It is pretty obvious, come to think of it, that life on this planet once
originated in a mad dash in cobbling together such elements as came to hand
at the time into some structure capable of auto-reproduction, as it had been
formulated in the manual. Fascinating as the brief was, what to do on the
off-chance that the level of intelligence of the resulting creatures would
equal, or even exceed, that of their architects? Of course it wouldn't have
been fair to pre-empt the most fascinating of all options right from the
word go - after all, shared credit goes a long way towards making amends.
And so a compromise was found in the incorporation of a delaying factor: the
notion of intelligence.
*
Whenever there's more than one way to read a sentence, trust me to make the
wrong choice. I'm always at odds with user instructions. Like a true
disciple of Baden Powell, I keep plugging away, trying frantically yet
fruitlessly to convert strings of words into sound advice concerning the
appliance I am so desperately keen to operate. In fact, I have been known
several years later (by which time I have usually come to embrace the right
procedure by intuition) to make occasional attempts at re-reading these
types of text, only to come to the conclusion that despite the skills I have
mastered, I'm every bit as inept as before at implementing the instructions
in the prescribed way. Which if anything is yet more proof of the
fascination of language.
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