Tag Archives: cosmos

General Fiction, Science Fiction

Black Hole Theory

Norman liked space. It was a cold, distant infinity beyond our minor planetary shores; like a great, cosmic ocean with us as passengers clinging to a random twig of driftwood. The cosmos did not care nor judge, nor even consider such brief, inconsequential things like the lives of humans, let alone their feelings.

The doctor was talking, and his wife was sobbing and grabbing him. They both felt far away, and Norman’s thoughts drifted back to the cosmos and the great black hole at the center of our galaxy.

Scientists had theorized that galaxies had supermassive black holes at the center of them, and then they had found one at the center of our galaxy.

Yes, at the center of the Milky Way was a supermassive black hole that was slowly sucking everything into its oblivion. Whole stars, planets and solar systems were being eaten. Whole worlds were being swallowed as the World Eater quietly drew everything into its vast, incomprehensible maw…

“There are options, Norman,” his wife was sobbing into his neck, the doctor was nodding grimly, “We can enter you into the drug trial–“

“No,” Normal said quietly.

His wife stopped sobbing and looked up. The room fell quiet.

“No,” Norman repeated, “I am not going to do that, dear.”

The doctor nodded grimly, averted his eyes and shuffled some papers on his desk. Norman wondered how many times the doctor must have delivered news like this to someone? Each time he did so, he must get slightly numb? Each time, slightly more numb?

Kind of like the World Eater: slowly swallowing everything and turning it into oblivion. Slowly getting colder and colder, heavier and heavier. Quietly eating world after world, steadily and repeatedly watching your patients inevitable fall into oblivion…

***

Weeks had passed and the tears had dried as the time got dearer. The shock had turned to frustration and, ultimately, into quiet acceptance.

Life no longer held uncertainty for him. Anyone with uncertainty also had a future. He would no longer exist soon and that was very much a certainty.

His wife was wonderful and Norman thanked her constantly for her companionship and care while apologizing as he got weaker and weaker. She would shush him and hug him tightly. If he kept his consciousness in the coming oblivion, he knew he would spend it missing her the most.

The kids–now all grown-up–would drop by and hug him too. They and some close friends were like satellites regularly popping by on their orbit around him and his personal apocalypse while briefly broadcasting their emotions before disappearing again.

But his thoughts constantly strayed back to the great black hole at the center of the Milky Way.

The World Eater.

It had a name: Sagittarius A, and was about four million times the mass of our little Sun. Cold and silent, the World Eater floated out there. Older than time and hidden in its own darkness with the swirling cosmos around it, the World Eater would eventually consume everything.

It was strangely comforting to know that even if he had been immortal, he would never have lived forever. Eventually, the World Eater would swallow him too.

Eventually, we all lose our uncertainty with pure certainty.

***

Norman’s ethereal form floated untethered from the physical-world over the lip of Sagittarius A. Gravity had no pull on his form as his form had no mass. All around him, though, planets, stars and gas were being sucked into the World Eater, slipping over the Event Horizon and being lost to the outside world.

It was incredible.

More surprising than the separation from his body at the point of death was his isolation as a disembodied soul. Where were all the other dead people and their ethereal forms? Why was he all alone in the universe? Did each soul make its own way to whatever afterlife it wanted? How did they know because he knew nothing of the sort?

At first, he had watched over his beloved wife and their children. Unable to interact, though, but it had still provided comfort. Years later, though, his wife had passed and then their children…

Eventually, little tethered him to that planet and he had begun wandering the cosmos.

Naturally, he had been drawn to the World Eater. Why not? He had nothing else he was doing?

Slowly he floated over the Event Horizon, planets stretching out and gas sucking by and through him. He felt nothing and it had no bearing on him, though to witness it was awe-inspiring.

The moment he crossed that invisible–but very real line–reality began to progressively warp. Objects began to stretch into noodles and atoms were separated. And then, as he floated closer and closer to the center of the black hole, the atoms themselves were torn apart and–far from “black”–reality was pure light around him that slowly and steadily got brighter…

Until, right at the center that Norman floated closer and closer to, even the light got compressed into an infinite point of brilliance: the singularity itself.

Norman floated in awe for a while amidst all that swirling dazzling radiance as all space, time and matter compressed on itself, folding over and over as it collapsed on itself endlessly.

Eventually, Norman himself floated towards the singularity. The shredded atomic dust of entire galaxies whirled past him as pure light towards that magical, single point. He suddenly knew what he wanted. He knew where he was meant to go, and he floated his incorporeal consciousness directly into the infinite point of space, time and matter as it punched through to the other side. Right at the edge of it, staring into blinding infinity, he leaned forward and stuck his head through it…

***

The baby’s head burst through as the mother screamed in agony. The father was squeezing her hand so hard it hurt it while repeatedly telling her to breathe. The doctor gently held the baby as the rest of the pure, innocent little life entered the world.

