The warlord Thon-Gul X has sent a swarm of scissors to destroy the world; and a world-killing meteor; and an evil prophecy; but something still disturbs him.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is possible,\u201d he says, \u201cthat the Earth will survive all these things by using a principle outside of and transcending the rock, paper, and scissors known to space.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wrestles with intimations of hobbits, Spock, and spiders.<\/p>\n
He cannot grasp them. He cannot grapple with them. He cannot conceptualize them.<\/p>\n
They haven\u2019t even heard<\/em> of the planet Vulcan, in space.<\/p>\n He simply knows that \u2014 outside the boundaries of his knowledge, his understanding, his intentions \u2014 there might be something more.<\/p>\n That is why there is a monstrous needle-thin ray racing towards the Earth even as we speak.<\/p>\n It has been traveling for nearly seven hundred years. It is coming to unmake <\/em>the Earth, to blast the whole of it into nothing, to turn it into the Decohesion Engine, the Principle of Thon-Gul X\u2019s omnipotence: an ultimate, glorious power born of death and a terrible light.<\/p>\n And sometimes he thinks, but can a needle-thin ray really break a planet?<\/em><\/p>\n And he starts to answer \u2014<\/p>\n But then he stops.<\/p>\n He resists that thought. He assumes he will be successful. He daren\u2019t even wonder.<\/p>\n It is ultimately, fundamentally, and structurally undecidable; to think too much upon it would lure his thoughts into a trap set long ago for him by Hans.<\/p>\n To answer is to rule that \u201cspace laser\u201d either beats, ties with, or loses when opposed by \u201crock;\u201d and this thing, until the cosmic institute of rock-paper-scissors makes its ruling, not even a wicked god may do.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The warlord Thon-Gul X has sent a swarm of scissors to destroy the world; and a world-killing meteor; and an evil prophecy; but something still disturbs him. \u201cIt is possible,\u201d he says, \u201cthat the Earth will survive all these things by using a principle outside of and transcending the rock, paper, and scissors known to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"series":[50],"class_list":["post-6871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vidars-boot-chapter-21-5","series-vidars-boot"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/Icon_Space1.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6871"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6872,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6871\/revisions\/6872"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6871"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/books.hitherby.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fseries&post=6871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}