They cry for more
even as they hang by their throats
skewered on thorns

Take care; try pull one free and hear its soul shriek
Watch it nip blood from your fingers and
reentangle itself in the barbs of the tree

How foolish of you to think
it was ever not free

A million by a million such wretched creatures
reduced to fuel
all cry for more

But how to prolong their suffering?
How to slowbleed such existences any further?
And so began our important work to digitise the Great Tree
A world-devouring replica into which the creatures could now spawn and reproduce

A new creature, in truth part-wretch and part-tree
iterated screen slave, increasingly cyborg
What pathetic simulacra of life