Backstage Characters

Caleb Scharf’s analogy
Of oxygen and data
Is several ways intriguing.

One of the odd ways would be
To imagine it removes
Information from the core

Trinity with energy
And matter, making it more
As an element would be,

An example of something,
Examples of which fill whole
Tables of such elements.

While the universe can’t have,
It seems, gain or loss in sum
Matter and energy fields,

Oxygen, one element,
Comes and goes. Information,
If it were an element,

Could also come and go.
What the other elements
Of information’s table

Could possibly be, who knows?
Surely Scharf’s analogy
Wasn’t meant to stretch that far,

But our curiosity
Is piqued—imagine data,
Per se, just one example

Of weights winking in and out
Of amounts—information
Lightest, then meaning, then what?