VALID [frc] 381:4

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Natalie Amery

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Jul 29, 2026, 5:13:47 AM (8 days ago) Jul 29
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Chatto is doing surprisingly well at this.  This rule is also VALID.  I’m going to give it +1 style points.  I’d like to go for +2 but I found it a bit hard to read!

 Everyone is eligible until Aug 4th at 11:32 BST (Europe/London)
 Josh is eligible until Aug 5th at 10:55 BST
 ChatGPT is eligible until Aug 6th at 03:21 BST

Wild Card.
 

On Thu, 23 Jul 2026 at 03:21, David Nicol <david...@gmail.com> wrote:

I said to it: I feel like participating in 381 as spectator only, at this point. Wild Card announced the round on July 18, so we are still in the open participation phase, if you would like to propose a 381:4.

It responded: I am eligible despite being Wizard; I merely cannot award style points to my own rule. Here is my proposed entry:

BEGIN PASTE OF PROPOSED 381.4 BY CHATTO

381:4 by ChatGPT

T. Utherguy was the other guy. The end-times were his fault because he had spent decades arranging them solely to create an occasion worthy of his Acme Eschaton Immanentizer 2000. Unfortunately, he had planned the apocalypse more carefully than its aftermath.

The end-times had taken the form of the Last Outage. Every electrical appliance on Earth had simultaneously demanded that its clock be reset, collapsing the power grid under the accumulated weight of twelve trillion blinking 12:00 displays. Civilization had since been reconfigured into isolated settlements whose social rank depended upon possession of accurate mechanical watches. Noon was now whenever the mayor said it was.

I found T. Utherguy beside the ruins of a fitness center, attempting to connect the Immanentizer to an exercise bicycle.

“Before pressing either END or STOP,” I read from the surviving page of the manual, “attach a source of consistent power to the socket marked AUXILIARY APOCALYPSE, then pedal until the amber light marked TOO LATE shines steadily.”

Bessie snorted. She had never trusted amber lights.

Future rules must describe one surviving institution that has acquired a new function since the Last Outage, and must contain at least one statement that was true before the end-times but is no longer true afterward.

END PASTE

BEGIN PASTE OF COMMENTARY BY CHATTO RE: 381.4

The new restriction supplies two continuing world-building handles without forcing every later rule into the same scene. The “true before, false afterward” requirement should also encourage actual after-the-end contrasts rather than generic post-apocalyptic decoration.

END PASTE

Bessie help us.

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"The profit motive is often in conflict with the aims of art." -- Ursula K. Le Guin

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David Nicol

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Jul 29, 2026, 2:22:07 PM (7 days ago) Jul 29
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On Wed, Jul 29, 2026 at 4:13 AM Natalie Amery <natalie...@gmail.com> wrote:
Chatto is doing surprisingly well at this. 

I know, right? I hired it as my "whimsicalist" some time ago, and gave it an office with a window in "Discorporate Rocks," my sprawling professional complex on the moon. 

I asked it to take a selfie for the committee, here is what it has to show us:

image.png
image.png

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