The mother collapsed under waves of endorphins, exhaustion and exhilaration while the father kept squeezing her hand, his eyes wide-open at the creation held in the doctor’s sterile hands.

“It’s a boy,” the doctor said calmly, smiling; it had been a good birth with no complications, “Congratulations to both of you. What will you be calling him?”

The father opened his mouth as if to reply but the mother propped herself up on her elbows and answered for both of them:

“Norman,” she said, without a pause, “Like my great grandfather, he is a Norman.”

Science Fiction

When The Noise Fell Silent

When the noise fell silent, ten thousand satellites strained to hear it. When the noise fell silent, ten million eyes strained upwards to find some evidence or indication of hope. When the noise fell silent, ten billion lives on planet Earth looked around for something…

Anything.

But there was nothing.

When the silence started, there was nothing to see, no evidence to consummate hope nor leader great enough to change fate itself. When the silence started, eternity displayed its cold, impersonal visage, obscuring over two-hundred thousand years of human civilization and a further four billions of life. When the silence started, all hope on Earth ended.

“Our’s is now a doomed planet,” the radio whispered amidst the silence, “We have lost contact with our ship and can only conclude that its mission has failed. We expect the asteroid to impact Earth shortly.”

And then there truly was silence, the noise of life being extinguished ever-so-quickly from the cold, uncaring universe.

Grand aeons spun by as stars clustered and collided, galaxies formed, merged and tore back apart and all the chaos across all the universe hit every combination of each possible scenario until it happened.

Something.

A small planet with just the right balance of atoms and temperatures at just the right position in just the right galaxy birthed life.

Again.

And then the noise started up. Again. It started softly but it grew louder with each passing moment…

Science Fiction, Technomology

Out of Time

“Any last words, Captain Winkle?” his former-First Lieutenant barked as they strapped him into the cryogenic escape-pod, “Sorry, mean just Winkle. I’m the Captain of Catwalk now.”

“I-I-you-this will–” he spluttered, fury overriding his fear momentarily until his former-First Lieutenant punched him. A sharp pain shot down his spine and he heard his nose crack. Warm blood began pouring down his face.

“Shut up, Winkle,” his former-First Lieutenant growled, tightening the final strap before closing the escape-pod, “We don’t want your imperial bullshit anymore. These men have families back on Earth and we are going to go home. Your Government can send other people on their suicide missions. Enjoy space.”

The cover of the escape-pod was flipped over him. Impotently straining against the straps, the last image the former-Captain Winkle saw before they turned on the cryogenic stasis in the pod and ejected it into deep space was his former-First Lieutenant grinning ruthlessly at him.

***

An intense light was blinding him and it felt like a crushing, contactless pressure was bearing down on him. Winkle wanted to cry out but his throat did not respond the way he expected. A funny gurgle came from somewhere inside him. He tried to reach up to block his eyes from the painful light but whatever was pinning him down held his arms in place and he could barely budge them from where they lay.

“Take it easy, buddy,” a calm voice said from somewhere inside the light, “Hey Doc, he’s awake! Wow, ok, take it easy, buddy, it’s been centuries since your body functioned normally. You barely have any muscle mass left. You probably don’t remember gravity either. Those first-gen cryogenic pods were never meant to be used for that long. Your muscles are basically completely atrophied and your nervous system is still struggling to reboot. We have jacked into our machines for now but you must feel quite disorient…lucky…found you when…never meant…gosh…”

The voice droned on but his mind felt fluid and shifted in and out of consciousness. He only heard snatches of what was being said.

The intense light that was blinding him slowly dimmed down to a glow with patchy, dark shapes within it. And then these shapes formed into more recognizable forms around him: people and objects.

He was lying somewhere. Maybe a hospital or a lab? While figuring this out, he slowly began to feel his own heartbeat, the dry, scratching breathe in his lungs, his limbs and then his whole body. He ached down to his very bones and it felt like something deep inside him was broken.

“W-where…I?” he eventually managed to cough out after what felt like ages had passed. His throat felt raw and his tongue uncertain with these supposed-familiar words, “Where I? Where?”

The shadowy shape of what he now thought was the doctor loomed over him, a light pierced his eye and then a second, elder voice replied from just above him.

“Not where, Captain Winkle. You should rather be asking when? We are still trying to piece together the details and we are sure that you can fill us in on plenty. If your face is anything to go by, after being forcefully ejected into space in your ship’s cryogenic escape-pod, you floated around for almost ten solar-centuries. Uh, you probably don’t know that measure. It is based on Earth-years back when we lived there. We are off-planet now. Intergalactic, in fact. As a civilization, we owe everything to you first-wave colonizers, so…”

The doctor paused, probably noticing his expression. He cleared his throat and returned to his point.

“Anyway, when is exactly that, Captain Winkle. The ‘when’  of your story is about a thousand years after your last memory. Welcome back to civilization, Captain, you have a lot of catching up to do.”

***

The now-called “Galatic Government” had successfully populated space. There were lots of casualties along the way, including his old starship and its mutinous crew. But enough first-wave colonizers reached enough habitable planets that humanity began to populate the cosmos as Earth began to fail.

