it still felt time drawing out of reach by inches

each of its movements was proscribed, strategies within strategies

the uncanny grasp of a chess grand master; not enough

 

 many thousands of years away from the original state of apeness from which its now complicated mind had sprung it was aware of its not completeness, not cleverness, not good enougness that would be the extinction of its race

 

its insight built on a great raft of the dead it floating through the void in its aloneness concentrating all of its energy into a powerful light

 

desperation not enough to slow its movement, the complicated structure of its thinking racing ahead of the death of everything like flotsam on a giant wave of darkness

 

the last thinker sputters like a candle out with a puff of regret the puzzle slipping from its arthritic fingers in a moment as quick as that

a tower of babel crumbles level into level