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Harry Mitchell: [talks to David] You're going to look for her, aren't you? You won't find her. They'll make sure of it. Even if they weren't trying to stop you, there are nine million people in this city. You'll never find her. Forget about her. Move on with your life.
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David Norris: What ever happened to Free Will?
Thompson: We actually tried Free Will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire we stepped back to see how you'd do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages for five centuries... until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought maybe we just needed to do a better job of teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason, then in 1910 we stepped back. Within fifty years, you'd brought us World War I, the Depression, Fascism, the Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis. At that point a decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn't fix. You don't have free will, David. You have the appearance of free will.
Phyllis MacBryde
Extended Reading
