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Prophase by Sean Ryan
A British news web site announced that the earthquakes had only left a hundred thousand people alive. The one seismologist left with Internet access was insisting that the quakes were a theoretical 14 on the Richter Scale (there was no precedent of the earth ever giving so much as a ten, so he wasn't positive on the number). The one geologist left online was posting that half of the Earth's core was shifting polarity, but the other half was staying the same. The seven eco-survivalists left- all in the same bunker in Alberta- argued that the Earth was freeing itself from the slavery of its human passengers. The one astronaut left couldn't help but notice the earth was getting narrower around the prime meridian. There were no biologists left alive, it appeared, but an archived site from a surviving host computer told that prophase was when the nucleus of a cell begins to split its genetic material in two; this was followed by metaphase, anaphase, and the drastic telophase, when the cell completes the split into two separate beings. A children's web site quizzed what the largest single cell in the world was: the answer the site provided was an ostrich egg.

Copyright © 2006 Sean Ryan