381:4
David Nicol
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.