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A beautiful blue-green world sat like a gem in velvet. Life in myriad forms, loving, fighting, eating, and ultimately dying, but always spreading forth and multiplying.
If one were to look to the skies at just the right moment, perhaps you could see such wonders as never before dreamt of – but not all dreams are happy ones.
The captain had approved their leave. Finally.
Slogging onto the transport, the crew members were all in mixed spirits; they looked forward to being away from duty for a while, but were still exhausted from the recent twelve hours shifts that they'd had to pull for maintenance support of logistic sorties during the exercise.
Still and all though, it would be good to be planet side, relax, take in the local scenery and wildlife. Glancing out through the view screen, they could see the nearest continent just beginning to come into view beneath some clouds along the horizon.
The first thing that crew member one intended to do was eat. Come to think of it, that was the second thing too... That being said though, crew member two had been rather friendly of late; perhaps a little rendezvous was in the offing. After all, what was good for morale was good for the ship, right?
Time passed interminably as they approached the surface, blue light reflecting from the nearest of the land, dimming somewhat to a more somber tone farther off. Not much worth speaking of. The lifeforms here were entirely sessile, and grew at geologically slow rates.
At last they landed. The picnic could begin!
And begin it did, in short order and with great rending and gnashing. The crew members spread out, absorbing all organic material within their now extended peripheries, while rejecting the small strange-shaped bits of flotsam that seemed to dominate some of the region – short mounds of rock and metal, some hanging in the air like insects frozen in amber.
As the crew relaxed, having feasted and sated themselves, crew member two drew near. Crew member one played it coy, but not so much so as to rebuff any overtures. The afternoon played on, with crew members enjoying the afternoon in twos and threes. It was good to be alive. It was good to feel so good. Nothing could ever go wrong on a day so perfect...
Far beyond the planet's local system, a ship moved slowly through the wastes of space, seeking a suitably dense matter field. Reaching this local neighborhood, it had found one. The expert systems of its parent-pseudopod had chosen this stellar nursery wisely, correctly predicting the likeliest elemental distributions to suit the shipform's needs.
The Bussard-Kerr-Newman subspace vacuole stretched outward, enveloping several cubic parsecs in its first sweep. No other shipforms were detected, just some minor organic contaminants. No matter – they would serve as grist just as well.
Anticipating the pleasure algorithms of its incipient meal, the ship began plotting the precursory stages of its upcoming mitosis. This region was most beneficial to occupy. Adverse factors were also indeed optimally minimized within.
As the galactic cluster churned, the cellular automaton cycled through to the next time integration.
Laws shifted and structures dissolved and reintegrated as new forms.
Energies dissipated and evolved to unrecognizable functions.
A preferable configuration now obtained. A mutative derivative might be in order...
O ~~~ O