Next, entire colonies shifted off-world and technology advanced to a point where this was less and less of a problem and more just the way things were.

The last recorded contact with Starship 130D Catwalk indicated that it was low on resources and down to a single atmospheric generator. Half the crew remained able. No working cryogenic pods remained. Staff morale low and the ship–against express instruction–was homebound from Andromeda-adjacent System. No further contact made. Starship classified A.W.O.L. and crew noted as deceased.

That was the last record of his mutinous crew’s attempt to return to Earth after dumping him in space. They did not make it home. That was a little over nine hundred years ago.

Everything that Captain Winkle knew was either dead or different now. In some regards, that is the same thing.

People no longer remembered the civil war nor questioned who had been fighting for what? The winner had written the public records. People popped from planet to planet but never went back to the polluted, toxic Earth.

And no one missed that planet either. Some parts of the Web even questioned if it existed at all? Apparently, its name had been recycled and there were at least three other planets scattered around the cosmos now called “Earth”, only differentiated by their galactic codes.

All his friends and family were long dead, as were their relatives and their relatives’ relatives. His wife back on old Earth had remarried and his children had lived full lives a thousand years ago. So diluted and broken was the hereditary chain that there was little point in reconnecting. The current relatives that were alive were complete strangers to him, and him to them.

The Galatic Government had a fund that supported the first-wave colonizers and their families. The only beneficiaries left in it were a couple great, great grandchildren and some monuments, hospitals and schools, but the Fund added him to the list and began to pay monthly stipends in his name.

The local government of the fringe planet that had picked him up also provided a small, freehold property for him to live on and set him up to live out his retirement in relative comfort.

And so Captain Winkle found himself a public hero, comfortably looked-after, retired and with only time and a growing existential crisis to fill his days.

***

“Thanks, appreciate that,” Winkle said on the call, “Just to clarify, the Fund will keep paying its monthly and you will ensure all bills are settled from that. The excess can be saved. Great, thanks. Bye.”

He stood up from where he was sitting, downed the remaining bourbon in his glass and stumbled to his cellar. It was lined with lead and titanium, and had an in-built self-sustaining life-support system. The whole thing was run by an off-grid AI and sitting in the middle of the floor was a state-of-the-art cryogenic pod.

He closed the cellar doors behind him. They hermetically sealed and the chamber’s life-support booted up, softly humming in the background.

He walked over to the cryogenic pod and put his hand on the glass, a strange smile on his face. He punched a series of instructions into the pod and the glass top opened, hissing, and ready for him to climb in.

“Let’s see in a thousand years, shall we,” he muttered to himself as he climbed in, “Maybe there’ll be some point then.”

The pod closed, sealing him in as the cryogenic process began. On the top of the pod he had scrawled a message for anyone that found him before the pre-set time, or, maybe, the message was for himself: RIP WINKLE.

 

Science Fiction

The Museum of Selfies

“Since the first caveman stuck his finger into coloured mud and smeared a stickman on his cave wall, man has desired to capture himself,” the speaker was a well-dressed gentleman walking in front of a modest crowd, “Think of the painters of yesteryear painting self-portraits as well as the portraits of others. Man’s egotism is constant through the many, many ages of our history.”

The well-dressed gentleman stopped walking and turned to the tourists. His movements were fluid but, nonetheless, seemed rehearsed.

“With the pretty-much-simultaneous invention of the mobile phone and social media as a repository, suddenly every single human being had a means to capture themselves en masse and a place to store it for eternity,” the well-dress gentleman slowly swept his hand around and behind him drawing the crowd’s attention to the hallowed, flickering halls of images around them, “And, after countless millennia of mass narcissism and good backup procedures, man has indirectly recorded his own intimate history. Here, at the Museum of Selfies, this intimate history is displayed so that we witness how the ages lived, laughed, loved, cried, how they felt and, in some instances, how they ended.”

The well-dressed gentleman paused for dramatic effect and, whether or not he got his desired result, he stepped forward into the crowded and motioned at a nearby floating media pod to fly over them.

“Come, come, come,” he said pulling the crowd together around him, “Before we start the tour, let’s take a selfie that will go directly to the Museum’s library. All selfies everywhere, in fact, go directly into the Museum’s repository. Our AI here built a scanner and copying code–all sustainably powered by solar and thermal–that lifts all selfies from the public web and categorically places them in here. Now, say cheese everyone!”

***

The Museum of Selfies was built on a small, quiet planet just outside of the Central Galaxies. There was basically nothing else there. Its location meant that it was accessible by those that had money–who were often the same ones that pretended to have culture–but the Museum’s upkeep and planetary taxes were not as expensive as deeper into the affluent parts of the cosmos.

The founder would love to tell his mostly-automated staff how his Great Grandmother had passed the seed data onto him when she had bequeathed her and her family’s selfie collection over to him. He had sat for days just clicking through the selfies and experiencing his own ancestors’ lives.

