DNA 5000 CREDITS CHALLENGE(10.17-11.06) version

Every living thing keeps playing this long, long game of telephone. Fins and feathers, roots and fingers— every body is on loan. [Verse 1 — Sparse, Half-Time] Hydrogen was drawn together deep inside the stellar cores. Helium, carbon, oxygen— then iron, scattered evermore. Nothing copied yet—but something passed from dying star to stone. On a wet unfinished planet, replicating molecules formed. [Pre-Chorus — Drums and Bass Enter] Not every copy matched the last one. Difference entered the game. Tomorrow kept changing the question; not all answers stayed the same. [Chorus — Full-Time, Full Band] Every living thing keeps playing this long, long game of telephone. Fins and feathers, roots and fingers— every body is on loan. No one heard the first transmission. No one knows what it was for. Some changes ended in silence. Other changes opened doors. [Verse 2 — Half-Time, Muted Guitar] Genes moved sideways between cells, not just parent into child. One cell swallowed up a stranger. Mitochondria survived. One unchanged reply could flourish till the world was rearranged. Messages divided and combined; no two children were the same. [Pre-Chorus — Building] Some grew fins beneath the water. Some sent roots through banks of sand. Some grew wings above the forests. Some grew feet and crossed the land. Some survive because we eat them. Some look cute; we love them so. One sleeps safely on a pillow. One dies from a slipper’s blow. [Bridge — Piano, Voice and Bass Pulse] Long before a word was spoken, minds could hunger, fear, and dream. DNA required living cells; language crossed from mind to mind. Words outlived the mouths that formed them. Books moved messages through time. Now we build another listener out of language, light, and code. Heir or partner—like the stranger that we swallowed long ago? [Final Chorus — Full-Time, Maximum Intensity] Every living thing keeps playing this long, long game of telephone. Flesh and language, code and memory— every carrier is on loan. There may never be a final winner, never one immortal name. The prize was never immortality— only one more turn to play the game. [Final Refrain — Sung, Instruments Cut One by One] What was the first message? Continue? Win? Win so you can continue? Or something else? Only the final winner could know. No one else would remain to hear it.