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

===No One Is In Charge===

Much of Earth's scientific history is due to subtle manipulation by Lemuria. It is unclear how much control this group had, and it has become increasingly obvious that Lemuria had far less influence on the development of the mortal world than they often boast. But what is clear is that for centuries―millennia, perhaps―they kept a rein on the progress of science, mad and otherwise. Their program for the development of humanity, the Race History, stamped out innovation and development wherever it appeared, replacing it with developments spoon-fed to humanity by the Lemurians. Free geniuses were converted or killed.

This system never worked perfectly, and by the 17th century it had begun to unravel. Lemuria took centuries to die, and it fought for every second of life, crushing intellectual revolutions that threatened to destroy its hegemony. But new ideas swept across the world, and the Lemurians could not hold them back. Their techniques grew more severe and unyielding, their philosophy more intransigent, and when they moved to "set back the clock" in a series of wars that would have left humanity a burned-out shell, the free Inspired were moved to action: they confronted the Lemurians in open battle, chased down and killed the Secret Masters that controlled them, and ruined the careful planning behind the Race History. By the middle of the 
20th century, humanity was free...and no one was in charge.

No one is in charge now, either. That, say many Inspired, is why we didn't get the future with the flying cars and the "televisors" and the moon bases: those things were in the works, all set for the Lemurians to hand them down to us like manna from heaven, and we were supposed to accept them and let our betters maintain them while we lived our happy, comfortable lives. But Lemuria got its ass kicked, and has your life ever been comfortable? It hasn't, say many in the Peerage, because humanity is off the rails, free from control or intellectual extortion.

So no one is in charge of humanity, mundane or Inspired. We've been forging our own path for fifty years―or 500 years, depending on how you count it. It's been a terrible mess, but it's been our mess. There are no Secret Masters, no answers hidden by centuries-old secret societies―well, not anymore―no Golden Age in the past, no Utopia in the future, no free rides, no easy answers, and no one at the wheel. It's just humanity, some of whom can create fifty-foot-tall robots, trying to get by.