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| British Museum |
On the giant screen they all saw Thompson
Rush’s hand descend and his fingers press the keyboard.
He saw it spreading in seconds like a
lethal virus, ripping through the world’s computer networks, a metaphysical
virus so potent that users could pick it up simply by scanning the Internet,
through e-mail attachments and vulnerable Internet information servers.
What evil could it stir in this realm of
digits?
He saw it reaching out to children on
their computers, corporation workers, police, air traffic controllers, hospital
workers, students... He saw the texts of the Destiny Stela as a creature coming
alive, like a scarab crawling through the desert of data, streaming strings of
binary computer code off its shiny back - grains of zeroes and ones, like sand,
as it attacked the pillars of science, reason and religion and faith, taking
humankind back to an age of fear where it was at the mercy of primeval forces.
