Madness string 111997

Random mermaid
When my dad was alive, they fed off and supported each other's delusions, so I knew anytime a sentence began with 'well what your father and I think is ...' that whatever followed would be bullshit. And of course they would tell all their friends, who'd fully believe it. But then, my mom's mom was a complete whackadoodle as well, and told the neighbors she didn't have children, since my mom was an adult, yet also her grandson, my brother, was an assassin.

Any sufficiently advanced science is indistinguishable from magic. Ultimately the determining feature is how well it's understood in practice, or in retrospect. If a thousand years later nobody still understands it and has made no progress toward understanding it, maybe it is magic... or maybe they're just idiots.