The Reality Matrix was a device of dubious provenance with which you could – should you so desire – alter the very weft and weave of existence itself. You know. One of those sorts of things.
This made it somewhat desirable to those of a frame of mind which led them to believe they knew better how things should be arranged. Villains, in the main.
By an odd twist of cosmic fortune a knot of such villains all happened to approach the Reality Matrix more-or-less at the same time. Exhausted from having just beaten off their own rival heroes or bands of heroes, further fighting was beyond any of them. So discussion broke out.
“Hang on hang on, let’s just try and get it straight here,” said Captain Evil, a straightforward chap, holding up his hands for calm. “What do we want here? Maybe we can figure something out.”
“I wish to end the suffering inherent in life itself, by ending all life. My act of ultimate mercy, my love of-” said a wafty gentleman with an improbable haircut, before Captain Evil cut them off.
“Wait, what? Fucking seriously? What are you, a fifteen year-old boy? What the fuck kind of shithouse logic is that? You have a bad time or something? A rough patch? Figure that if you were miserable everyone else must be too? And then from there you decide that it’s a good idea to just end everything? For everyone? Everywhere? Fucking what? Your decision that life is too hard is a questionable one from a personal standpoint but to then apply that to everyone is just fucking stupid. No, no more from you. Adults are talking now. How about you, sparky?”
This Captain Evil directed to the betentacled, squid-like robot hovering nearby.
“We seek to utilise the device to euthanize all sapient organic life in the galaxy, thus sparing it from being destroyed by its synthetic creations.”
This took Captain Evil a second or so to work out in his head.
“You’re…killing everyone to keep them from being killed by robots?”
“We are only mostly killing them so that they are not completely killed,” the robot said. This distinction was, in its mind, important. To anyone else it was not. Captain Evil just made a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp.
“I’m sorry, what? They’re still dead though, aren’t they?”
“Yes, but organic life will continue,” the robot pointed out, smugly.
“…what? I must be missing a few steps here. How are you valuing life? Indeed, if this is your solution why bother keep it going at all? Have you done this before?”
“The cycle is eternal.”
“Well clearly it’s not because you came from somewhere but that’s as maybe – your whole motivation is jacked. I can’t even – I can’t even wrap my head around it. So robots will always turn on non-robots? Is that your argument? And wipe them out completely unless you do this controlled extermination?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve seen this happen, I take it?”
“Our predictive simulations show it to be an inevitability.”
Captain Evil took a moment to digest this. He then exploded:
“YOU’RE GUESSING?!”
“The simulations run by our posioptic hyper-brains are-”
“The best simulation in the fucking world is still a simulation! You’ve run this genocide game how many times based on fucking GUESSWORK?! And in so doing – and I can’t believe I have to point this out to you, oh bearer of a posioptic hyper-brain – you’ve become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You are robots killing organics! And I don’t care if you fucking smallprint your way around it by saying ‘Oh but we leave enough alive to evolve again’ that’s a shitty excuse. The fuck is wrong with you? I have a lawnmower at home that realises when it’s wasting its time on something pointless HOW DID YOU MISS THAT UPDATE?!”
Getting increasingly red in the face Captain Evil rounded on the next Villain along, a lumbering cerulean fellow known in the evil community as Big Death.
“Big Death, what was your deal again? What did you want to do?”
“By killing exactly half of all living being in the universe I will bring balance to nature, ensuring that life does not extinguish itself through over consumption,” said Big Death, with the pride of one who plainly thought he had a cast-iron position. Captain Evil just goggled at him.
“Balance? Fucking balance? What the fuck even is that? There is no balance in nature! Equilibrium, sure, I’ll grant you that, but you don’t get there by halving populations! Equilibrium is arrived at by constant struggling settling at a point where no-one can really out-compete anyone else! You can’t FORCE that! If you do you fuck the whole system up! It doesn’t work like that! What the fuck even is balance? Life isn’t a fucking set of scales! Are you insane? And for what? Resources? This thing can rewrite reality! Write more resources! Or literally ANYTHING ELSE! What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“My plan was for half of everything to die…” Big Death mumbled.
“So?” Captain Evil asked and Big Death shifted uncomfortably.
“Well if I don’t follow through on my plan it kind of looks like I’m admitting my plan was wrong,” he said, lamely, as anyone admitting something they’d rather not might.
“It is wrong! It’s so wrong! How did you not work that out?!”
Big Death did not answer, and just looked a little sheepish. But Captain Evil wasn’t finished.
“What fucking timescale was this plan on? You’re talking about galactic extinction due to lack of resources. Wait, not even that, you were talking universal, weren’t you? That’s so far in the future my brain can’t even hold a number that big! And you think halving the population NOW will avoid this?! DO YOU GET HOW POPULATIONS WORK?! Fuck, do you understand BIOLOGY?! When an organism and another organism love each other very much – you following this?!”
“You don’t need to shout…”
“I kind of feel I do! Fucking hell! You’re all unmoored!”
Captain Evil, now bordering on open despair, turned to Baron Von Murderpants, who had yet to speak.
“How about you? What’s your ridiculous scheme?” Captain Evil asked. Baron Von Murderpants shrugged.
“Me? I just want to kill a lot of people. Because I find it gives me a feeling of sexual release. I literally cannot climax unless there is a pile of corpses somewhere in my sightline.”
Throwing his hands up above his head Captain Evil then gestured to Baron Von Murderpants while glaring at all others there gathered.
“Jesus, finally. I mean it’s a bad reason but at least it makes SENSE! At least the logic TRACKS!”
Story Unrelated 