I was tempted to believe at first that this next world involved mass
spiritual abilities. There appears to be no particular reason why half the
population possesses the same special ability, and the other half does not.
It’s quite clearly not genetic, as one twin will often have it, while the
other does not. But not always. It seems to be, on the whole, random. One in
every two people will, early in their childhood development, start to be
accompanied by a guide. This guide, which this world calls their
excelschian, appears in the form of a person, and can alter their shape to
fit their human’s needs or preferences. Only the human attached to the
excelschian can see it. It’s unclear if excelschians came to be due to some
evolutionary necessity, but it seems rather unlikely, since like I said, it
happens to only half the population. The other half is left to their own
devices, which as we’ll discuss, may not be a bad thing. The excelschian can
answer any question that their human has, as long as the answer falls within
the realm of humanity’s current well of knowledge. They could not, for
instance, explain the answer to life, the universe, everything, because no
one knows what that is. For the excelschian to know it, enough other people
need to know it so that it’s accepted as fact, if only until new evidence
comes to light. It couldn’t tell you someone else’s password, and it couldn’t
reveal some other well-protected secret. It could, however, reveal other
secrets, if too many people are cognizant of it, which is what really makes
this universe so much different than others. State and trade secrets, and
other proprietary information, does not exist, because it would not be able
to. It wouldn’t even occur to this version of the human race to try to hoard
such hidden knowledge, because it would get out, and it would get out
quickly. So their civilization was built from a place of honesty and
openness, not because they were more virtuous than you or I, but because it
wouldn’t work anyway.
The assumption here is that people who have excelschians are more
intelligent than the people who don’t. After all, they can pass any test
simply by posing the questions to their excelschians. The excelschian won’t
answer you if you don’t ask it something, but the asking can come in many
forms. You could rub your finger along the paper, underneath the text, so it
knows what you want to know, or someone else can ask it, and you can use
microexpressions to defer it to your excelschian. This is all well and good,
except that the excelschianed never really learn anything for themselves,
because they never need to. Regular people have to work hard, and study new
data, and memorize concepts, and fully grasp practical information. They’re
generally more independent, stronger-willed, and far more likely to make the
informational breakthroughs that people with excelschians will come to take
for granted. They’re the ones moving humanity forward, and advancing science
and technology. They’re changing the way people live, and ultimately making
the world a better place. Sadly, this was not enough. With only half the
people actually working for progress, this version of Earth was not able to
develop sustainable strategies early enough to satisfy the antinatalist
eco-terrorist Ochivari. In the early days of The Darning Wars—if there even
is such a thing—the Ochivari came to this Earth, and destroyed it. And since
this universe did not allow time travel, the attack could not be undone.
They never stood a chance.
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