[ WP ] To keep up with challenges by mortals , Death must master every new game that comes up . But there 's one game that he just ca n't figure out for the death of him .

From the dawn of time I have played, staving off the eternal monotony; learning from every opponent, mastering every game, until one. Ironically, I used to enjoy losing; it was a rare treat to face a worthy adversary, to look forward to the challenge of our next encounter. Once upon a time, there were a million million games and variations I could play, and every mortal had their favorite to challenge me with. But that's in the past now. 
 
 Now there is only one game, and its been two-hundred and thirty-seven years since I've harvested a human soul above the age of five. 
 
 I wonder if its a Darwinian process; a genetic affinity, passed from parent to child, ensuring the survival of the fittest. Or perhaps they retain some subconscious memory of our encounters; an impellation to master their skills and teach the others. Or maybe I'm over-thinking things; could they simply have noticed a correlation between survival and mastery of a single, specific game? It's become the first thing they teach their children, a requirement of their education, a species-wide pass-time. All of them know it, all of them play it, all of them are better than me at it. 
 
 Two-hundred and thirty-seven years of continual defeat now, of continual humiliation. 
 
 And yet, despite frustration at my own impotence, I am proud of these primates. In two centuries their sciences have eased the pain, and repaired the bodies of those who should have been given to me by age, disease, and death. Freed from my culling, their greatest minds continue on, becoming only greater, peeling back the secrets of existence. And from the pressure of their expanding population, they have burst forth from their small Earth; spreading across their solar system, and beginning to stretch toward the stars. 
 
 And yet as they progress, I remain as I have always been; fading into existential obsolescence, robbed of the one novelty that brought me joy. Cursed to eternally play a single game that I shall never win. 
 
 In this planck of time, I am playing against children who were caught in the collapse of a space-elevator over Ganymede. I can see victory within my grasp, as it has been so many times before. I do n't allow myself to hope. And just as so many times before, victory is snatched away; I return them to their broken bodies, awaiting rescue and repair. 
 
 Blue shells are such bullshit.
