On Omega, the law was kept secret. Older residents used their knowledge of the law to enforce their rule over the newcomers. This system was condoned and reinforced by the doctrine of the inequality of all men, which lay at the heart of the Omegan legal system. Through planned inequality and enforced ignorance, power and status remained in the hands of the older residents.
This was the scene in California in California Mojave Desert five years ago. The historic first view of the Newcomer ship upon it’s arrival. The ship was a slave ship carrying 250,000 beings, bred to adapt & labor in almost any environment .But they washed ashore on Earth with no way to get back to where they came from. Civil liberties attorneys successfully lobbied for the end of the quarantine and in the last five years, the Newcomers have become the latest addition to the population of Los Angeles.
“Actually, that’s not putting it strongly enough. Under the circumstances, at least from what I can see at a distance, it sounds like a very good strategy. Taking away one of Manpower’s most notorious hellholes and handing it over to their slaves for a homeland strikes me as a dandy proposition.”
“Have you ever played chess, Kitty?”
I eyed her. What did a board game have to do with this? “Not really.”
“You and I should play sometime. I think you would like it,” she said. “It’s a game of strategy, mostly. The strong pieces are in the back row, while the weak pieces—the pawns—are all in the front, ready to take the brunt of the attack. Because of their limited movement and vulnerability, most people underestimate them and only use them to protect the more powerful pieces. But when I play, I protect my pawns.”
Schwartz’s chess pieces played themselves, while he wondered about it with a tight-pressed heart. His King’s Pawn took the opposing Bishop’s Pawn. Grew moved his Knight to Queen 4 and Schwartz’s Rook sidestepped the attack to Knight 4.
“If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.”
“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”
The attempt, while spectacular, had not been a success. In fact, the imagery which had been recorded by the Dahak’s escorts still turned up in slow motion in HD compilations of the most awe-inspiring disaster footage in galactic history.
“Sometimes the biggest disasters aren’t noticed at all - no one’s around to write horror stories.”
In retrospect the only reason this was not a complete disaster for us is that the Soviets were caught in the same disarray as ourselves. But the specter of Communism now dominates western Europe: the supposedly independent nations of the European Union are as much in thrall to Moscow as the client states of the Warsaw Pact.
“Losing your head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis.”
Here I am with a brain the size of a planet and they ask me to pick up a piece of paper. Call that job satisfaction? I don’t.
Herbert West Has A Very Good Head On His Shoulders… And Another One In A Dish On His Desk!
“… we have created a man with not one brain but two. … This new brain is intended to control the biological brain. … The patient’s biological brain is the peripheral terminal – the only peripheral terminal – for the new computer. … And therefore the patient’s biological brain, indeed his whole body, has become a terminal for the new computer."
We can uncouple any terminal from all the others- necessary as this is a household of rugged individualists.
The treecats reached out with her as the first, thin squall of protest sounded, and suddenly, as easily as slipping her hand into a glove, she touched him. Touched him as she had never touched another human being, even Hamish. It was as if her hand had reached out into the dark, and a smaller, warmer, utterly trusting hand had found it with unerring accuracy.
“But…you’re a cat!”
“Granted. But you see, Frank, that’s as far as our civilization needed to evolve. We developed our brains to a fine point.”
Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains — cheat.
I’ve never seen so many brains out of their heads before! I feel like a kid in a candy store.
From the lump led a ropelike strand, with finer strands splitting off it. Barely visible, the finest ones touched the silvery boxes that surrounded the pile. How many times had he passed that exhibit at U Krirsarque Museum, and shuddered at the pickled brain and spinal column there? Here the spinal column was bent into a circle to conserve space, but the rest was all the same.