Editing Genius The Transgression/Chapter One: The Cosmos (section)

===Genius in History and Legend===

''"3. And Jesus made of that clay twelve sparrows, and it was the Sabbath. And a child ran and told Joseph, saying: Behold, thy child is playing about the stream, and of the clay he has made sparrows, which is not lawful. And when he heard this, he went, and said to the child: Why dost thou do this, profaning the Sabbath? But Jesus gave him no answer, but looked upon the sparrows, and said: Go away, fly, and live, and remember me."

''-The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, Roberts-Donaldson Translation (Second Greek Form)''

The history of Inspiration is shrouded in myths, tall tales, and botched attempts at time travel. What is clear is that there have been geniuses for nearly as long as there has been civilization. The oldest orphans―wonders whose creators have disappeared or died―were found in Irem in the 1980s and dated to around 2500 BCE, and rumors of even older Egyptian orphans and ones of unknown origin are common. Wonders have been found from ancient Egypt and China, Babylon, Mesoamerica, and the Indian subcontinent. The remnants, no longer functional, of Greek, Roman, Persian, and Medieval Muslim wonders are common collector's items among the Inspired, and many orphans from the Renaissance and early industrial period are still in working order, and treated as status symbols by powerful geniuses.

It is also clear that very few of history's great philosophers, savants, and scientists were geniuses. The Inspired are characterized by an inability to express their ideas in universal and comprehensible terms that shape the technological development of the world. Of history's great scientists and thinkers, only Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, and Robert Hooke were certainly geniuses. (If reports are to be believed, da Vinci was a rogue who opposed Lemuria, Nikola Tesla was an Etherite, and Hooke belonged to the Invisible College.) Cases have been made for a number of other thinkers having been Inspired (or beholden), including Hero of Alexandria, Paracelsus, Gottfried Leibniz, Benjamin Franklin, Lady Ada Lovelace, Josef Mengele, Amelia Earheart, Philip K. Dick, and countless others, but evidence for these claims is spotty at best. No one involved in the Manhattan Project was a genius or a beholden, almost certainly: the Peerage and Lemuria both watched every scientist involved very closely for fear of what horrors contamination with Mania could cause. In general, history's greatest scientists, from Lavoisier to Darwin to Einstein to Turing, were defined by their ability to communicate universal concepts about the world in clear and unambiguous language to the majority of interested and educated human beings, a feat that very few geniuses are capable of replicating, 
and a task that would not interest most of them even if they could.

History before the Italian Renaissance―Inspired scholars favor the arbitrary date of 1452, the year of Leonardo da Vinci's birth―is largely obscured by Lemurian propaganda. Early history appears mostly to have been one of relentless Lemurian control, with independent geniuses being either entirely local or, if they made contact with their far-flung peers, suffering destruction at the hands of Lemuria. Tantalizing hints of exceptions to that rule, such as rumors of the Syntaxis League during Alexander the Great's Empire, and the Scholars of Contradiction who were said to have spread across and outside the Muslim world during the 8th 
century AD, remain elusive. Lemurian records during ancient Rome are extensive, but contradictory, with clear and believable accounts of everyday life mixed with impossible nonsense and murky parables. Many peers consider Rome the origin of Inspiration, but this is incorrect. If Inspiration has any single origin point, it is India; the traditions of genius likely spread from India westward shortly after the death of Alexander the Great. The East may have had a separate Inspired tradition originating in China, though many scholars cite 
ancient trade in secrets and technologies between Egypt and China as evidence of a fundamentally Mediterranean origin for all Inspiration.

Due to this murkiness, history (as opposed to legend) really starts with the Renaissance. The rapid spread of knowledge resulted in too many mortal mechanics, philosophers, and experimenters for Lemuria to monitor, and countless Breakthroughs. Improved roads led to better communication, and in no time, it seemed, there was a community of Inspired chattering eagerly with one-another, and not interested at all in Lemuria's promises or threats. A similar thing happened in China at nearly the same time. The Lemurians, fearing an ascendant and organized Inspired population in China, ruthlessly annihilated almost all traces of that society.
 
Their work was so thorough that by the mid 17th century, not even their name was known.

But Lemuria had neglected (comparatively backward) Europe, and geniuses had spread everywhere―and worse, mortal thinkers had gotten all sorts of ideas into their heads, something that had not happened as extensively in the East. Attempts at repairing the damage with promises or violence proved futile, and Lemuria was forced to activate the next phase of its Race History early.

The result was several centuries of failure for Lemuria, interspersed with spasms of genocidal violence: every time Lemuria focused its efforts on eradicating the Peerage, mortal thinkers made new discoveries; every time they tried to drive the clock back in the mortal world, free geniuses spread and prospered. The loose alliance of free Inspired continued to grow in power, despite constant pressure from Lemuria, until, in the 20th century, Lemuria began an open war that resulted in its near-total defeat.

The last half-century has been bewildering for geniuses, whatever their political allegiance: there used to be something to "push against," a plan that could be embraced or ignored or even harmed, but there isn't a plan now. The Peerage flailed about for a time, directionless. It took the development of the Internet to change that.

Estimates of the genius population before 1990 or so guessed that one person in a million was a genius, giving a total world genius population of a few thousand. That was wrong: once the Inspired got online, superior communication allowed for a revised estimate: there were, probably, at least a million geniuses out there, and many of them wanted to talk to one-another. The Internet was a revolution, and it continues to be so: there are now a million Inspired online (though many probably have no idea what they are), with estimates of the 
total genius population being anywhere from twice to ten times that. Since the arrival of the Internet, the life of a genius has changed considerably: the days of laboring in isolation are over, unless a genius chooses to live that way, and while funding and lab space are always at a premium, a genius now knows that a community of peers is no farther away than the nearest connection. How this will ultimately change Inspired society is still uncertain.