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Flash rule: Must be a satire. Round n (662 words) Tick Flowering of space-time-force Tock Macro dimensions crystallize Tick Ah, three plus one. Tock My favorite Death watched intently As infant matter and its opposite Warred in the blackness Attracting, repelling, touching Annihilating Orderly matter, both kinds Flashing away to energy Death was increased A happily messy aftermath The soup was thin now And of only one kind But it was not without order Death watched intently As hydrogen slowly massed Barely detectable clusterings Now diffuse clouds Now tight knots Less homogenous, yes But clumping produced heat And Death was increased Death watched intently The cloudy knots were thinning No - clumping further! Clumping locally! And under the pressure The stars were lit Their fire was Creation Complex helium From simple hydrogen Death was decreased! But as a forge Gravity is inefficient The stars Created, yes But much greater Was energy lost as light A fair enough trade After the initial shock Thought Death As he increased Death watched intently As twenty-five new forms Were birthed in the young stars Most distasteful, to be sure But Death increased all the while And the stars were slowing down. Then they began to explode! Ah, how Death increased! How silly to have worried! He saw immediately That new stars would form But what of it? So much energy ceded to him For what? For what? Cold fury, then As he saw what the suicides Had bought dear Sixty-Six new forms! Very orderly Though many were unstable Unthinkable! Blasphemous! Yet Death had increased And continued to increase What was this gambit? Death watched intently As infant atoms formed molecules Complex structure But at a cost Always Death increased Death saw the gambit, now New stars, heavy stars Would coalesce from this dust Death watched intently As the heavy stars formed Waited for their ignition Creation at their cores Nothing! The new stars were stillborn! Too cold, too cold! Nothing but rocks Leaking the heat of formation The gambit had failed Death was increased! Death watched languidly As the true second stars Collapsed and ignited But they were nothing new Nothing to fear And still Death increased Death watched languidly As the light of true stars Fell on a fraction of the stillborn And their surfaces warmed Still Death increased Death felt a pinprick Cast about for its source A stillborn star? No, new structure At its surface Self replicating structure! Death watched furiously As the replicators multiplied And spread Their messy processes Increased him always Faster than before But their ordered internals Were the ultimate affront So this was the true gambit Such audacity! To increase him By building pockets Where he could be murdered! This went beyond The Spirit of the Game Beyond the implications Of Conditions Initial This was a cheat! Death could never be decreased By this insane process It was true But the irreverence on display Was too much to bear Death watched insanely As life multiplied and branched Always he increased Even life increased him As it lived As it died But this was forgotten He'd seen the possibility Right from the start The Gambit within the Gambit Ah, they awakened now Self aware creatures Aware of death Death cared little for death The ending of a process At a specific level of abstraction But these creatures feared death And though they had not yet named Death He knew they would And they would scheme Against their petty death Against his ultimate Death They would lose both battles Always That was obvious But how disgusting To waste an entire Game An entire Universe On a bad joke aimed at him Executed by little machines That would presume to Take up their master's Standard! It was time to interfere Time to break the rules As his opponent had broken them Death hadn't interfered In a very long time Not for many Games But this was personal And he could use a challenge After all Spare the children and the rod spoils
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| ← # ? Jan 14, 2013 05:58 |
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