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by Joshua Allen
like something that would be quite warm, right? Well, it's not.
us, because we realized some time ago that long life meant
strange to me.
The universe has changed too. Most of the stars have gone
kaputski.
can only hope the timescales are good and that I'm not talking
to a bunch of dinosaurs, or singing to a flock of trilobites.
times. I'm 400 years old and I'm barely a pup. Not too long
Science warned us. Boy did it. But we didn't heed. Here's
still three centuries shy of college and now Dad is dead. Died
interact, and they begin to just go cold, and the matter breaks
won't know what the piss I'm talking about. Oh, who cares, no
more distractions.)
rare. The problem is, we found out, it's impossible to know what
think you know what you are seeing. You think the soil and the
animals are there independent of the trees. You think that the
sir. Trees are god damned cunning bastards. Their cities look
their game, the sun had started to swell toward its red giant
never really took to the move. See, the problem is, we couldn't
still alone.
life, and put a superscript ten on that number to get just the
In your time you just don't realize how big a role Dark
other (at least, I assume they know about is. The ones we talk
universe.
had strict rules about which ones we used. They had to be old.
We had to confirm that there was not a trace of any kind of life
naturally, but it's still slow. And you always win, energy-wise,
because all you have to do is add mass to the star, and you
There are other ways of getting the energy out, but they are too
slow. Novas are fast and fun. Supernovas are a real blast, but a
effects, like heavy elements you can use for nuclear power to
get sticky. Those supernovas might have formed new stars and new
when you factor in how much travel we were doing, and the
problems.
the galaxies. We are the only organism who has ever even
slow, and the method they use is very slow, almost imperceptibly
slow to us.
truth is, we are, to the rest of them, not much more than beasts
planet.
disappointing mass of slop that took too long and never reached
its potential.
each organism has. There's the life timescale and the daily
Trees live(d) a long time and think very slowly. Humans live a
around us, except that individuals don't die while the colony
our natural habitats, that adds up to the fact that we are the
only species who cares about exploring the universe. And we are
ago. We're hyper, but we're not stupid. We could see the pace of
our lifestyle was taking its toll. The total heat in the
longer, of course).
killed stars, and now they were killing us. Of course, we were
don't know. They had an escape plan, I guess. They never shared
it with us.
was our last stand. They realized a plan of action was needed,
something to look at it not with our eyes, but with the eyes of
what might be, too long to realize what we were doing was
stupid. The mailmen from the stars brought one message, and it
was of death.
Intelligent life does not war. They laughed at us when they saw
reboot our own. How do you do that? Wormhole. You need to rip
that's how every universe comes to be. And how do you do that?
resemble as life, are the rarest of all. Ours is the only one,
so far.
to blow it up. Not a star this time, or a solar system, not even
close enough. Good enough for the girls we go with, as you might
say.
Wormholes are great. They allow us to send messages back in
Mailman, to tell you all in the past. I don't want to alarm you.
I know that you will by necessity make the same choices we made.
Big Bang: reverse time messages are possible, but cannot effect
it is still a few billion years into your future before you have
every second of every day. And maybe all the other intelligence
laughs at us, but god damn it, I'm proud we love and live life.
cruel, noble and terrible. We never lost any of the stuff that
beast. I'm proud we went to the stars and saw them and touched
them and tasted them and maybe once in a while fooled with them.
the thing I've learned--and yes, I'm little more than a child: