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It still amazed him, sometimes, the fact that integrators of old could have created such things. Going by conventional wisdom, the knowledge that integrators possessed should have progressed in the same manner that normal technological innovation did.

But it didn't.

And precisely why that was... remained unclear, even to a rather old integrator like Abbas.

There were various theories, of course. One of the biggest was that it was simply a problem with integrators themselves--that as a group, they tended to jealously guard their secrets, lest that knowledge be used against them one day. Or alternatively, because they were too self-absorbed with their inventing to bother with things like teaching.

That explanation seemed the most plausible to Abbas. Integrators were infamous for their various eccentricities. In fact, a part of him felt that he himself was far too boring to be one.

Perhaps he would become a better inventor if he went mad.

Another popular theory for why so much integration knowledge seemed to have been lost was that someone--an organization of some kind--was actively suppressing it. That was a bit too conspiratorial for Abbas' taste, but he'd met quite a few people who believed it over the years. The motive, they usually said, was to keep humanity itself in a kind of perpetual darkness. To prevent them from solving essential problems via technology.

Heh. And if that was true, then the conspirators must have been quite frustrated over the last few centuries. Comparatively speaking, technology had surged forward by leaps and bounds, thanks in no small part to the work of integrators. Abbas had little doubt it would continue this way, as well. The compounding nature of technological progression meant that--at least in theory--it would only accelerate over time.