Julia

My [interpretation? fanfic?] is that Julia is like a carnivore, and humanity is not it's first prey. Every creature that eats, eats to steal the disentropy of it's meal. Plants can steal order from sunlight, and certain microbes can steal order from thermal vents, but carnivores, herbivores, and decomposers steal order from the work of other organisms. The improbability of living is sustained by arranging stolen amino acids into one's own proteins, powered by the toppleing of sugar towers back into a jumbled mess.

Julia does not reassemble amino acids like earth life does. But it does absorb disentropy from it's prey. The extreme specificity of an interstellar spacecraft, it's contents and occupants, is absorbed by Julia, so that it can move, grow, and attract more prey.

I read a good way down thinking this was some kind of highly metaphorical blog post about the programming language Julia

I have a recording of le temps des cerises by Charles Trenet, which I picked up after hearing his music on a movie soundtrack. Anyway, this is a song one could imagine playing in the void, echoing the end of everything. A little melancholy, a little sweet. Pairs will with fractals.

I assume this is a sort of poem about the programming language Julia...

;-)

The narrative style reminds me of the novel-game Caves of Qud. Very well done.

Am I too dumb? I literally understand none of this.

this completely sucked me in after skimming half a paragraph while unsure what to expect. very golden age, thanks for the link!

i liked this a lot. real Gene Wolfe vibes.

Needs a twist or a reason to care about the characters.