In the year 2025, humanity faced an unprecedented biological crisis. A mutant microorganism, dubbed Entropia Vitalis, had emerged from the depths of an Arctic bioengineering lab. This invisible, ravenous entity broke down the DNA of any living being with terrifying efficiency, reducing complex organisms to molecular chaos within hours. Plants, animals, and humans fell alike, and science, despite all its advancements, hit a wall: no biological, chemical, or technological solution could stop it. Predictive models were clear: in six months, life on Earth would collapse.
In a desperate move, a group of interdisciplinary scientists proposed a radical idea: a shift in domain. If the Cartesian logic of biology failed, perhaps the solution lay in a different realm, one where reason gave way to intuition, metaphor, and creation. The domain of poetry. The idea was simple yet absurd: poets and writers, masters of the intangible, could reimagine the problem and find a solution in language, rhythm, and the essence of existence itself. The mission was entrusted to a group of the greatest writers and poets in history, resurrected through neural reconstruction technology that preserved their minds and unique styles. Pablo Neruda, Marina Tsvetaeva, Charles Bukowski, Stefan Zweig, Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Emily Dickinson, and others like William Blake, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, Federico García Lorca, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Woolf were summoned to a secret enclave in the Andes, a place where time seemed to stand still.
The Poetic Conclave
On the first day, the poets and writers gathered in a stone amphitheater, surrounded by a forest already showing signs of Entropy: leaves crumbling to dust, trees groaning as if aware of their fate. Each brought their voice, their style, their way of seeing the world, and the initial chaos was inevitable.
Neruda, with his ocean-like voice, began:
"This microbe is not an enemy; it is a furious lover devouring life to unite with it. We must sing to it, seduce it, not fight it."
He proposed an epic poem, a Canto General for Entropy, where each verse would be an offering to appease its hunger. His words, laden with images of rivers and fruits, resonated but were interrupted by Bukowski, who spat out his beer and growled:
"Sing to it? It's a damn drunk wrecking everything! We need to write it a dirty letter, something to make it look in the mirror and puke in shame."
Bukowski scribbled a raw poem, full of insults and brutal truths, addressing the microbe as if it were a treacherous old friend.
Marina Tsvetaeva, her eyes ablaze, raised her voice:
"It's not a lover or a drunk; it's an exile. This microbe is the solitude that expels us from ourselves. We must write to it from the tear, from the edge of the abyss."
Her verses, written in Russian, were a lament that cut like a knife, a dialogue with death that seemed to invite Entropy to confess its purpose.
Emily Dickinson, from a corner, whispered:
"Because I could not stop for Death – / She kindly stopped for me –"
She suggested that Entropy was not an end but a threshold. Her poems, brief and precise as darts, proposed that the microbe was a messenger of something greater, and only by embracing its mystery could it be dissolved.
Tolstoy, with his prophet's gaze, insisted on a moral narrative:
"We must tell the story of a man facing this microbe, not with weapons, but with kindness. A novel where Entropy learns the weight of compassion."
Dostoevsky, in contrast, objected:
"No, it must be a broken man, a soul in the underground, who dialogues with Entropy as if it were both God and the Devil. Only in contradiction will we find truth."
His proposal was a feverish monologue, a text where the microbe and man merged in a dance of guilt and redemption.
Stefan Zweig, ever diplomatic, suggested a fictional biography of Entropy:
"If we give it a past, a motive, a psychology, we can understand it. Let's write its story, from its birth in the lab to its rage."
Virginia Woolf, her mind like a river, proposed something more abstract:
"Not a linear story, but a stream of consciousness. Entropy doesn't think like us; we must write its perception, its waves, its fractured time."
Blake drew apocalyptic visions, Rilke invoked angels to converse with the microbe, Lorca sang coplas filled with blood and moon, Whitman celebrated Entropy as part of the great cosmic body, and Sor Juana argued with poetic syllogisms that the microbe was a reflection of our own hubris. Each contributed something unique, and the amphitheater filled with words, rhythms, and ideas that clashed and intertwined.
The Domain Shift
After days of debate, the poets and writers agreed that the solution would not be a single text but a constellation of works that together would form a semantic field capable of reshaping reality. Entropy, as a phenomenon that dismantled order, could be countered by a new order born from creative chaos. Each author wrote their piece, and a team of scientists translated these works into a hybrid language: a poetic-biological code transmitted to the microbe via nanotransmitters.
Neruda's Canto General became a sequence of pulses that slowed Entropy's speed, like a tide lulling it to calm.
Bukowski's visceral poem acted as a mirror, forcing the microbe to recognize its own destructiveness, slowing its replication.
Tsvetaeva's verses, laden with pain, resonated in the microbe's frequencies, making it hesitate, as if doubting its purpose.
Dickinson's poems, with their mystic economy, inserted pauses into Entropy's cycle, creating moments of introspection.
Tolstoy's novel and Dostoevsky's monologue wove narratives that enveloped the microbe in a web of meanings, constraining its chaos.
Zweig's biography and Woolf's stream gave Entropy an identity, a weight, something that anchored and made it vulnerable.
Blake's visions, Rilke's angels, Lorca's coplas, Whitman's chants, and Sor Juana's syllogisms completed the tapestry, each thread forming an impossible structure: a living poem, an organism of words.
The Dissolution of the Solution
When the poetic-biological code was activated, something unexpected happened. Entropy was not destroyed but transformed. The microbe stopped breaking down DNA and began reordering it, creating new, strange, yet viable life forms. Trees with crystal leaves, animals with impossible patterns, humans with collective memories. The poetic solution had transcended the original biological domain, undoing the idea of a single, optimal cure. Entropy was no longer a problem but a collaborator in a rewritten world.
The poets and writers, seeing their work complete, took their leave. Neruda smiled at the wind, Bukowski cursed one last time, Tsvetaeva wept in silence, Dickinson retreated to her eternity, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky argued to the end, Zweig penned a farewell letter, and Woolf vanished into the horizon. The world, now a living poem, kept singing.