Yeah. I too beleive ...someone in this world .. or perhaps someones {plural}.. know the source of magic and are using it to their advantage and control over societies from behind the scenes.
But if that is the case... just WHAT is the Dark Cell and what is its location that is significant to the answer of what the Qualia are? WHY is the Dark Cell important? Why does Lehm believe that penetrating it will yield answers upon the purpose and origin of the Qualia? Perhaps I have missed this explanation that has already been made known but I cannot remember anywhere telling us WHY the Dark Cell is important to the mystery of the Qualia-Nanite magic?
Those ALL being supplemental questions to the one I'm getting at~ IF there are people or organizations in this world aware of the Qualia and using that knowledge to their advantage... if the Dark Cell is important to understanding the Qualia.. shouldn't THEY know about the Dark Cell as well? If not.. why don't they know about it? If the Dark Cell is important... why have THEY not secured it from investigation by the curious.. who might gain knowledge or access to the Qualia and thus potentially Threaten their monopoly on manipulating such knowlegde to their advantage?
... basically a SHIT-TON of Questions about the ENTIRE PREMISE... that has NOT been even hinted at answers for?
tl;dr version - WTF?!?
And yes I do believe Maytag has figured out how to pass Stage 3... she is now fishing for information and trying to discover, if what Lehm is saying is true, is it in the world's best interests for her to even do this? "Just because you can do a thing.. does not mean you should!" Money is not really May's motivator anymore.. SHE IS thinking seriously about this and is not sure the answer reveled~ is necessarily in everyone's {or her} best interests! I don't think she feels people not knowing the truth about magic is necessarily a bad thing. Not knowing has not hurt people thus far and magic IS useful. Magic is not broke.. so why bother trying to figure out how or why it works and potentially risk screwing things up for EVERYONE somehow?
Plus, she HAS NO idea what breaching the third phase will do to her.. and she can see someone went through a Hella lot of effort to keep anyone from breaching this mystery... her life could VERY WELL be in danger.. and she CERTAINLY wants to see Bernadette again! No secret~ no matter HOW profound it might potentially prove to be, is worth loosing her love for Bern or risking May's chance at living a life with Bernadette in it!
From what I can gather, reading btwn the lines, asking about who created the qualia caused the stylus to suddenly stop. While the Dark Cell may not have caused such a reaction, I'm sure you can understand the difficulty of finding out anything trying to paint an area of perfect darkness. He probably asked "Is there any area that I could go to in order to find the answers that you cannot tell me?" And it showed the entrance to the Dark Cell.
Mmmmm. And this is indeed true. I had a conversation about science and ethics yesterday. Given sufficient drive we could develop Skynet in real life, but that not in humanity's best interest. You do have to consider the ethics of a decision.
On the other hand, well since Lehm mentioned oppression lets consider a government. In a government where its incompetence and active hostility to its citizens is NOT exposed, you can have some serious abuse to the citizens. We could talk about Cold War Russia or China.
But we have a better example of secrecy than that, and yes it does matter that people know. I watched a film called The Big Uneasy. It was about how there was a complete denial about the Hurrican Katrina failure. Basicallty, three things went wrong. They cut a canal that fiunneled water into the city, and they hoired one construction team that was basoically govt employed(the army corps of engineers) to put a particular damming system. Now the Corps is great for overseas military actions, but many of its original engineers are long since retired and the dams they built failed in test, so rather than telling them that, they hid thre results sand lowered the test until it passed. Before this canal, it was bad because of crappy pipingbut not to the point where water slid in through the pipelines and wiped out whole streets. Then there was also the matter of building on marshland, which drains much of the floodwater. If people had lknown stuff like this, rather than continuing to call it a "natural disaster", people from landscaping and construction would show up at the doorstep to plant natural systems, and to build cheaper and better dams.
Back to Maytag. While there are useful things about magic, humans can conceivably work with other systems. And you have to remember there are a great number of magical attrocities that have been happening quietly. Bloody Mary for instance is a result of healing magic. Even though Lehm did create her, he used the same regeneration system that regrew May's arm. That is, Lehm created a regenerating person, and the result was that her body became parasitic requiring people to sustain itself. The fail wasnt with Lehm good intentions so much with his methods, the magical system being used. In Book 0, we also see monsters. These are misuse of such tech. And what about the dissolving test? Its a VR system that convinces people they are more powerful. But we saw the effect of this system in Suspiria. She basically had such distorted mental state that she wasnt sure whether her parents were real or not and was clearly emotionally unstable. In other words, this system basically fries your brain. It is closer to having various helmets installed that can call qualia. With each upgrade, the load on your brain is that much higher, until ypou are almost frying synapses to maintain a delusion of power. Yes, magic is broken. Knowing what magic is means that people may be able to invent other means of carrying stuff out using items... rather than plugging their brains in. It does seem to need doing.
So this brings the last worry, that she may die. Honestly, if there were so many good candidates, I think this is the one remaining deal, because they probably did find a (wrong) way to conquer the system. Which just means rather than quit because of the risk, she needs to expose the truth, and hold herself together for her love. To bring the truth back with her. Since making it to the end is not a success if nobody knows the truth (it's not like The Giver where crossing the threshold unerases everyone's mind).