Re: The Grand Battle II! [Round 5: Value City Mall!]
04-28-2010, 04:40 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by Sruixan.
Contary to popular belief, time travel is possible. Kind of. Depending on how pedantic you want to be, it happens all the time. It's been pointed out that the contents of our thoughts, our memories, no matter how rose-tinted they might be, are not just snapshots of frozen time and space - they can play themselves back, changing details ever so slightly at the whim of the subconcious, allowing you to notice things that were never truely there, or might have been there, or were in fact there, just a little bit out of shot. Until, that is, you dredged it up, purely by putting your mind to it. Nothing is set in stone - the past can be changed quite easily, quite simply by thinking about it...
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"Follow me..."
And so began another view on a scene that had been replayed, in light of the grander scale of things, just mere moments before the current present. Whereas in the Escherscape, however, the end of the film was not far away, here it has only just begun. This window onto another time is being looked through at a rather different angle...
No longer was the mind of Maxwell Deakin occupied with the quaint knitted cushions or the craftsmanship of the dome. No longer was it appropiate to dwell on memories of adventures had in those velvet seats.
Now, in his mind's eye, Maxwell looked up at the stars. After all, he knew what was going to happen next...
"Where shall I start, where shall I start... Maxwell, how many stars are there in the sky?"
"Depends, of course. I mean, right now, there are only about a hundred or so displayed on this dome... one hundred and thirty, if memory serves... but of course, there are hundreds more in the sky at any given point in time, night or day, no matter the orientation of our planet or that of the viewer beholding them..."
"Even then, there are those whose light has yet to reach us, or those that have yet to be born, to our eyes, but are in truth out there, or those who are just too dim for us to see with the naked eye... it's a lot, I think..."
There was a chuckle here, from the wisened woman in the centre of the room, tinkering with the projector.
"Oh, Maxwell... try a hundred thousand billion billion, give or take, well, quite a lot, actually!"
"There should be a mathematical definition for "a lot", really..."
"Oh, don't worry about that. I have another question for you; it's your question, just better, really. How many "planets" support life in our solar sytem?"
"Depends on your definition of life, or if you meant to include the world "could" in your question..."
"Right here, right now."
"Well, um, one. But they think that Skeek might-"
"One."
"-have the potential... oh. Oh, I see. I get it. You want me to extrapolate outwards, having considered the conditions under which life can exist and adjusting for the number of stars that are suitable, then to come to the somewhat sobering conclusion that there must be other planets that sustain life out there and just because we haven't found one yet doesn't mean that they don't exist. Then, let me guess, we're going to get out that so called paradox and have an argument about that. Way ahead of you, Betty."
"No."
The ceiling went white, white with the simulated light of a hundred thousand billion billion stars.
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There was sickening thump as the intangible remains of a head flopped onto the floor. The gun too fell at Maxwell's feet, but this was not worth noticing.
"A general theme that crops up in most religions is the concept of the sancity of life - that is, that as life has been created by a God, it is henceforth a sacred and precious thing, not to be played with by the likes of men."
The scattered remnants of the Karmist, crimson and puce and a myriad of other nauseating variations, were still. Completely still. Lifeless and lackluster, soon to gather dust.
"Of course, one need not be of a religious disposition to hold some of that view, the idea that life is precious at least. That conclusion can be reached by cold hard logic alone."
The only thing that was moving still was the blood - an apathetic ooze that dribbled from the gaping void, the physical leftover of the death of Samuel Therion.
"One celestial body out of over a hundred - what lovely chances, hey? Considering that we have a star that's just right, an orbit that's perfect enough to persuade people that it was designed - beautiful chances, don't you think?"
If only he'd left that shotgun at the carnival, seen through that flaky attempt at the "self-defense" argument. How did that even add up? Maxwell plus gun equals dead person...
"So many people lose sleep at night, fretting over the deceptively simple paradox that lies at the heart of extra-terrestial life. If there is other life, where is it? Pick an answer, any answer, for there are a plethora of theories to choose from. And none of them are perfect."
Here's another corker - the simple deduction that the death of a murderer would save innumerable invaluable lives in time. A priceless jewel of his powers of self-persuasion, that one. But of course, he didn't do it. There was no way he could have done it. Simple as that. All he did was give a dangerous being a means through which to express that ability to kill.
Pity he hadn't thought that far...
"However you plug that hole, it still remains that as of this point in time, the humans on this planet are the all the life in the observable universe. Every single morsel of sentience is contained upon this globe. So what if there are other worlds out there, filled to bursting point with that sparkle of life? However much you can find in the universe, spread it out through the very medium that contains it and you come to realise just how tenuous life truely is. Every living soul has merit, for every death takes away a definite, discerable amount of life in the universe. How lucky and unlikely existance is, that's what makes it precious. Call that sacred if you will, but that's the long and short of it, Maxwell."
