A Revolutionary Coincidence

Every once in a long long while humanity makes a leap so revolutionary that the course of history is forever changed. Most often than not, those leaps are fueled by accidental discoveries or simple coincidences. And behind all revolutionary discoveries there is always a hero.

Juxxto is one of those heroes. He worked at the Robot Factory as head engineer and his invention came just at the right time. Juxxto’s invention turned a curse into a blessing.

The curse was a strange airborne parasite that had spread trough the West Hemisphere. The parasite attacked the nerve cells in the spinal cord. Those affected lost all movement of the body. The victims survived but were unable to move. The parasite extended from city to city, from country to country. Soon a world epidemic broke off. Humans were doomed to contract the infection to which there was no cure.

And it was in those dark, dark times that Juxxto’s invention, came to be. At just the perfect time.

Juxxto’s invention was a mind controlled exo-skeleton that could restore the abilities lost by paralyzed victims. They could move, lift objects, walk, sit and even talk again.

When the Robot Factory announced the invention, Juxxto became a celebrity overnight. Production could barely meet demand as more and more humans contracted the disease and lost their ability to move.

Juxxto’s exo-skeleton did more than restore movement. It returned humans to a long forgotten glory and reignited a new Renaissance. At last, humans were no longer limited by their physical bodies. They could complete any physical feat reserved for gods. Freed up from physical limitations humans embraced their new mechanical partnership. The distinction between humans and robots disappeared in just one generation.

Few times in human history a single invention transformed our species so significantly. And all of it thanks to a small parasite which origin is still unknown. We do know it is a silicon based parasite, which really only leave us with two options. It is an alien parasite, or an artificially created one.

Those that studied Juxxto’s education, point out the curious fact that the head of the Robot Factory, was not only an excellent mechanical engineer but also a notable synthetic bio-engineer, whose specialty was a particular kind of silicon -based lifeforms.

A coincidence indeed. Like so often such coincidences lie at the heart of the most magnificent of human revolutions.