Take a photocopy of a random page. Shred that paper into about sixteen parts and have fun with about ten of those torn papers. Burn them, soak them, bury them; It does not matter what you do, as long as those pieces are ruined.

After a week of waiting, stitch pieces back together. Whatever you will do with those shred paper, there is always at least that one piece that won't completely fit. Still, you put them back as best as you can anyways.

What you see before you now is an amalgamated object, once made of one piece of paper. However as you can see, it is not the same as the piece of paper you started with.

The "thing" before you has no other description other than ugly. Burnt. Wrinkled. Dirty. Some even missing. Whatever content you had copied, be it trivial or special, is now worth even less than before.

If you have copied a special content into the thing that was once paper, then you might see value in one of the pieces that is not damaged. You might even want to salvage it from the amalgamation. However, to do so, you must rip the stitches apart.

You contemplate for a moment whether that one piece it is worth your time or not, and when you decided that it is, you destroy what was once an abomination to preserve a fragment of a copy of your treasure.

---

In this story, that treasure is the planet Earth, and that piece of paper represents a countries from the past. Unable to sustain itself however, this piece of paper will eventually perish as it lacks the resources to maintain itself.

Which is why, even if this fragment of a world cannot exist forever, even if my actions will ruin what is left of the copy, I will prolong the inevitable as long as possible.