Ant Gods

So they figured how to manipulate dark energy and distort the continuum to their will. An inconceivably empowering achievement. This was during the rainy season of twenty-eight twenty eight, and inevitably, the carousing arrhythmic songbirds made merry that, "Love was in again, and Hate was ambiguous!"

(Caught the un-rhyme? No bother if not!)

To most sober folks though, 'potential' was the word of concern. The technology they now controlled, the bigheaded tinker-types could make the quantum leap past the realm of Possible and into that of the Magical. As in the past, this did not augur well.

As expected, the early times were toughest! With every new improvement of the Human template, citizens became deeply needful of more purpose for being. All that enhanced awareness could make, and did make for many a queasy questing persona.

Some behavioral changes were excruciating. Consider that this was during an era when peoples, because of divergent beliefs of respective HolyDaze and ProSport celebrations, would be routinely blood&gore gruesome to their fellows. An inconsequential slice of life was all this was.

And the overwhelming discernible result?

So many precious gene pools forever wasted and gone. All so regrettable, this being centuries before humans had RapidRepair capabilities.

Still though, Human Enhancement did create its own problems. This current confusion is example.

Which reasonable person wouldn't be disgruntled if, as they approach their fourth or fifth century and knowing what they know and have experienced, they begin to feel ready to explore, to get into some other reality, and then what happens?

Well, what gives is that Authority comes up with a new system that one just can't ignore, or leave behind.

It turns out that the Bigheads have devised this system of recalling everyone's total potential: as in, at every cross roads and turn in your past life's pathways, every choice you did not make, is now made available for a replay, for a new try, or approach.

This proposal is prepared to affect every single one of the two point three four something million augmented Humans left on the shrinking land mass of the planet.

The added carrot is that with every new choice the citizen tries, she, he, or other keeps all the knowledge and empathy gained from the last. So unless a person follows a particularly unfortunate path, one's ability to manage complex lives constantly improves.

As rewards go these interminable days, not too bad, that.

What the Bigheads suggest is really a hope that somewhere along the unexplored lifelines one might discover their true genius or exceptional ability. What ever, how ever it may be, the person would live that life, know it in and out entirely. However long that took. Because Time was moot. There was an abundance of it available. Always would be.

According to Authority's data-streams, in terms of life experience, the traveler had nothing to lose and sooo much to gain. Over and over, again and again. (Yes, O Yes, that ancient singsong!) So if one chooses, he, other, or she could spend thousands of years living many hundreds of lives.

The only way out is self-destruction. Which option we actually do not have. For as every newfangled Human is patently aware, having been engineered with the curiosity of ants, one can not refuse a challenge to gather knowledge for the community.

But that's the Bigheads. Guess they have retained for themselves a sense of humor. They get a kick from the irony that Humans, the original makers, are no longer natural, but manufactured and fixed to be this or that certain way.

Maybe that's how Bigheads dare to be the Gods they play at.