There was a giant spider in a tree behind my house that never seemed to move. For a month I would greet him, Jeff, whenever I left or returned home. Since Jeff never seemed to move, I got to thinkin’. How do spiders work? Do they realize they are spiders and go straight to building a web to chill on, or is that only a response to hunger? After they build a web, what happens if they don’t catch anything? Do they abandon the web to find better real estate, or do they just sit there until they catch something or get caught; or starve to death?
In: 1127
“A million-year prejudice stares back at him. The ancient cannibal spider, whose old instincts still form the shell within which their culture is nestled, recoils in horror. He sees the conflict within them: tradition against progress, the known past against the unknown future. They have come so far, as a species; they have the intellect to break from the shackles of yesterday. But it will be hard.”
― Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Time
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