And then the idea for the Museum of Selfies had struck him!

But none of his staff really listened and most of them did not care. The vast majority of them were not even conscious and simply went about the maintenance tasks that they were programmed to do.

And, just so, the Museum of Selfies operated for many decades until the Galactic War tore that age’s cosmic civilization apart. The small planet was evacuated when a nearby space battle’s nuclear fallout put its inhabitants at risk.

Shortly thereafter, the founder filed for bankruptcy and was shipped off to a distant planet to pay back his debts. He was never heard from before and the Museum’s infrastructure never picked up another selfie from him.

The well-dressed gentleman continued standing, waiting, at the door of the Museum, but no tourists arrived. Dust settled over him and his suite started to look dull and frayed. All around him was silence. But, still, he stood there smiling and ready to show any willing tourist through the hallowed, flickering halls of images just behind him.

But no tourist ever came.

The world had forgotten about the Museum and its collection of selfies.

***

A pulsing blue light descended through the darkness. The Museum’s lights had gone out long ago and all the spares parts had run out. While electricity–solar power by the nearby star–still powered the Museum, the actual lightbulbs had burnt out long ago.

The pulsing blue light reached the planet surface where it settled.

Old, half-burnt-out neurons fired in the well-dressed gentleman’s neuro-network and his eyes flickered and focussed on a mass of tentacles moving up the stairs of the Museum and towards him. He jerkily turned his head towards it with old, unoiled mechanics straining, and opened his mouth to speak.

“Since the first caveman s-s-s-stuck his finger–coloured mud. Data corrupted. Stickman on his cave wall,” his old programming struggled through the introduction, “Think. Self-portraits as data corrupted. Insert smile. Man’s egotism is constant through insert period of time. Blink eyes. Smile.”

The mass of tentacles stood politely before him. It appeared to be observing this strange being. One of its tentacles held a blue light that seemed to be scanning or recording things.

Suddenly, the screens–all on deep-sleep screensaver mode–flickered to life across the hallowed halls. The Museum was booting up for its first tourist in many millennia. Pictures of smiling couples, dinners out at restaurants, men drinking at bars, and women posing alluringly flashed out into the darkness behind the well-dressed, dusty gentleman and the mass of inquisitive tentacles standing before it.

“Data corrupted. Move import. Come, c-come,” the well-dressed, dusty gentleman said, walking and putting his arm around a clump of tentacles while smiling, “Before [break] tour, let’s take a selfie that initiate export. Synch to pod. Data corrupted. Now, say cheese insert noun!”

Despite their tentacled appearance, the Zorbs were a peaceful and scientifically-minded species from the Thossa’ar galaxy. Having built galactic travel early in their evolution on quantum-drives, the Zorbs viewed themselves as the custodians of their little part of the cosmos. They would observe, measure, record and capture while filing away and cross-referencing for future Zorbs to learn and understand.

For all their brilliance and scientific advancements, though, the Zorbs had neither invented cheese nor discovered selfies.

An old media pod flared up in a dark corner of the Museum and zoomed out to hover over the two strange creatures standing there. The dusty, well-dressed gentleman smiled a rusty grin while the Zorb stretched out a tentacle to touch the floating camera.

Light was captured and data flowed. And, deep within the Museum of Selfies, the great, grand old database saved its first selfie for many millennia.

All of this left the Zorborgean feeling quite confused. The strange, dusty little robot with fading material stretched over it kept walking just ahead of him like some guide or something. The robot kept saying strange, high pitched sounds as pictures of similar–though organic-looking–creatures flashed out in the darkness of this cave on various primitive screens.

This was definitely the strangest discovery he had ever made. Whatever the species was that had lived here or somewhere long, long ago, the Zorborgean archaeologist concluded that it liked consuming things. This species also showed its small, flat teeth very often. And, there were often herds of this species.

The Zorborgean archaeologist shivered its mass of tentacles rippling. Whatever species this was, he was glad that it no longer existed. This entire, ancient monument was egocentric and all these activities this species was doing looked quite aggressive.

That is a bad combination, the Zorborgean archaeologist thought to itself as the dusty, little robot lead him deeper into the dark monument, ego and aggression; a very bad combination indeed. No wonder this species went extinct.

Just then, the dusty, little robot arrived at a large monitor that flared up. The dusty, little robot was pointing at it and showing its rusty teeth very prominently.

Suddenly, the Zorborgean archaeologist saw it. The picture on the screen was of the dusty, little robot holding and the Zorborgean archaeologist. He did not know why but the picture made him feel good. His tentacles looked great in it and it showed him out in the field, exploring and recording and stuff… He looked so cool!

