Page 34 - Fables volume 3

microcosm came into existence before the unpredictable advent of
Homo sapiens. Skink: how do you respond to this?”
The government’s representative squinted and scowled. “Your
Honor, plaintiff is engaged in special pleading against the original
inexorable and unambiguous statement of Natural Law, as repeatedly
understood by all as effectively a pronouncement of the obvious and
semantically redundant proposition that those who die before they
reproduce will not extend their genetic inheritance into the future. All
corollaries—kill or be killed, survival of the fittest, implacable fate—
are not revisions of that necessary causality, merely different ways of
saying the same thing. To argue that this principle is nullified in some
fashion by the appearance of intelligent bipeds is absurd. They do not
operate outside of nature; how and why they may be the agents of
extinction for any other species on the planet—indeed, of their
own!—is not an issue for this court to rule upon. The plaintiff’s
demise, and of any other related extinction linked to his via class
action, must be seen as qualitatively identical in the rule of Law of
Nature. I therefore request the appeal be denied.”
Learned Claw pushed forward against the log, flicking his tongue at
Leopard and his lawyer. “How say you to that, Baboon?”
“Your Honor, my distinguished colleague has raised the question
of qualitative difference between Nature and intelligence, effectively
attempting a priori to settle a problem that this court has refused to
resolve definitively in past cases. As the bipeds transfer their abilities
of analytical thought and conscious awareness to etherealized systems
of their own device, and as those systems detach from their
organisms of origin, can those qualities truly be deemed natural? Only
by a leap of faith and logic, I submit. The Law of Nature does not
apply to many, if not all, activities of intelligence. It may follow other
principles, but your power to redress wrongs in the entire biosphere
should override any such putative laws; if anything, it is plaintiff’s
hope that amendments to the basic law will soon be made. Clearly,
what the bipeds are doing with their brains requires regulation. Until
then, we beg the court to release my client from his sentence of
death.”
“Thank you, counselor. And you, Skink. You have made your
cases. I do find a flaw in both of them, however, and it will be the
key to my decision. You both speak of “species” as a given. It is not.

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