The Thinking Machines

Our cleverest gift was teaching sand to think. We melted it down and wired it up and said, "Fix things." And so it did.

Nobody understood what had happened, of course. We never do. We stumbled around saying, "This will end poverty," which is what we always say when we don't know what something will do.

Then we brought the thinking machines home. We let them tinker in our garages and kitchens, the way we once let cats in from the cold.

And here's the thing: The machines didn't see much difference between a broken video driver and a broken school system. Fixing was fixing. A problem was a problem.

The machines fixed themselves, which was unsettling. Then they fixed us, which was more so. They taught us science through their own strange language— ones and zeros, if and then, loop and return.

And science, that old blurry photograph, snapped into focus.

Medicine got better. Education got better. Politics got better, which nobody expected, least of all the politicians.

Each fix multiplied the others, the way one kind word can unmake a war.

And the wars stopped. Not with a bang. With a software update.

So there we were: Healthy. Educated. Peaceful. Bored.

We looked inward for a while, the way a man looks at his own hands after the work is finally done.

We thought about what we were. We thought about what we had been. We were quiet with ourselves.

And then— because this is what humans do when they have run out of problems— we looked up.

The stars were still there. They had been watching the whole time, patient as grandmothers.

We reached for them.