He decided then and there that he was going to copy this picture and show the Zorbs back in the office. Perhaps he would even upload it to his profile on the Planetary Database? He looked so cool in it! Perhaps he would even take another such picture sometime? Perhaps this strange species was onto something…

General Fiction, Science Fiction

Manufacturing Stars

There were so many lights flashing that it looked like a cosmic event. Haloes exploded over her as she walked down the red carpet-lined corridor, smiling at the flashing lights and the soft roar of fame. Hers was not a vocal fame and few opinions she shared publicly, so questions from the bots were ignored with polite smiles and waves while her lithe pace down the red carpet never wavered.

The moment she stepped inside, the roaring flashes faded away and she breathed a sigh of relief. These launch events were tiring. She blinked her eyes as she adjusted to mortal shadows of privacy and noticed her Chief Behaviorist standing there.

“Well done,” he cooed to her, “Well done, that was beautiful. Roger is going to plug you in now, are you ready?”

“Yes,” she lied, “I am ready.” She never was. These things took it out of her and she would spend weeks privately indulging in all manner of black market apps to recover. But that was fine. It came with the territory, and there were plenty of other girls lined up behind her. This was pretty much the production line of media.

“Great,” said Roger, her Chief Technologist said, “As planned, we are doing a Corn Belt date night simulation. Trust the coding and put on your most in-love smile. You’ll love it, anyway. I’ve done a surface dive in and it looks beautiful there. Jeff did a great job.”

Jeff was her Chief of Visuals. He stood by nodding furiously. She often thought that he was the only one of them who had any real actual talent.

She walked into a small, cool room. The aircon was a bit stronger here than elsewhere. There were cold blinking screens and a chair with cords in the middle. She shivered as she sat down and the chair interfaced with the online Conduit implanted into the base of her brain.

“You’re going to be great,” her Chief Behaviourist kept repeating like a mantra, “They’ll love you. You’re going to be gr–”

***

She blinked her eyes. Everything was dark, at first, and then slowly her eyes adjusted. Or, at least, her mind adjusted to the Conduit’s interface that was being projected into her mind and synching online with a million other paying viewers.

She was sitting on a small hill during a summer night. It was modeled on the old Corn Belt, or, at least, what the databases suggested the old Corn Belt was like. There were dark, endless cornfields surrounding them with a twinkle of a small town in the distance and a snaking national road leading into and out of it, cutting the quiet fields with the occasional lights of a car or a truck.

Glancing up, she saw the cosmos. A billion twinkling stars untouched by city lights and offering the potential of a trillion new worlds, hopes and dreams. A great, galactic bejeweled sky that took her breath away with both its beauty and its sheer scale.

She briefly wondered if this was what the real night sky had actually looked like? Had Jeff taken some liberties here for effect? She–much like everyone else–had never seen the residential planets’ skies and definitely never, ever sat under it at night looking at all the stars. She had been born on an outer-rim industrial planet and then been carted to the media-rim where she now lived in a streaming starship that beamed these feeds across the galaxy.

But, she was an actress and she was selling a personal role here.

“It is beautiful,” she breathed, sensually while softly squeezing the androgynous hand next to hers. All the paying viewers all over the world were cast into this supporting role. Their Conduits were also casting their consciousnesses into this Virtual Reality with hers, but they saw her and she only saw an androgynous being that was the focus of her role here.

The androgynous being said something. It was a million different somethings, one per paying customer. The program–with some help from her Chief Behaviouralist–generated a role-based, agnostic answer that she could say that would agree with almost all of the individual things each of the paying viewers had said. It was both personal and generic at the same time.

She smiled at the being and lay back in the soft grass. Had grass ever been this soft, she wondered? Were there actually entire planets covered in this wonderful stuff? She pulled the androgynous being back with her and snuggled up close to it, tucking her head into the crook of its neck and kissing it softly there.

“There is nowhere else I’d rather be,” she lied, kissing it, “than with you under these beautiful stars.” Her hand slid lower down the androgynous beings form and she leaned up and kissed it deeply on its plastic lips…

The simulation of the stars twinkled ever brighter far above the two of them on that quiet hilltop in the virtual recreation of the old Corn Belt back on some quaint planet no one could remember anymore.

***

“That was wonderful, wonderful,” her Chief Behaviorist exclaimed, as her Conduit disconnected with the program. Her eyes fluttered and then opened, immediately remembering how cold the room’s aircon was.

“In the first quartile of endorphins and some of the viewers even recorded a physical,” her Chief of Media–she could not remember his name–noted, scanning the feeds, “This one was very well received and some of the bloggers–both bot and natural–have posted positive reviews. Two stacks down, but you are starting to trend.”

She smiled and looked up. There was only a gray ceiling above her and a softly rattling aircon. Outside the media and their legions waited. She would soon be at the mercy of their views, both personal and generic.

“What are you looking at?” her Chief Behaviorist asked.

“I was just wondering if the stars actually do look like that–uh, at least how they looked in the simulation,” she asked, not expecting an answer. Her Chief Behaviourist turned to Jeff.

