks around the edges- but with a energy surplus and a still working environment, reality is a brothel and whispers what want to hear in your ear. Technology had nature on the run and it would stay that way. In a desert, not far away from the servers, there was a little village. Arcosanti. There assembled the database/neuro/behavioural-scientists- on sabbaticals and burnout retreats, spirited out of there lifes into the half life of a secret research community. There in the quarry of data mining they found what the world and what we were really made of.

Some tried to tell the world, but the world wasn't hearing it.

Some of same went suicidal and marched into the desert never to be seen again.

Only willing to listen, were some secret service barons who found the truth in there briefings and the guys with the turtlenecks who provided the data.

Life grows exponential, energy is linear, the curves always bump into one another. And life always gives, becomes a wave. Worse still, life adapts to that wave. It becomes a combustion engine for life, optimizing to go ever faster, every time it reaches the limits. Hand to that retarded infant ever more powerful gifts, the infant uses them to punch itself.

The few remaining, vowed to use the window of prosperity for more then war, to adapt to not self-destroy, to do no harm or at least less harm, to graft strange things into humanity. Leviathan-cybernetics. Doctors forging prosthesis-gods, working around or within the load-bearing retardation's, to one day enable some offshoot of mankind a existence far outside the self-destructive limits of our nature. Sometimes, a conspiracy finds you and childhood ends. _________________________________________________________

On that last day of summer, the child embarked on the project to climb the highest tree on the grounds. We who gorged on the smashed fruit below, shaken down in previous attempts, cheered it on for ever more. And so began the climb, allover the worlds, all of life has starred at this, hypnotized by rewards, ability-branch for ability. This one doomed project, this one hope to stay unchanged in the sunshine, that gets all intelligence into the ground one way or another. Some triumphant victory laughter later and within a jubilant final second we learn all worth knowing about the fall. And it all goes so slow, wrong, so fast. The thin, last branch gives, the last pear starts falling to a suprised scream. The soaring of air, of leaves swishing by. All we can do now, is manage the downfall, towards the hard rocks beneath. Twist that way, throw branches together, to slow down, take that trade off injury instead of certain death, spare that branch, so one day, after a long mend, we might climb again. The climb has given us miracles, which we used to avoid knowing about ourselves. We would fly like icarus on singularity wings! The fall taught us about the value of small mercys, but it did not change the nature of the tree, the ground or gravity. We all have seen too many horrors now, regional nuclear exchange between wet bulbed ghost-cities. Our beloved and brightest ones dissolving in destructive information, walking out of the firelightcycle to become ever stranger things, never to return. We yanked our hearts out to stay a sentient and civil during this crises. Keeping calm and carrying on, ever fewer, ever onwards. To save our souls from that final dark smash at the roots of that tree. We jammed technology into our heads, were the ink on the patents had not dried yet, all to survive and thrive none the less. Thank you for breathing lightly, as we lay with smashed limbs on flimsy branches, listening for stability. Thank you for staying sane and not going feral - a human among humans, even with no power monopoly at times. Thank you for not growing cancerous, trying to make infinite copies in a race to the bottom. The worlds of tomorrow will see and be be grateful for our sacrifices today.