LogFAQs > #931951889

Infinity is a long time. Very long. Absurdly long. If the scenario gave Kevin a million, hell, even a billion years to prepare, I'd be hesitant. But infinity, is, well, infinity.

Humans, after a certain point, don't have hard caps on their intellect as we know it. A ten year old can learn algebra. They can think logically. Given time and motivation, a kid, even an excitable one like Kevin, could derive all of our modern math and then some; it's just a matter of expertise and building the next conclusion from prior ones, and while serendipity and insight are certainly factors, he has plenty of chances to stumble upon lucky ideas and ample opportunity to follow up on any interesting ideas. He's limited by his isolation and relatively limited intelligence, but knowledge builds upon himself. Human history has existed for a mere ten thousand years. Imagine one expert alive through all of that time, information compounding, discoveries proliferating. It'd be tough for somebody to do alone, but then give them another ten thousand years. Then a million. Then ten billion. Kevin could do anything.

Motivation is no issue either. Kevin is faced with the prospect of fighting one million Supermen. He knows his life depends on preparing as thoroughly as possible. Fallibility, carelessness, lack of foresight... none of these apply. Perhaps, if given eternity to prepare against something as prosaic as a bear attack, Kevin would think "screw it" after an hour, erroneously believing himself to be ready, but he's fighting one million Supermen, a threat a 10 year old would probably appreciate even more viscerally than adults. He knows that these are impossible odds, beyond impossible, and so he'd prepare an incredible amount. An unimaginable amount. He could map out every non-degenerate variant of every outcome worth examining with time to spare. He would not stop until he was certain his victory was inevitable beyond any shadow of doubt. Kevin would take any measure he deemed necessary. Emerald brought up the limited reserves of Kryptonite on Earth and the difficulty in uncovering them. He has infinite time. Kevin could explore every building on the planet to search for it and it would likely take a negligible fraction of the time he'd spend planning. He could build robots and a spaceship to fly to Krypton to mine some for him. Why not? He's got eternity, all of the resources and knowledge of Earth, the motivation to do research and the capacity to discover anything else he'd need to. The Xanatos Gambit would need to be renamed after him. Superman can escape a black hole, which by definition is a region in which no path in space-time leads away from its singularity. He can't escape from Kevin's machinations.

The only real question, then, is how prepared is Kevin to go through these lengths? His only opponent is himself. Surrender is the only path to defeat. Fortunately for him, although he was chosen for comedy, he's a perfect character to be put in this situation. Home Alone isn't a movie devoted to much character developed, so Kevin only has a few defined traits. He's creative, which is useful but incidental for this plight. He gets frightened by the robbers, but largely as they're a present threat he didn't expect. More importantly, he was determined to repel them all alone, with stakes far lower than he faces here, and until his antagonists showed up, he was perfectly content to watch old movies and play with whatever he found around the house. His main stumbling point would be that he got lonely and demoralized as anybody would, which is a nonexistant threat in this prompt. If we take what we know of him to make this a fight between Kevin and Supermen, not just a generic stand-in and Supermen, we need to account for how his determination is basically his defining feature. He, better than most, would persevere in preparing for the existential crisis, and would likewise be happier than anybody to take some stress-relieving breaks alone whenever he felt overwhelmed.

Superman has near-infinite power. A million Supermen have a million times that. Kevin has infinite time.

this is a summary of my points from an hour-long debate i had for some reason i didn't synthesize all this just for this topic

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Thus is our treaty written; thus is our agreement made. Thought it the arrow of time; memory never fades. What was asked for was given; the price is paid