In doing this, you completely reversed the function of the Probability Engine. We built it in order to avoid making unfavorable decisions. You used it to insure that unfavorable decisions would be made. You actualized worlds which for the most part would never have had a remote chance of existing, if you had left the decision up to the people inhabiting your world. Normally, even individuals of your caliber will show considerable shrewdness in weighing the consequences of their actions and in avoiding any choice that seems apt to result in unpleasant consequences. You, however, forced the unwise choices to be made as well as the wise ones—and you continued to do this after your own race had acquired more real wisdom than you yourselves possessed.
For the Probability Engine in no way increased your mental stature. Indeed, it had just the opposite effect, for it gave you powers which enabled you to escape the consequences of your bad judgments—and it truckled to your delusions by only showing you what you wanted to see. Understand, it is just a machine. A perfect servant—not an educator. And perfect servants are the worst educators. True, you could have used it to educate yourselves. But you preferred to play at being gods, under the guise of performing scientific experiments on a world that you didn't faintly understand. God-like, you presumed to judge and bless and damn. Finally, in trying to make good on your damnations, you came perilously close to destroying much more than you intended to—there might even have been unpleasant repercussions in our own cosmos.
And now, small things, what shall we do with you and your worlds? Obviously we cannot permit you to retain the Probability Engine or any of the powers that go with it or the talismans. Also, we cannot for a moment consider destroying any of the alternate worlds, with a view to simplification. That which has been given life must be allowed to use life, and that which has been faced with problems must be given an opportunity of solving them. If the time-splits were of more recent origin, we might consider healing them; but deviation has proceeded so far that that is out of the question.
We might stay here and supervise your worlds, delivering judgments, preventing destructive conflicts, and gradually lifting you to a higher mental and spiritual level. But we do not relish playing god. All our experiences in that direction have been unpleasant, making us conclude that, just as with an individual, no species can achieve a full and satisfactory maturity except by its own efforts.
Again, we might remain here and perform various experiments, using the set-ups which you have created. But that would be abhorrent.
So, small things, there being no better alternative, we will take away our engine, leaving the situation you have created to develop as it will—with transtime invasions and interworld wars no longer an immediate prospect, though looming as a strong future possibility. With such sufferings and miseries and misunderstandings as exist, but with the future wide open and no unnatural constraints put on individuals sufficiently clear-headed and strong-willed to seek to avoid unpleasant consequences. And with the promise of rich and unusual developments lying ahead, since, so far as we know, your many-branched time-stream is unique among the cosmoses. We will watch your future with interest, hoping some day to welcome you into the commonwealth of mature beings.
You may say that we are at fault for allowing the Probability Engine to fall into your hands—and indeed, we shall make even stronger efforts to safeguard it from accident or tinkering in the future. But remember this. Young and primitive as you are, you are not children, but responsible and awakened beings, holding in your hands the key to your future, and with only yourselves to blame if you wantonly go astray.
As for you individuals who are responsible for all this botchwork, I sympathize with your ignorance and am willing to admit that your intentions were in part good. But you chose to play at being gods, and even ignorant and well-intentioned gods must suffer the consequences of their creations. And that shall be your fate.
With regard to you, Thorn, your case is of course very different. You responded to our blindly broadcast influencings, stole a talisman, and finally summoned us in time to prevent catastrophe. We are grateful. But there is no reward we can give you. To remove you from your environment to ours would be a meaningless gesture, and one which you would regret in the end. We cannot permit you to retain any talismanic powers, for in the long run you would be no better able to use them wisely than these others. We would like to continue your satisfying state of triplicated personality—it presents many interesting features—but even that may not be, since you have three destinies to fulfill in three worlds. However, a certain compromise solution, retaining some of the best features of the triplication, is possible.