Let\u2019s back up a moment.<\/p>\n
The Earth spins, unaware of the fate awaiting it. A swarm of scissors seethes towards it from the distant industrialized and scissors-hurling planet of the wicked god of space.<\/p>\n
You shouldn\u2019t throw countless trillions of scissors at another planet! But he\u2019s done.<\/p>\n
Their numbers are limitless, by the way. They glitter as they fly.<\/p>\n
The pressure of photons against their shiny metal surface causes them to move.<\/p>\n
Light drives them along. Glints that pass back and forth between them serve as signals; as coordination; as tools for navigation; as the synapses of its great space-brain. If they have no special medium by which they could step outside their raw physical presence and adjust their course \u2014 no inherent power, other than the function of their reflection, to do other<\/i> than fly along the path that their gravity and their velocity set forth for them \u2014 then it is equally fair to say, neither do we:<\/p>\n
The great brain of the scissors-swarm, with its sharp malevolence, is exactly as much of a prisoner of physics as is the human soul.<\/p>\n
It glints within itself. Within itself it makes choices.<\/p>\n
It hones in on the Earth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let\u2019s back up a moment. The Earth spins, unaware of the fate awaiting it. A swarm of scissors seethes towards it from the distant industrialized and scissors-hurling planet of the wicked god of space. You shouldn\u2019t throw countless trillions of scissors at another planet! But he\u2019s done. Their numbers are limitless, by the way. They […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"series":[5],"class_list":["post-2994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stomping-the-world-round-chapter-3","series-stwr"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Icon_Space1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2994"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6514,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2994\/revisions\/6514"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2994"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=2994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}