unlistened warnings

You asked me how fast they were, what steps we could take to protect ourselves, that kind of thing. You didn't understand why I had moved to the edge of the swamp and swore that I would live my life in a reedy hut writing in spidery calligraphy on dried parchment. You wanted to make an issue of it. You wanted my expertise on the matter. I told you to stuff it. I told you, again and again that no strategy devisable would work. You pestered, editorialized, proclaimed the power of our technology.

One of them is eight hundred and fifty seven octillion times more intelligent than our entire species. Each one of them moves thirty septillion times faster... than the speed of information in our computer network. And that thing you did, didn't just incur the wrath of one of them. You incurred the wrath of four thousand, a whole creche. I told you, very explicilty, to not do that hideously stupid thing that you then went ahead and did. There's a reason that the artifact they left behind was protected the way it was, and yet, despite the warnings that both I gave, and others gave, and in fact, some of their kind gave you, you persisted, opened the thing up.

And you were perplexed, after the whole affair had reached a sort of conclusion, why they wouldn't let you make me the scapegoat for our entire species. If you think that's the extent of their manipulations, oh, the next twelve years news headlines or so are going to confuse you immensely. You basically asked them to do what you had done to them to be done to us. I'm going to go back to my reedy hut and steamed saltcakes and hope the next time one of your ilk decided to do something equally foolish as far as that Them is concerned, that they won't come running to me to tell them in as clear language as possible "don't, ever bother".