Читать книгу Time - Stephen Baxter - Страница 19

Thank you, your honour. I only want to say this.

I want everybody to know what we in the Eden League are attempting.

We are developing an internal technology which will selectively suppress the so-called ‘higher’ brain functions in humans. It is clear to us that our ‘intelligence’ has been of no real evolutionary advantage and therefore we intend to discard it. That is why I have no regrets about the mine we attempted to drop onto the laboratory at Key Largo. Frankly I wish it had worked, and I know that statement will affect my sentencing. I don’t care; in fact I welcome it.

And I can announce from this platform that we have already started researching a counter-technology that will similarly restore the squid to their innocence.

What those fascist scientists are doing is cruel.

I don’t mean the experiments where they scoop out the brains of a sentient, intelligent creature. I don’t mean the way they plan to put them to work, farming the oceans for us and even shooting them off into space, where once they were free.

I mean the fact that these animals have been given minds at all.

For centuries we have dragged these beautiful creatures from the Ocean for our food. Now, for our own convenience, we have committed a much greater crime. We have inflicted on these squid an awareness of mortality. And for that, may the Mother Ocean forgive us.

Thank you. That’s all.