"Letters from somewhere; letters from somewhen"

By RWS ( http://www.triggerstreet.com/gyrobase/Member?oid=oid:583970 )

My Dear,

I hope everything is okay where you are; I hope everything is okay when you are.

I wish I had something personal to tell you in this letter. Something about me... I

know how much you miss me. And I can only begin to know how much I miss you. But

the truth is I haven't thought much about myself lately; haven't thought much about

myself in this place.

That's a good thing, though. You have no idea how amazing it is here... In this

planet... In this Universe...

You see, we have always thought that Earth was a place full of life, full of

"exuberance", full of diversity. Now I know it is, indeed. But it is far from being on the top

on that list.

TRIEX, we call them.

I am not going to bother you with scientific names and details. You know she'll

send you all the data you need once we have figured it all out. I'm just telling you the

nickname beforehand, so I can picture you in my mind raising an eyebrow and telling

yourself, with a tiny smile appearing on the right side of your mouth: "TRIEX!? This is so

obvious, there are three of them".

Yes, you're right. TRI. Three. Wanna try and guess the rest now?

Sorry, girl. You are smart, but you are not that smart. TRI sEXes; three sexes.

They are like the basic colors. Take one out and, no matter what, you will never

be able to produce white.

We studied them. Over and over again. Never understood why.

You see... Evolution is always trying to make things easier. Trying to make things

simpler. You don't need your appendix? It's gone. Need a bigger brain? Voilà! Why

would it bother to make these beings that way? Why was it creating a puzzle, instead of

solving one, as usual?

It wasn't until we went back and forth for the fourth time through the cycles, that

we began to find out the reason...

Life was too easy here. The planet is just too damn fertile.

Like I told you, we always knew Earth was a place full of everything. Full of life,

full of different paths life could go... But now... We also know it is not only far - it is far,

far, way too far from being near the top on that list.

The conditions for its development here are just... too easily available. Too

overwhelmingly available.

So much light, so many resources, so much heat.... And the atmosphere...

Completely unlike ours. So few íons, so few salty compounds, none of that acid Oxygen

you have... Leave an iron rod here and it will never go rusty.

It feels as if this place were designed to work as a huge cradle, a test tube for life.

Here, dinosaurs would be twice... Five times as big as they were on Earth... on Earth's

continuum.

That's why we didn't understand it, at first. And asked ourselves: With all these

characteristics, all of this potential... Why did this Planet die, time and time again? Why

would life keep extinguishing itself every time?

It was so frustrating, and it took us so much time... But in the end, many cycles of

existence later...

Bingo! We finally got it!

The solution was right in front of us: the planet's greatest forte was also... its

greatest weakness.There was just... Too much life.

Not too many lives. Too much life. Too much "Ch'i". There was just so much

potentiality, so many possibilities for "L'esprit"...

This planet, it was like a... a giant mount of sand, that kept growing so big and

with such strength... That it was also doomed to crumble under its own weight. So many

different organisms would evolve in a way that... To summarize it... They would just

cannibalize each other.

Sometimes, there is so much abundance that, paradoxically, there is simply not

enough room for all of this very same abundance to take place simultaneously. Overkill,

you might call it.

It is as if every player in a poker table got 5 aces all of the time. With the lack of

obstacles, one species would try and overtake the other, time and time again. Until one

of them succeeded, until there was the only type of life left.... And then it died, because

of some small difficulty that hit it in the Achilles' heel, like, say, overpopulation or some

bacteria or virus.

And then another bacteria or virus would do the same to this one.

Low genetic variability.

Every cycle would end with life annihilating itself. The planet was like a

dysfunctional rich family where the spoiled sons killed each other over an inheritance.

And then the "winner", the only one left, would also end up killing himself for a stupid

reason, like driving his Porsche into a concrete wall or suicide, when he finished

spending the last penny.

But evolution finds a way. Life finds a way. Always.

After failing time and time again, life itself came up with a solution to these

problems. At one given "try"... The answer appeared.

The planet had to fight its perfection. It had to fight itself. Scarcity was the cure

here. Life weakened itself.

A "commie" evolution, so to speak, arose - instead of the capitalistic one that we

are so used to seeing.

It started taking from the rich and giving to the poor; it started penalizing the

winners and rewarding the losers.

How, you ask?

"Gaia" began to create beings with three sexes. It put some barriers there.

It made their sugar a little salty.

Things weren't so easy then. No one would dominate. Not completely, at least.

The conditions for reproduction were now so hard to achieve, and so uncommon... The

new forms of life were always kept in check.

A balance was finally reached.

Interspecies wars stopped being a big problem. Overpopulation stopped being a

big problem. Lack of space stopped being a big problem...

You on Earth are too used to evolution "helping" everyone... Here things work

different. It has to make things more difficult.

"De-evolution" is what has saved the planet.

Yours Truly,