"This? I dunno, an Enforcer, Razorjack, Lightning Gun, does it really matter what it's called? It kills people."

"No! This, all of this; what's going on here?"

Xan sighed and turned to look into the dim recesses of the cave.

"Lemmy. It's been a long life, this one. Careworn, full of adventures. We've had quite the adventures in our day; and now we stand at the outset of a new one, and I just have to wonder... I just have to think. Was any of it worthwhile?"

Lemmy let out an audible gasp. He was right of course, but in all those times, whether Xan was his enemy or his friend, he'd always been the confident one; the one who knew where the course of events was heading.

Xan continued, "Do we stand any wiser than before? I mean none of it ever made any sense; and now you're still running around bashing the living souls out of bricks and dirt and building those bridges you always build, and I feel like no matter how many of them I kill I always end up right back where I started. No matter how many I kill.."

He turned towards Lemmy and gestured at the gibbering pile of lemmings around him, slowly picking themselves up off the floor and seeking a leader to follow.

"Lemmy, think about it all. The robot you pushed over the edge; it kept saying 'Please pass the milk please'*, and you thought you killed it, but why? Why are we doing any of this? It's like we've lost sight of the goal...

(*Back around 2007 in the old Random Story this totally happened.)

Lemmy was falling into a haze; this wasn't supposed to happen, and Xan was right; none of it made any sense... But there was something that mattered... Something really important that he needed to tell Xan about. He sought desperately for it while Xan rambled on; "I'm tired, Lemmy, I want to put down the enforcer and figure out where this road leads, because as time goes on I'm starting to think it's a loop... It never ends unless you break the road... I have to break the road I'm on..."

Lemmy grabbed him and with all of his relatively insignificant might tried to shake Xan out of it; "The Goal, Xan! The Goal! It does matter; it might take awhile, but we'll get there! It is confusing, after all we're only mere Lemmings, but it's not like we're out here to no purpose; remember the goal!"

"What Goal? I've had the same goal since birth and no matter how many times I accomplish it, no matter how many adventures I go on and no matter how hard I try to figure out if it's even the right goal, it keeps coming back! Get the flag, get the flag, get the flag!"

"What Flag?! The one you use when you play paintball?"

"No! The infernal cursed Flag! I learned at first to love the sight of the flag, it meant victory! Prestige! Now I hate it and I curse its existence, the thing binding me to this world, and nothing I can do can destroy it!"

He shoved the cartridge back into his gun and stood up;

Lemmy tried to explain; "We have to get to the entrance, don't you understand? That's what this is all about."

"And then what? What comes next?"
In the dim haze of memory words and images returned to him;

In the depths of the earth, darkness engulfing everything the flames couldn't reach, laying brick after brick onto an endless stairway; a sign on the wall; he turned to Xan and said, "Heaven"

A forest, night; scared and lonely wandering through the thicket of brambles and trees,  bashing blindly into the wilderness; then on a hilltop; he whispered; "Home"

He turned towards Xan. His gun was level with his head, "Do you really buy it, kid?"

Lemmy sprang towards him, but before he could reach him a shield descended between them; invisible. He pounded on the invisible wall and shouted at him; "No matter how much I hate you, you've always been here, you can't leave! You can't leave, Xan! The World doesn't make any sense without you; even if I do hate you; you're the only thing in it that always stays the same!"

"I'm done with this, kid. I'm tired, just let me go. None of it makes sense anymore, and I'm coming to realize... This is the only way out of it. The only way I can know that I'll never be drawn inexorably back to that accursed flag... Like a fly to a light, I swear."

"What about me!? What about me!!?" Lemmy screamed.

"You don't need me. You just think you need me. I'm not taking you with me either, kid; I've tried to kill you plenty before this; first off it doesn't work. Second off, you've got a reason to be here. They need you."
He pointed behind Lemmy. Slowly, Lemmy turned and saw the lemmings staring at him. Blank, idle, stares, but devoted; burning with a desperate need to find that exit.

Behind him he heard Xan, "They still need a leader. Go to Heaven, kid. Go home."
Then a single shot rang out and echoed around the chamber forever.

~"Uh, I'm not supposed to tell anyone what we're mining, least of all you; you're a bit suspicious, you know. Anyway, I'm working here for Psygnosis, I'm just here to knock down trees, now move."

They moved. Xan looked down into the crack. The lemmings were building a ladder of lemmings to get out. A strange idea struck Xan, and he counted the lemmings... There were 80 of them, exactly...

Well that's simple. Use ice from it to cryogenically preserve yourself on it, and let it run its course. By the time the thing finally melts and you thaw out, the glacier will have carved out a nice depression; and there'll be this nice little lake with a nearby town and a quaint little bakery with a brick chimney that just makes the best pies you ever had. I'll sell the frozen caveman next to me to a museum for a few million dollars, and use the funds from that to buy a pie.

Next Item: Franz Kafka

Answer: It's the only place soundproofed enough that they can practice without disturbing the peace.

Question: Why does tautology exist?

Quote from: Funktastic on 2010-01-01 19:32:34

So sorry, but unless you can slow down light quite a bit, it's not incredibly feasible.

Sounds like we just need some new technology to control the flow of light at its inherent speed. It's strange that your argument takes the form of "We can't make better technology because existing technology isn't good enough for it."

Also; I should specifify; the difference here is between practical technology and pure science. We need an improvement in pure science technology's ability to slow down light before it can be turned into such a practical technological advance.

Mine does turn off, thankfully. It just doesn't do anything else. It was pretty funny, really; It took about half an hour after I got the thing to figure out how to do anything other than turn it on or off, since the only thing on it is an on-off switch.

To do this now you'd use a system where four transistors are treated as a single output with some sort of output, but that might not actually bring an inherent gain in efficiency. Ideally you'd find a second state to change. Like find a way to control variable X that inhibits the flow of electrons the same way we control electrical on/off switches now.

EDIT: lol; apparently the link says that this method is ideally used in combination with optics. I don't like light though, so I vote we find another changeable state to work with.