Once upon a time, on a planet completely covered by water, there lived a race of big-brained fish. These fish could only survive at a certain depth, and none had ever seen either the surface above or the bottom below. But their big brains made them very smart and also very curious. In time their questions about the nature of water and other things became very sophisticated. The most brilliant among them were called fyshicists.
The fyshicists were wonderfully clever, and in a few generations they understood a great deal about natural phenomena, including fluid dynamics, chemistry, atomic physics and even the nuclei of atoms. Eventually some of the fyshicists began to question why the laws of nature are what they are. Their sophisticated technology allowed them to study water in all its forms, especially ice, steam and, of course, the liquid state. But with all their efforts there was ...
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