“Zecharia Sitchin had it partly right; our species evolved in order to ‘mine’ a substance… but it wasn’t gold. Machines could do that far better. No, it was something absolutely lethal; so lethal, in fact, that the intelligences involved in our origin and evolution could not risk exposure, let alone handling of this stuff. For most forms of intelligent life, the stuff we ‘mine, handle and refine’ is as lethal as hard radiation. But it wasn’t gold. It was language. Flat, conceptual, representational language. Words. We are the species that can partly survive exposure, but even we are eventually obliterated by the results.”

— an a i