Madness string 93488

Random mermaid
I read of a man who stood to speak at a funeral of a friend. He referred to the dates on the tombstone from the beginning... to the end. He noted that first came the date of birth and spoke of the following date with tears, but he said what mattered most of all was the dash between those years. For that dash represents all the time they spent alive on earth and now only those who loved them know what that little line is worth.

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.