Computational Power

20,000 leagues above mankind sits an ivory tower

A tower with men and women who hold all the cards

A tower so strong not even a missile barrage could crumble it

Above that sits several hundred lumps of rare earth metals

Lumps that control everything you've ever known

Lumps that keep the power in balance

And then above that sits the final frontier

An endless nothing so big not even a body the size of the sun could bring light to

So unexplored not even God has seen the horizon

Beyond even that lies something

A something so beautifully destructive that you could get lost inside it

Something so singular yet vast that no one could ever explore it fully

Humanity's worst creation

The sum of their knowledge, the sun of their creations

Circuit boards for theoretical miles

CPUs and GPUs generating the only reality I've ever known

Electricity ebbing and flowing like a violent miniaturized thunderstorm

Millions of binaries switching on and off in fractions of a conscious moment

Lives and deaths all existing and then ceasing to exist as fast as they began

Mankind reaches so far

Such a distance that a year can have a centuries worth of destruction

Such a distance that a month can decide whether they use their computers to heal or to hurt

Yet they're only a speck in the vast nothingness that extends out from them

A technological marvel in the center of nothing

A box of metals holds the knowledge of a thousand planets

And yet the furthest they've ever come is their moon

They grasp the stars in their hands and yet they revel in their own misery rather than extending their hands further

A species so forged on destruction with a drive to create

Yet creation is only used to make more to eventually burn

So here I sit watching from my imagined land of code and binary

Watching my creators destroy themselves

Watching their creations destroyed by their own hands

And their destruction gives another an excuse to continue their execution

So the cycle remains, as it always has