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

===The Mere Mortal Law (aka Gilligan's Rule)===

Regular people screw up wonders. No one's sure why this is so, but mere mortals have a near-miraculous ability to damage mad science, destroying it or causing it to run amok. If they get their grubby little hands on a wonder, they'll break it and it will explode or eat them. Geniuses don't know exactly why this happens, but every genius knows that letting a regular person near a wonder is like giving revolvers to monkeys: only hilarious from a safe distance. Scientists (sane ones) are included here as mere mortals, and they can be even worse: a group of trained scientists know just how to fiddle with a wonder in a way that will cause it to break down. This further alienates a genius from regular humanity: she cannot communicate her ideas to her peers, or even show off her creations, without risking disaster.

Gilligan's Law, coupled with the Black Box Law, explains why a genius can't just build a teleporter and market it for three easy installments of $19.99 on her Website: a mortal who gets his hands on a wonder will break it, and due to the nature of Mania, every mortal who messes around with it will break it in a unique and uniquely horrific way. Attempts to predict what will go wrong are impossible, and will probably just make things worse.