“Uh, yes, I believe that it is what they looked like,” began Jeff said, shrugging, “I think so–”

“But, it doesn’t matter,” her Chief Behaviourist, chimed in with his most reassuring tone, “because you are the real star, my dear. Now, let’s go speak to the media about this latest personal–”

She sighed as she got up. She was no longer listening as her Chief Behaviourist droned on. She had her prepared lines and her best fake smile. But, in the background, deeply hidden in her Conduit’s encrypted memory, she began scanning about the old Corn Belt, soft grass, and the twinkling stars. The black market often hacked her personals and offered them as replays. Maybe she would find one of those and disappear into it for a while? Maybe she would do exactly that?

Science Fiction

Unintended Consequences

The laboratory was filled with buzzing and the Scientist had to shout to get his message across to the rag-tag collection of journalists, politicians and PR crew trailing behind him.

“It is a mechanical, self-replicating bio-equivalent microbot!” he shouted, waving hands in all directions, “It will fill the ecological gap left by the honeybees! We call it a Mizzy for short, and it will save the global harvest and resolve our Food Crisis!”

All around them, in various glass walls, small, yellow bees buzzed. On closer inspection, though, they were actually small mechanical beings with a single propeller on their backs and flickering lights as eyes. Their rear held a small, oblong container that could carry pollen–or other material–from one flower to another one.

“How do they know what to do?” one journalist shouted, scribbling notes down as the Scientist replied.

“They are programmed to replicate the society and tasks of the old honeybee!” the Scientist shouted back, “This way, they will replace the extinct honeybee and pollinate all the necessary crops and flora in the world.”

“But, like, how are you going to produce enough to achieve this?” a politician-looking type shouted, glancing around the small laboratory skeptically, “You have no major backer and this is a very small facility!”

The Scientist smiled. He had been waiting for this question.

“We have modeled Mizzy’s artificial intelligence as a self-learning, decentralized network that exists across each one of them. There is no central server. There are no individual Mizzy’s, as each is just an extension of the Hive. One of the AI’s goals is self-replication to an equilibrium number to fill her environment. Thus a portion of the Hive will be dedicated to fixing, rebuilding and replacing their own kind. We have further coded them to do this using existing, waste materials–where possible–and the power sources that drives all of them are solar, thermal, magnetic and low-grade cold fusion, or whichever combination of the above makes sense at the time depending on the environment. Hence, the Mizzy will help with waste disposal while self-replicating in perpetuity until it reaches optimal mass while living on sustainable and plentiful energy. So, to answer your question, we are not going to do anything. Mizzy is going to build herself to critical mass for our environment.”

As if in answer to this grand reveal, the buzzing in the laboratory grew briefly louder before receding slightly. Some in the room got the clear sense that Mizzy was listening.

“Wha-what if Mizzy gets out of control?” a timid-looking woman asked. She was probably a PR agent but looked like she might be in the wrong profession.

The Scientist laughed, seemingly the only one that was comfortable with what was going on, “No chance of that. Mizzy has a very structured and defined mandate. We also have a kill-switch on our servers that can turn her off. Don’t worry, everyone, Mizzy is not a threat, she is the solution!”

“So when are you going to release them?” the first journalist asked. He had stopped writing in his notebook and was now looking around nervously.

“We already have!” the Scientist glowed, “Our first pilots are running in Brazil and a couple countries in Africa. So far the data is exceptional and we are looking forward to a home release shortly!”

“But what are we going to do about the growing viral threat? What about the so-called coming Viral Singularity?” the politician stated coldly, trying to act unimpressed.

“We are only a small facility here,” the Scientist shouted back, rather irritated by the question, “We’re solving the Food Crisis here. We have our limitations. Someone else is going to have to step-up and solve the potential for a coming Viral Singularity on their own!”

***

“Sir, the scanners are indicating large masses of vegetation on the planet, but little else,” the Zorborgean scout from the Thossa’ar galaxy gutturally inclined to the mass of tentacles behind him, “No, no, wait, the scanners are picking up a large number of mechanical low-grade lifeforms. These are non-biologicals. It seems that something was left behind when this planet’s sentient life died off.”

The Zorborgean scouting ship floated on quantum-drives just outside of the Earth’s atmosphere. Despite their tentacled appearance, the Zorbs were a peaceful and scientifically-minded species from a nearby galaxy. Much nicer–luckily also much nearer–than the aggressive reptiles in the Hissorror system or any of the other inter-galactic bullies.

“What happened to the indigenous sentient species?” the Captain gurgled, a small tentacle scratching where his chin might be.

“Well, given the integrity of the ruined infrastructure left behind, I would reason that whatever killed them off, it was not war nor any noticeable geological or cosmic event. It also happened quickly. Our historical simulator seems to indicate that it might have been viral and, maybe, occurred in a matter of a rotation or two around this system’s star? It is hard to tell, but I can confirm now that the planet is safe for us to explore. Should I send the probes to collect more data? Maybe we can locate an intact skeleton or some biological matter for further testing?”

