August 23, 2097 3:23AM

Uploaded Recording from Construction Fabricator located at the CBIDT

Phil Barkley: Mipsters revel in their ignorance by defining intelligence as something with no practical value.

 

– Design schematics were uploaded by Phil Barkley into the fabricator. The output consisted predominantly of carbon and iron.

 

The fabricator was a ‘dumb’ machine, therefor it was programmed to reply to sapiens speech with external beeping sounds*.

 

Fabricator: Beep beep.

 

Phil Barkley: I mean that’s the only explanation, right?”

 

The fabricator displayed the readout:

 

Common Cement Trowel 6” X 2”

C 23.7% Fe 56.3% O 7.9% Ca 3.6% K 2.4% H 2.1% N 1.4% S 1.2% Cl 0.7% Mn 0.5% P 0.2%

2 minutes 31 seconds

 

At this point, Phil Barkley was sitting on the floor of the CBIDT Greenhouse. The building was unfinished. The construction process had taken so long, that windows were now missing, and the structural integrity was compromised. It looked abandoned.

 

Phil Barkley: My first attempt at making brick was three years ago.

 

Phil Barkley: It was a failure, when I pulled the cooked clay out of the oven, they were ceramic pancakes that were only good for nothing.

 

The Fabricator: Beep beep beeeeep.

 

The conversation continued as Phil grabbed a set of wooden brick slat molds which were hanging on a wall adjacent to the fabricator.

 

Phil Barkley: That’s when I remembered an old biblical story about brick making slaves complaining about straw.

 

Phil Barkley: Why would they need straw? I wondered. What use would a readily available, easily flammable, binding agent have in the creation of making bricks? …Oh.

 

Phil Barkley: You know sometimes you need to start a project before you have the tools, so you can figure out what tools you need to finish the project.

 

Phil Barkley unraveled a bundle of switch-grass to be used as the binding agent for his bricks. Switch-grass vegetation is found throughout the southwest of North America. It can be used in place of straw when drying sapienmade bricks and is readily available.

 

The Fabricator: Beeep beep.

 

Phil Barkley: Viscosity won the first battle, but I won the war.

 

Phil scraped the switch-grass against a metal grate. This separated the shafts from the leaves. He was now ready to mix together the two feed-stock of sapienmade brick. Clay and straw, or in this case, switch-grass.

This brick making workshop was not a required course at the CBIDT Institute, not that any courses were. Still, Phil was hoping the history of Masonry would resonate with his students. Instead, he was sitting in the Institute’s greenhouse alone, making mud out of the soil beneath his feat, while talking to a hunk of metal. A construction Fabricator. A machine that didn’t look all that different from a stainless-steal oven.

“Beep beep,” the fabricator replied.

“You and I are both masons you know?” Phil continued, “masonry is the building of structures from smaller units. I’m using brick and mortar, you are using the very elements that make up the universe.”

“Beep.”

“It says a lot about us sapiens. Our race of people. Three different civilizations. Asia, Europe and the Americas. It started with stone, all three carved down mountains to create blocks built from millions of years of geology. All three also realized that mud walls built against fire pits were stronger than ones that just baked out in the sun.” Phil was now mixing the switch-grass into the pile of mud using the back-end of a hoe, “The Americas never got past that point, probably one of the reasons they collapsed so fast. Both China and Europe built kilns to cook the mud blocks at two thousand degrees American. The new material that created the modern city.

“Beep beep”

“That’s when Asia fell behind. Europe, really the Romans, fair to say a single Roman engineer in Italy, figured out you could grind up a certain type of volcanic ash, called pozzolan, and mix it with lime to create opus caementicium, you know, cement. It must have been like magic. Maliable stone which was so strong it could set underwater. Buildings and foundations that are still used today. Maybe the most important invention in the history of sapiens.

An empire was created, and the technique spread throughout their known world. All while the Rubicon was crossed, an adopted son took charge, a republic became an empire, only to split apart, change capitals and religions, then collapse.

You’d think that’d be it. But here’s the thing I will never understand. The thing I fear most in this world. That engineer who created cement died. Then I guess everyone he taught died as well.

And all the other citizens of Rome, all those people. The richest, most educated, most privileged sapiens in the world. Not one of them ever bothered to ask what that stuff in between the brick was.

Because they forgot how to make that stuff.

It was gone.

For a thousand years the invention of cement was lost.

Phil began to pack the now grass laden mud into the wooden molds so they would shape into their final block form. “Their entire world collapsed around them, and they called it bad luck.”

“Beep,” the fabricator replied.

“They blamed the Gods and religion, the immigrants and culture, even their grandparents and all those who came before. But never themselves. They never bothered to realize all they had to do, was ask what that stuff in between the bricks was.”

“Beep.”

“Where would sapienkind be with that extra thousand years?” Phil then realized he was talking to a hunk of metal which had no opinion, or even thought on the subject. “And here I am, sitting in this greenhouse all alone, making bricks, talking to you.”

“Beep,” but this beep was different. A ringing sound came from within the fabricator. Phil pulled down the metal hatch and grabbed for the freshly made cement trowel. He looked over the device. It was perfect down to the atom.

“Any five year old could use instabuild and a fabricator to make a better greenhouse then this one I built myself. No one person knows how to build the world anymore. Cement was easy, just a few chemicals. What would we do without you.”

A flash of light caught Phil’s eye and he looked upward, through the broken windows of the building, into the night’s sky. “Look, it’s a meteor shower,” he said.

*The mass adoption of ‘smart’ devices led to Sapiens talking freely to their machines, as if they were sentient beings. Although the beeps of ‘dumb’ devices signified absolutely no meaning at all, it was quickly determined by the corporations that most people don’t care if their listener has anything that could be classified as real intelligence, they just want to know they are being heard.

It’s a funny thing about sapiens. They think their normal, is normal. Only those who breath fresh air, complain about pollution, and the only ones who talk of being silenced, are the ones who have the right to say so.