I know it drives some people batty, but I like to write incomplete characters, where you know just enough about them to have a feel for who they are, but not completely explain everything about them. So my feeling about these two unnamed characters sharing Abby and Delilah's situation is that, like Abby and Delilah, they're more than a little involved in the shady goings on of the Vol, but have for one reason or another fallen afoul of their masters. They're familiar enough with the hunts to know what's going on.
AUTHOR'S NOTE
The stalker bots are sort of like hunting dogs. They use them to keep the hunt fast-paced and exciting for the hunters, so the quarry stay running and don't just hide somewhere for hours on end.
A few years back, I wrote a blurb contemplating the end of science. To sum it up, physics today is approaching a state of crisis because we're nearing the end of our capability to feasibly observe particles at smaller scales than we currently have, and on the macro end of the spectrum we've already viewed as far as is possible into the observable universe. What this means is that our ability to experimentally confirm theories about the deepest mysteries of our universe may be limited, and many theorists today don't even believe experimental confirmation is necessary for the acceptance of new theories. The danger of this, I wrote, was that science could lose credibility and eventually lose the ground it has gained on religion and superstition. Reevaluating those thoughts today, I think I was half right. Science won't lose ground to religion; science will become religion.
So, if experimental confirmation is no longer the gold standard, how do you “prove” a theory right? You know the answer to this one: a computer model. The problem with relying on a computer model, however, is that it's a form of circular reasoning. It can only tell you what the programmer told it to tell you. It's a weird situation: Computer models are a lot more impressive to people who don't work with computers… yet people who work with computers are the biggest evangelists for computer modeling… because they work with computers. The truth is, if you give a team of programmers a pile of data, a pile of money, and enough time, they can tailor an algorithm to “predict” that data. It's like taking a multiple choice exam where you're given the answers, and you need to fill in the questions. There's an infinity of questions that fit the data… but only one truly “correct” question. This means, in the absence of experimental verification, any theory can be “proven” correct… and even conflicting theories can be simultaneously “correct.” You'll have to pick one and believe it, and justify that belief – that “faith” – by whatever means helps you sleep at night: you appreciate the mathematical beauty and symmetry of it, or it matches your sense of how the universe “should” work, or it's convenient for a sociopolitical agenda you support. It's all just turtles and teapots and spaghetti monsters at this point anyway.
What I get a sense of when I read the things everyday people write about science, is that most people who “believe in science,” don't actually understand science very well. They don't understand the basics of evolution, the know nothing about orbital mechanics, and they don't know anything about the Big Bang theory except that it exists and has a cool name. They just understand that, in the battle between science and religion, science is the “big dog” and religion is enfeebled and dying. So people form a tribal association with science (as they understand it) because they want to be on the winning team. So now what happens when you have multiple scientific disciplines claiming to be sole authorities on “The Science,” and demanding the world's affairs be ordered in accordance with The Science? Which side do you choose? And if your side's truth is The Truth, then who are these unwashed others who dare go against The Science? Is this starting to sound familiar? History can be weirdly cyclical. Wouldn't it be horrifically poetic if the coming centuries see us reliving the religious strife of Medieval Europe, only instead of Catholic versus Protestant, it's Big Rippers versus Heat Deathers? Might be a good premise for a sci fi story, but it'll require a better writer than me!
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