Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Cycles, The Game You Can't Win - 250 words

As the countries of the World began to cooperate and share knowledge in their efforts to quell the ever growing unrest inside their own borders or unrest imported from afar, the noose around all the World's population drew tighter and tighter...........and tighter.

Suicide bombings became daily occurrences at  airports, bus stations or municipal buildings somewhere on the planet. Unhappy groups from every fringe of the globe began to adopt each other's techniques and complaints until the battles waged between Authority and everyone else became one struggle instead of many.

The sapient population on the third planet from it's home star eventually consumed itself along with most of the life forms left on the planet. The Earth fell into dormancy.

Epochs and ages passed as Earth healed itself. More time swept by as another phylum of life clawed its way up from the crumbled ruins left by the previous occupants. At first and according to rules set down across the Universe, early survival depended more on luck and mutation than conspired advantages.   Food Chain laws based on adaptation and flexibility kicked in and the predictable rise of a dominate species began.

So it went until the moment the first artificial advantage was found and manufactured. And another species began to close in on its demise. The end game was always the same.

"Xracll, you always play this game the same. You are so predictable. How many games am I up now? 6, 7?"

"Screw you. Let's go again. Double or Nothing?"
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Literally just some train of thought stuff with two lines of dialog at the end to turn it into fiction.  Whether it works or not does not matter.  Just the exercise was fun.

7 comments:

Demeur said...

Baring a planet ending event it doesn't look like we'll become the latest addition to the endangered species list. Extinct? I think not at least not in my lifetime.

Randal Graves said...

All I want to know is that when my piece is removed from the board, can I stop going to work?

Mr. Charleston said...

I thought for sure this thing was going to mankind starting over and over again. You know, the great flood (extinction) could have happened.

Commander Zaius said...

Don't know if this is on point with the post but I found it interesting when I read Stephen Hawking believes the evolution of sentient intelligence is in itself no real advantage to long term survival. Sort of explains most of the people here in South Carolina.

Tom Harper said...

Sorry Randal, you have to keep on working even after you've become extinct. No excuses.

MRMacrum said...

Demeur - It's all relative. But if global tendencies are followed, at some point we will disappear.

Randal - You can leave work anytime you want as long as you have bus money.

Mr Charleston - Greetings and thanks for swinging by.

Many things could have happened and probably did. It was just a story after all. Another twist on my struggle to understand that which none of us understand.

Beach Bum - Odd, but I was thinking when I wrote this or was about to write this or when I was coming up with the idea - That just because a species sits on top of the food chain is no guarantee of lasting supremacy. It seems to me that if longevity is the goal of a species than the old axiom "KISS" would be the way to go. Cock roaches, horse shoe crabs, and sharks come to mind.

Tom Harper - But what if Randal only slips to "endangered"?

The Blog Fodder said...

When you think about it, Homo neanderthalensis lasted about 600,000 years. Homo sapiens is only about 150,000 years old and only in the past 100 years have we really begun to outsmart ourselves. We could disappear quite quickly from a number of our own follies. Maybe Stephen Hawking was right, the smarter we are the less time we last on the planet.