The blood was now at his shoes, lapping against their soles, flowing around them, two immobile islands in a river running red.
"Any questions?"
What had he done?
"How many times have you given that speech to some unsuspecting victim?"
The truth was simple. There was a dead body on the floor and Maxwell was to blame.
There was a door, a way out. He knew that much for sure...
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
"Follow me..."
And so began another view on a scene that had been replayed, in light of the grander scale of things, just mere moments before the current present. Whereas in the Escherscape, however, the end of the film was not far away, here it has only just begun. This window onto another time is being looked through at a rather different angle...
No longer was the mind of Maxwell Deakin occupied with the quaint knitted cushions or the craftsmanship of the dome. No longer was it appropiate to dwell on memories of adventures had in those velvet seats.
Now, in his mind's eye, Maxwell looked up at the stars. After all, he knew what was going to happen next...
"Where shall I start, where shall I start... Maxwell, how many stars are there in the sky?"
"Depends, of course. I mean, right now, there are only about a hundred or so displayed on this dome... one hundred and thirty, if memory serves... but of course, there are hundreds more in the sky at any given point in time, night or day, no matter the orientation of our planet or that of the viewer beholding them..."
"Even then, there are those whose light has yet to reach us, or those that have yet to be born, to our eyes, but are in truth out there, or those who are just too dim for us to see with the naked eye... it's a lot, I think..."
There was a chuckle here, from the wisened woman in the centre of the room, tinkering with the projector.
"Oh, Maxwell... try a hundred thousand billion billion, give or take, well, quite a lot, actually!"
"There should be a mathematical definition for "a lot", really..."
"Oh, don't worry about that. I have another question for you; it's your question, just better, really. How many "planets" support life in our solar sytem?"
"Depends on your definition of life, or if you meant to include the world "could" in your question..."
"Right here, right now."
"Well, um, one. But they think that Skeek might-"
"One."
"-have the potential... oh. Oh, I see. I get it. You want me to extrapolate outwards, having considered the conditions under which life can exist and adjusting for the number of stars that are suitable, then to come to the somewhat sobering conclusion that there must be other planets that sustain life out there and just because we haven't found one yet doesn't mean that they don't exist. Then, let me guess, we're going to get out that so called paradox and have an argument about that. Way ahead of you, Betty."
"No."
The ceiling went white, white with the simulated light of a hundred thousand billion billion stars.
-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-
There was sickening thump as the intangible remains of a head flopped onto the floor. The gun too fell at Maxwell's feet, but this was not worth noticing.
"A general theme that crops up in most religions is the concept of the sancity of life - that is, that as life has been created by a God, it is henceforth a sacred and precious thing, not to be played with by the likes of men."
The scattered remnants of the Karmist, crimson and puce and a myriad of other nauseating variations, were still. Completely still. Lifeless and lackluster, soon to gather dust.
"Of course, one need not be of a religious disposition to hold some of that view, the idea that life is precious at least. That conclusion can be reached by cold hard logic alone."
The only thing that was moving still was the blood - an apathetic ooze that dribbled from the gaping void, the physical leftover of the death of Samuel Therion.
"One celestial body out of over a hundred - what lovely chances, hey? Considering that we have a star that's just right, an orbit that's perfect enough to persuade people that it was designed - beautiful chances, don't you think?"
If only he'd left that shotgun at the carnival, seen through that flaky attempt at the "self-defense" argument. How did that even add up? Maxwell plus gun equals dead person...
"So many people lose sleep at night, fretting over the deceptively simple paradox that lies at the heart of extra-terrestial life. If there is other life, where is it? Pick an answer, any answer, for there are a plethora of theories to choose from. And none of them are perfect."
Here's another corker - the simple deduction that the death of a murderer would save innumerable invaluable lives in time. A priceless jewel of his powers of self-persuasion, that one. But of course, he didn't do it. There was no way he could have done it. Simple as that. All he did was give a dangerous being a means through which to express that ability to kill.
Pity he hadn't thought that far...
"However you plug that hole, it still remains that as of this point in time, the humans on this planet are the all the life in the observable universe. Every single morsel of sentience is contained upon this globe. So what if there are other worlds out there, filled to bursting point with that sparkle of life? However much you can find in the universe, spread it out through the very medium that contains it and you come to realise just how tenuous life truely is. Every living soul has merit, for every death takes away a definite, discerable amount of life in the universe. How lucky and unlikely existance is, that's what makes it precious. Call that sacred if you will, but that's the long and short of it, Maxwell."
The blood was now at his shoes, lapping against their soles, flowing around them, two immobile islands in a river running red.
"Any questions?"
What had he done?
"How many times have you given that speech to some unsuspecting victim?"
The truth was simple. There was a dead body on the floor and Maxwell was to blame.
There was a door, a way out. He knew that much for sure...