Giblets are the nicest species in the galaxy. Kindness precedes all other necessities for the Giblets. A neighbor falling ill is more grieving and painful than any maladies a Giblet would feel for themselves. Empathy permeates their way of life. Space taxis that shortcut through the Giblet side of the galaxy find their transmitters swarmed with overwhelmingly amiable complements and requests for good deeds. An unprepared driver will have their mapping functionality rerouted to handle the transmission influx and be left adrift in some nook of space. Bar these kindness casualties, the Giblets drive to imbue goodness in everything that squirms and wheezes might seem like a just one. But in the course of two generations, the Giblet’s planet was to be completely destroyed by their own empathetic emissions.

It started with a few bright Giblets that had been born at the start of the intraconnection expansion of the population. Giblet engineers had made the technological leap from slow audio communication, to screamingly fast written communication over an internet protocol. Giblet A could tell Giblet B about the latest drama in town A, and Giblet B in town B could have that info to start disseminating faster than a bee can buzz. Giblet’s couldn’t help but wonder over the virtual trinkets that could be developed for such a service: sites for Giblet’s to upload information about their relationship status, their birthday, or what interesting random task they were doing that second. Sites for writing large numbers in front of people that told them how much money they could own but didn’t right that second because someone else was using it right now. Sites that told you in detail how to cook any cuisine from around the world but hid the recipe in piles of text all about the emotional status of the recipe creator. Sites that were empty, sites that were full, sites that plotted the prices of fuel. Some sites let the Giblet sit there while it stuffed any extra space in their brain with product names. All sorts of sites, all sorts of potential, and everything was done with the kindest intentions – the Giblets being the nicest species in the galaxy, of course.

What of the few bright Giblets? The first one had an idea for an algorithm. Distributed, decentralized, and run completely in the cloud. It managed finance, and contracts, and even had a marketplace. The algorithm was incredible for it snatched power away from the central controllers that had tried to bottleneck the internet’s expanding cash flow. An algorithm as crafty as this one only asked for a small fee: that each Giblet that wanted to use it please cough up a little bit of electric power to help secure the transactions. What fun, every Giblet thought, this is revolutionary. The second Giblet heard of this idea and used their bright mind to take swift action. The Giblet has a mind so big that it could fit so many different ideas for how to use this algorithm inside it. Most other Giblet’s had small minds and could only fit a few ideas. The big-minded Giblet had ideas about coins, ideas about games, ideas about checking tickets on trains. Ideas for travel, insurance for a casualty, and how to dress oneself in virtual reality. How to turn your hair green or purple or blue, how to make money by younger people doing things for you. The ideas just flew! And he implemented everyone of them, and everyone of them used the new algorithm. Upon hearing about the new algorithm, the third Giblet couldn’t hold back their excitement. But they decided to wait and as they waited the watched the pile of products the second Giblet was making grow and grow and grow. It was a feat of determination for sure. Yet as that pile grew, so did the third Giblet grow uneasy. To it’s office it went and measured a few quantities, counted some numbers, and summed this and that and, lo and behold, when all was done it sprinted from its office to tell warn the second Giblet. But the Giblets, above all else, were a kind species and this Giblet hesitated for it did not want to spoil the good fortune and happiness of such a determined Giblet. After all, the inventions of this Giblet were improving the quality of life for Giblet’s planet-wide. So the Giblet addressed the matter carefully. It told the second Giblet how, in the kindest possible way and with no intent to hurt the other Giblet’s feelings in any way, that the algorithms being used would destroy the planet. The little bits of energy that the algorithm demanded from everyone was wasteful and that soon – despite the decentralization and distribution – there would be no planet to enjoy any of these leisures on. The second Giblet was hurt and unhappy at the unkind words, for it took it as a personal attack. All the work it had done and all the hours it had toiled to make such wonderful and useful products? Giblet’s admired brains such as its and it was warmed that the work it was doing inspired future generations to do great things. All it wanted was to optimize the spread of kindness throughout the Giblet globe and achieve that perfect Nirvana that Giblet’s enjoyed goggling at. How could the third Giblet come to it like this and tell it otherwise? This problem of the planet ending, although true, would sort itself out in due course and was not a concern right now. The Giblet stressed that not everything can be dealt with at once and that small steps would lead to great solutions. The third Giblet became enraged at this, for it had in that moment overridden its desire for global kindness with its trepidation at the world’s imminent termination. This, of course, was the height of all crimes, punishable by prison time.

Prisons on the planet of the Giblets were not unhappy places. In fact they were the opposite. Giblet’s in prison were coaxed into returning to their kind mindsets, embracing forgiveness, and developing apologetic tendencies. The third Giblet was now sitting in a prison cell talking with an apology-councilor about the incident. The apology-councilor was coaxing the third Giblet into trying to rewrite the first draft of the apology so that it used less accusatory language. The key to non-accusatory language was to replace all ‘you’s with ‘I’s and ‘my’s, a classic rule that was taught in all Apolology Schools. The third Giblet was trying to explain to the apology-councilor how, yes, they agreed that amending the heinous act of making a Giblet unhappy was important, but that it would still like to get some of the message across about the dangers of using new-algorithm technology and the damage it was doing to our planet. Apology-councilors are known for being amiably blunt, and this one was having none of it. No to the phrase about the approximate consumption of decentralized devices on this new-algorithm tech. No to the carbon dioxide rants that spelled out the blackening this electricity was causing on the atmosphere. Nay to the call for ending new-algorithm technology that, in the words of the Giblet, had no purpose whatsoever other than financial gain. These parts of the message would not do, for if any Giblet read this message they would feel such an overwhelming sense of personal attack, feel drenched a downpour of grief from above, feel as if they alone were the cause of this suffering, that unkindness and unhappiness would spread through the world like an unchecked virus and not a soul would survive the assault of their ego. No, this wouldn’t do. As the apology-councilors are known to chant: kindness above all else, kindness before myself.