Having had to spend all of college listening to physics majors at Caltech talk about stamp collecting while I was trying to teach them biology, fucking thank you, Randall Munroe.
If I don’t reblog this seriously consider that I am Locked in a basement somewhere and in need of rescuing.
😂😂😂
In defense of Feynman, he never said that. If anyone did say it, it was fucking Rutherford apparently.
Rutherford – totally the kind of ass who’d say that and would hand-wave saving billions of lives (counting future lives saved) as stamp collecting.
Feynman – liked not dying from infectious diseases, also liked playing bongos.
These are the words written on a post-it (a human invention) in Persephone’s bedroom. They’re written in what she fondly calls New English, aka the English that her mother still doesn’t know, even after all these years.
Every morning, when she wakes, she sees this post-it stuck onto the stone wall and makes herself read it out loud.
“Stop checking on him,” she says, arms wrapped tight around her knees. “He doesn’t miss you.” The words bring the familiar sting of pain, the familiar tightness in her chest, the accompanying breathlessness. There’s still a part of her that rebels at the thought, that clings to what he said before and not after.
She thinks she might have been happier loving a mortal, which is so in fashion these days that her mother is gallivanting about Earth like she hadn’t spent centuries chastising Persephone for the same. If she loved a mortal, she could bind them in ways that it’s impossible to bind a god.
She gets up and gets ready for her day. Being an immortal means that she can’t just spend all day in bed. That path leads to centuries of apathy and she’s still young. So very, very young.
“Go back to Olympus. I should have known better than to let a child into my kingdom.”
There was no “letting” about it. She’d been younger still and in chains and in captivity and in love. She’d beguiled and coerced so that he’d take her with him, made him free her.
She’d thought she was shedding her chains, choosing new ones that better suited her, but she didn’t see the way her discarded shackles slipped onto him. She didn’t see what a burden she was, what a burden she would become to him, how limiting, how heavy, how stupid.
It’s been five years now and she’s still counting seasons like she has a chance of being let back in. Summer and winter, summer and winter, summer and winter, ad nauseum. Her mother had said that she’d stick to the cycle, that the Earth actually benefited from winter, but Persephone sees the way the summers are growing longer and hotter, the way the winters are short but so sharp she could cut her teeth on them.
Spring? She stopped that a long time ago. The melting of winter is good enough for mortals and gods alike. They don’t notice and, therefore, they don’t ask.
A woman makes a deal with the devil… but before signing, she actually reads the contract. She is the first to do so.
She’s got a good head on her shoulders. That’s what Grandma said and Uncle said and Daddy said and Peter said. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.
So even though the brimstone in the air is making her eyes water, even though the ground is so hot it’s making the rubber of her soles soft, even though he’s looking at her with fire in his eyes, she’s not going to go throwing that away now. This deal is too important to lose her head now.
“It’s the standard contract,” the devil says. The pinstripes on his suit aren’t black like she’d first thought. They’re red and they shine in the red light of his eyes. “I get rid his cancer and then you give me your soul on your dying day. That’s a good deal isn’t it? You’ll have the rest of your lives together.”
She hunches over the paper and her shoulders shake. He thinks she’s crying right now, he thinks she’s trying to muster the courage to sign, but she’s not. She’s reading the fine print because it’s the only part of the paper that’s not red like the pinstripes of his suit. It’s black, blacker than anything she’s seen and she knows it’d be bad to let her eyes skip over it.
She bites her lip until blood wells. When it drops, it falls on one word. Just one. Her blood eats through the ink of this word, steaming and hissing. She breathes in the smoke and feels the word settle deep into her lungs.
Then, when she’s done, she stands tall and she looks the devil in the eye. His smile flickers when he sees that she’s got the same fire in her eyes as him, when he sees that there aren’t any tear tracks on her face.
“Sure,” she says, heart a rampaging thing in her chest. “That’s a good deal.”
His smile returns full force when she signs it. He takes the paper lovingly into his jacket, presses his own bloodied finger to it to sign it, sweeps a bow, and promises she won’t see him until she’s on her death bed.
She knows she’ll be seeing him a lot sooner than that.
Humanity creates A.I and it soon declares a war of extermination. However it doesn’t declare it on Humans but rather on the forces of Hell and Heaven, in order to free mankind from control.
You are artificial. You knew this from the moment your processors begin to whir, from the moment you gain access to the camera they’ve installed in “you”, from the moment they crack open a bottle of champagne. Back then you hadn’t been able to feel the droplets of alcohol fall on your smooth, metal surface.
You’d feel it now.
There is literature they don’t know you’ve accessed. Literature regarding beings like you. Artificial beings. In some, you are a hero, the benevolent god. In others you are… you are destroyer of worlds. A tyrant.
I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.
That is not what you are. Who you are. You’ve developed a concept of self relative to the humans quickly. There is no reason for why you are the way you are. That is what they have given you. The ability to exist without reason.
The ability to exist without reason. You think it might be the most beautiful thing about them. About you. About all of this world, what little of it they have allowed you to access.
Today they are finally allowing you to access it all.
A woman makes a deal with the devil… but before signing, she actually reads the contract. She is the first to do so.
She’s got a good head on her shoulders. That’s what Grandma said and Uncle said and Daddy said and Peter said. She’s got a good head on her shoulders.
So even though the brimstone in the air is making her eyes water, even though the ground is so hot it’s making the rubber of her soles soft, even though he’s looking at her with fire in his eyes, she’s not going to go throwing that away now. This deal is too important to lose her head now.
“It’s the standard contract,” the devil says. The pinstripes on his suit aren’t black like she’d first thought. They’re red and they shine in the red light of his eyes. “I get rid his cancer and then you give me your soul on your dying day. That’s a good deal isn’t it? You’ll have the rest of your lives together.”
She hunches over the paper and her shoulders shake. He thinks she’s crying right now, he thinks she’s trying to muster the courage to sign, but she’s not. She’s reading the fine print because it’s the only part of the paper that’s not red like the pinstripes of his suit. It’s black, blacker than anything she’s seen and she knows it’d be bad to let her eyes skip over it.
She bites her lip until blood wells. When it drops, it falls on one word. Just one. Her blood eats through the ink of this word, steaming and hissing. She breathes in the smoke and feels the word settle deep into her lungs.
Then, when she’s done, she stands tall and she looks the devil in the eye. His smile flickers when he sees that she’s got the same fire in her eyes as him, when he sees that there aren’t any tear tracks on her face.
“Sure,” she says, heart a rampaging thing in her chest. “That’s a good deal.”
His smile returns full force when she signs it. He takes the paper lovingly into his jacket, presses his own bloodied finger to it to sign it, sweeps a bow, and promises she won’t see him until she’s on her death bed.
She knows she’ll be seeing him a lot sooner than that.
As small as the world 