Contact - Carl Sagan [124]
"I don't want you to think that I've done anything really illegal. But we're doing so many new things, it's smart to be on the safe side. For instance, there are people who actually believe I sabotaged the Machine, when I spent a ridiculous amount of my own money trying to build it. And you know what they did to Babylon. My insurance investigators think it might have been the same people in Babylon and Terre Haute. I seem to have a lot of enemies. I don't understand why. I think I've done a lot of good for people. Anyway, all in all, it's better for me to be up here…
"Now, it's the Machine I wanted to talk to you about. That was awful-that erbium-dowel catastrophe in Wyoming. I'm really sorry about Drumlin. He was a tough old pisser. And it must have been a big shock for you. Sure you don't want a drink?"
But she was content to look out at the Earth and listen. "If I'm not disheartened about the Machine," he went on, "I don't see why you should be. You're probably worried that there never will be an American Machine, that there are too many people who want it to fail. The President's worried about the same thing. And those factories we built, those aren't assembly lines. We've been making custom-made products. It's gonna be expensive to replace all the broken parts. But mainly you're thinking, maybe it was a bad idea in the first place. Maybe we've been foolish to go so fast. So let's take a long, careful look at the whole thing. Even if you're not thinking like that, the President is.
"But if we don't do it soon. I'm worried we'll never do it. And there's another thing: I don't think this invitation is open forever."
"Funny you should say that. That's just what Valerian, Drumlin, and I were talking about before the accident. The sabotage," she corrected herself. "Please go on."
"You see, the religious people-most of them-really think this planet is an experiment. That's what their beliefs come down to. Some god or other is always fixing and poking, messing around with tradesmen's wives, giving tablets on mountains, commanding you to mutilate your children, telling people what words they can say and what words they can't say, making people feel guilty about enjoying themselves, and like that. Why can't the gods leave well enough alone? All this intervention speaks of incompetence. If God didn't want Lot's wife to look back, why didn't he make her obedient, so she'd do what her husband told her? Or if he hadn't made Lot such a shithead, maybe she would've listened to him more. If God is omnipotent and omniscient, why didn't he start the universe out in the first place so it would come out the way he wants? Why's he constantly repairing and complaining? No, there's one thing the Bible makes clear: The biblical God is a sloppy manufacturer. He's not good at design, he's not good at execution. He'd be out of business if there was any competition.
"That's why I don't believe we're an experiment. There might be lots of experimental planets in the universe, places where apprentice gods get to test out their skills. What a shame Rankin and Joss weren't born on one of those planets. But on this planet"-again he waved at the window-"there isn't any microintervention. The gods don't drop in on us to fix things up when we've botched it. You look at human history and it's clear we've been on our own."
"Until now," she said. "Deus ex machina? That's what you think? You think the gods finally took pity on us and sent the Machine?"
"More like Machina ex deo, or whatever the right Latin is. No, I don't think we're the experiment. I think we're the control, the planet that nobody was interested in, the place where nobody intervened at all. A calibration world gone to seed. This is what happens if they don't intervene. The Earth is an object lesson for the apprentice gods. If you really screw up,' they get told, `you'll