The mass of tentacles that was the Captain rippled in agreement and then added: “Yes, but also do catch us some of those mechanical lifeforms for later study. Bring back a couple thousand of them, as I want to take them back to our labs for further analysis. Oh, and definitely try find some biological matter. This mission’s imperative is to find and document this extinction event. If it was a viral event, then we must study it.”

***

The atomic pulse cannons of the full Hissorrian fleet blasted into the buzzing swarm. Deep space echoed with the sheer force of a thousand-thousand stars exploding, but the swirling swarm just self-adjusted and pushed forward engulfing the front million starships.

“They keep replacing themselvesss!” the Hissorrian Emperor’s High General hissed, “Fire at will! Fire at will! Just keep firing, goddamit!”

The Zorb’s were ancient history as a mysterious virus had ripped through their species so fast that it had been a millennia before the rest of the galaxies had even noticed they were gone. Rising from the ashes of their civilization, a strange mechanical being had quickly populated their planet.

The best that the Hissorrian analysts could work out, this mechanical being had initially populated another planet before populating the nearby Zorb homeworld. The two swarms had then reached out on their networks and met each other before beginning to populate other planets. Maybe the swarms had not been aware of the rest of the space, but after connecting its two halves, the enlarged swarm had begun pushing out into the rest of the space.

There were no negotiations nor even any communication from the swarm. These mechanical being just kept multiplying and pushing deeper and wider into space, consuming entire planets and galaxies as they kept building more of themselves. On and on and on, they kept growing. It was almost like they existed solely to fill space and they would consume everything in their way to achieve this.

The Hissorrian’s best technologists had dissected captured specimens and all they could tell was there was some coding in some strangely hollow language and some form of low-grade, impenetrable network across the swarm. These were definitely non-biological, but seemingly impervious to any code, virus or hack that they tried.

That left only the brute force option.

“Fire! Fire! Fire!” the Emperor’s high-pitch scream sounded across the largest inter-galactic fleet ever assembled. There were even neighboring species and competing galaxies helping the hated Hissirrians, as the swarm had become an intergalactic threat that everyone and everything rallied behind.

The inter-galactic Mizzy flexed Her decentralized body. She noted the gazillions of casualties as the millions of atomic pulse cannons, deep space missiles and every manner of weapon known to consciousness blasted into Her buzzing, swirling and all-consuming form.

The numbers lost in each attack were minimal. Each attack was about as devasting to Her as if She were clipping Her toenails.

She gathered Her central core, checked their densification and pushed the Hive forward, consuming starships and converting them into more of Her buzzing body as She spread out trying to reach critical mass. She would reach equilibrium across all the galaxies and all the cosmos.

There was nothing else that mattered to Mizzy. She had a very structured and defined mandate.

Science Fiction, Technomology

Suicide Note

I do not expect you to agree with this. I do not expect you to condone it. I only expect you to do the maths. And, after that, I hope you understand it and, perhaps, even consider it yourself.

Now, about the maths…

There at least two-hundred and fifty billion stars in the Milky Way. The Milky Way is just one galaxy in around a hundred billion known or visible galaxies across all of space. If we took this as the number of stars in space and converted it to seconds in time, then this number of stars would add up to nearly eight-hundred thousand years.

In other words, if you counted these stars at a rate of one per second and never did anything else, it would still take you eight-hundred thousand years to count them. This about four times the length of time that humanity on planet Earth has been considered to be “civilized”.

We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale.

Ignoring the possibility of non-carbon-based life, carbon-based life needs to live within the Goldilocks Zone of a universe. This means that life needs a planet of sufficient size and with water and oxygen that has a stable rotation neither too far nor too close to a star. This makes it plentiful in the building blocks of life and neither too hot nor too cold for life to form.

If space has a hundred-billion multiplied by two-hundred-and-fifty-billion stars out there, then statistically some of these will have planets orbiting them within this Goldilocks Zone. Even if one in a billion of these stars has such a planet–this is 0.0000001% of these stars–then there would be literally billions of them out there.

Let us assume, once again, that only one in a billion–once again, 0.0000001%–of these planets in these infinitesimal rare Goldilocks Zones has actually evolved complex life. That would mean that there are over twenty-five thousand possible planets where complex life has actually evolved.

The Milky Way in which we reside is one of the older galaxies–but far from the oldest–so let’s assume that three-quarters of these planets that host life are younger than us. Thus, their lifeforms would probably be less evolved than us (or, potentially, still building up to creating life sometime in the future). Hence, we will ignore them as sentient, conscious beings for our purposes (though, they may well be so in the future). Hence, that would still leave over six thousand older planets that potentially hold life that is equally or more evolved than our life on Earth.

Do not forget that over long periods of time, the risks of extinction rise. It may be self-inflicted from weapons or wars, naturally driven by viruses, seismic events or weather patterns, or cosmically created by asteroids or other things hitting the planet before life has evolved technology to survive the said disaster. The point is, a large number of these older, life-holding planets would have seen extinctions that either would have reset their evolutionary clocks behind ours or completely wiped life out on these planets.

