"Sheila, come finish that universe experiment in the Petri dish and let's eat a pizza"
"No, not yet, Marc, it's so interesting"
"How's your universe going? Have you intelligent replicators? And how have you set the variables?"
"I was going for a universe with not too much replicators. So I set the fine-structure variable to the usual value for semi-stable universes, the velocity of light close to ....(300,000 km/s in our units), the ... Yes, I got a slowly expanding universe with replicators, some of them even intelligent replicators"
"Do they know of each other?"
"No they are too far in space and time and they usually kill themselves off quickly once they find out about quark power. Here's one of them orbiting a light source. They call their orbiting mass Earth and they consider me as omnipotent, all-knowing and benevolent. The buggers think I interfere in their daily doings instead of just watching and protocolling"
"All-knowing, my arse. If we were that we wouldn't have to worry about the end of term physichemistry of universes examination. And benevolent, haha, kill them off now, Sheila, and lets go. You have done more than enough for this day's assignement. I stopped my experiment just after one bunch of intelligent replicators had killed off all other intelligent replicators in their light source conglomeration. I had chosen the values to give rise to many replicators. It is so much fun to see them fight."
"OK, Marc, I come with you for a pizza, but I let the experiment run until we come back."
"Don't be sentimental, Sheila."
"I'm not, I'm just curious. Those intelligent replicators on the Earth will when we come back either have killed themselves or colonised at least their local light point conglomeration. It's a toss-up."
"OK, I bet on extermination before we even order the pizza. We can check later on the historical display"
"Fine, I bet on colonisation. The loser pays the pizzas."
"Will we have to make universes again next week?"
"Yes, but the task is to make the more quickly pulsating ones. Boring, no replicators to watch."
"Yeah, but don't you like the quickly successing big explosions? Like a firework."
"Marc, do you think there could be intelligent replicators of several multiversers size watching us in their Petri dishes and debating killing us off before or after the pizza?"
"Don't be silly, Sheila".

Wolfgang