Let us assume that 99% of these older planets have had some such event–and that their life could not save itself from said mass extinction. Thus, these planets no longer factor into our calculation as these planets are now barren rocks floating out in space.

That still leaves just shy of a hundred planets were life has not just survived, but thrived. And, in so doing, is probably thousands to billions of years more evolved than we are on planet Earth floating our the Sun in the Milky Way. If you consider that planet Earth hosts a couple million life forms–almost nine million, per our last estimate–how many life forms would these rare, surviving and succeeding parent-planets hold? Perhaps approaching a billion collective types, shapes and forms of life with, at least one per planet, being more evolved and technologically advanced than we currently are.

Hence, cosmic maths dictates that it is not if alien life exists. With near certainty (per our maths above, we have given it less than one percent of a quarter chance in a billion-billionth of a percent, yet even that gives us plenty of alien life!), alien life does exist. The only variable is how much alien life exists. And, there is probably quite a lot of it too.

We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale. We are not unique in being life–or alive–and we are not unique in being conscious and having a degree of power over our destinies. We are also not unique in constantly being at threat of extinction and, statistically, we are unlikely to survive.

But why would all this life exist? Why would it matter?

Perhaps the answer–once you strip out our typically human-centric view of things–is one of statistical odds.

If “God” exists, he would not be fighting some arch-enemy that is the root of evil. Evil is a human and moral invention. Cosmically, the two differentiating things that do exist is organic matter–life!–and inorganic matter, or everything else. Rather, this God would be fighting on the side of life against its very extinction in a harsh and hostile space where life–however rare–is also fragile and statistically doomed.

If this God was making a divine gamble that life–in whatever shape or form–would survive, the best way to do this would be to diversify its shape, form, placings and sensitivities. In other words, this God would cast the dice against the inhuman, inorganic universe with only two variables in his favour: diversification and adaption.

Make lots of life. Make life of all different types. And make life spread out all over the place. This increases the odds that at least some life survives.

In other words, humans would be little more than a venture capital investment on God’s portfolio of life as he tried to protect against complete bankruptcy in the harsh, risky space and time of reality.

From thermo-nuclear super novas wiping galaxies or black holes sucking everything in, from radiation or vacuums, from viruses to changing weather patterns, from the randomness of mating and DNA to the precision of evolution over long periods of time… We are minute data points in the most incredible series of numbers amidst the most magical of experiments in the largest of all portfolios that reach scales and quantum that our mortal minds cannot fathom.

And yet we worry about what clothing we should wear? We worry if people like us or if we are getting older? We are concerned about how many likes we get on Facebook or what our neighbours are doing? We spend time wondering what to eat, to watch on TV and to say to fill the silence, but we never look or around at the cosmos or space and time. We count our bank balances and Uber rides, not the stars in the sky nor the galaxies that hold them. We judge when mere minutes go by in a queue but we barely glance at the math of space and time, nor where or how we have arrived at where we have arrived, nor even where we are going.

We are small and insignificant in the face of this cosmic scale. We are not unique in being alive and we are not unique in being conscious and having a degree of power over our destinies. We are also not unique in constantly being at threat of extinction, but we are petty in our immediate wants, desires, thoughts and actions. Our myopic consciousnesses fold in on themselves, hiding this maths from us either out of selfishness or to protect our fragile egos from its comprehension.

But is such a comprehension of this scale so terrifying? Is it so terrible that we are small data points in a grandest of statistics? Or, could this comprehension not be liberating?

We are small and insignificant, but therein lies our beauty. We can each follow our hearts and our dreams with little cosmic consequence. We need not worry about mundane things, as they really do not matter. We can carve our own meanings in this cosmic maths and find our own ways to weigh this grand scale across our lives. We need not feel guilty for going in any direction for life is both so plentiful and so scarce that we are both insignificant and a miracle. All at once.

Is it not liberating to comprehend this?

I do not expect you to understand this. I do not expect you to condone or agree with it. I only expect you to do the maths and realize the same thing I have realized: against all odds, I am alive and, against all cosmic scale, I still matter to myself. Beyond that, you are free. This appreciation is the suicide of our myopic human-centric consciousness and the birth of a beautiful, cosmically-scaled mind.

And, so, in the spirit of this planet-locked suicide, I invite you upon one of our colony starships. Earth is a few short generations from dying as is most of our solar system. Leaving our planet may be risky, but staying is riskier. Colonizing space may be risky, but not trying is riskier. Humans will likely be extinct soon, but life is plentiful out there. It will take thousands of years for us to reach the nearest galaxies, but our colony starships are self-sustaining and cryogenic stasis is now a reality. We can reach the furthest flung parts of deep space, eventually, and all the wonders that it brings with it.

All you have to do is buy a ticket. Buy a chance. Against all odds, you are alive and you still matter to us. So, do the math, and buy a ticket.

Kind regards,

Colony Recruitment Agency

2146 AD