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xuenay"It is done. My instruments have ceased picking up any trace of extra heat emissions from the Sol system."
The Prime Speaker's words fell into a sort of resigned silence. It wasn't that we hadn't known to expect them - over the last 24 hours, we had gone from observing over a thousand spaceborne objects to less than a dozen. We had been there, watching them go out one by one, unable to help with all our advanced machinery.
Man's final century had been an era of unparalleled change. The development of artifical intelligence had fostered an explosion in the speed of scientific progress, plunging dozens of technologies into the hands of men before society could properly adapt to them.
Cloning and the ability to copy minds like computer programs. Nanobots that could reconstruct a human body from a single strand of DNA. Weapons that could devastate planets.
Weapons so well shielded that they could travel into the sun and disrupt the fusion reactions going on in there. Make our sun, the giver of all life, go out prematurely.
Weapons that landed in the hands of fundamentalist doomsday cults before most of the populace even know such things existed.
Ours had been a scientific laboratory, hidden far from the solar system to protect Earth in case the research we were conducting would go awry. Built in an era when people still thought mankind would survive this time, our space station was the only one far enough to escape serious damage by the red dwarf that now marked the center of our system. Too far away to be too badly damaged, too far away to be of any help to the survivors.
There were ten of us left, all gathered in the main observation hall. Or perhaps one should say eight - there were three identical copies of Kiovan, made in the early days of braintaping. That had been before people realized it was no use to have identical copies of people working on the same research project - it would just create redundancy, as instead of having the benefit of three brilliant minds we'd just have one brilliant mind in three bodies.
Not that that mattered much, either. The Prime Speaker was the entity doing most of the work - we had long ago been relegated to mostly observing the process.
"I have finished the final calculations", the AI's voice broke into our reverie. "I have narrowed down the list of eighty-nine potential locations initially selected into the most suitable five."
Five, the magic number. Among us, there were five physicists and five biologists. Five self-sufficient capsules with space capability and five biology laboratories to go with them.
Though it didn't say so anywhere on our mission profile, we had been sent here to play god. Five scientists working on many-worlds theory, scanning the countless possible universes to find worlds in our universe that had the potential for life. Five biologists with the tools to seed life on those worlds, create whole new ecosystems from primodial goo.
"I'm still sure my version will be the best", Shirel said, offering a small smile in a desperate attempt to cheer up the mood. "You'll see."
You'll see, she said. We were all practically immortal - not only had the natural processes contributing to aging been stopped in our bodies, a swarm of self-repairing nanobots was constantly on patrol inside all of us, able to repair even the most serious damage we would suffer. Unless we chose otherwise, we would be able to live millions of years.
And that was the thing our plan relied on. Using the equipment installed on the station, Prime Speaker had scoured through billions of possible universes, studying their properties and laws of physics. Finally it had found what we had been looking for, a universe where the laws of physics allowed us to live and most of our machinery to function, but prevented the creation of such powerful weapons that had led to mankind's demise.
From there, it had found eighty-nine planets that could support life. We could use our machines to travel to that universe, leave our dead system behind and seed new life on new planets. Each of the five biologists had their own idea on how exactly we should do that, what sort of life we should create. We would shape the dominant species in our own image, but not an exact copy - mankind had had its chance. None of us wanted to recreate the thousands of years of suffering that made up humanity's history, so we would create a new sort of man on the planets. Different. Improved. And we all had differing opinions on what the improved man should be like.
There was just one problem - we only had five two-man capsules in our disposal to travel to those worlds, and the same laws of physics that allowed us to live in that universe and prevented the creation of sun-killers also prevented us from being all sent to the same system. The very set of physical conditions we needed to prevent this tragedy from repeating prevented any of the capsules from arriving within ten thousand light years of each other.
What was worse, we had no possibility for remote pickup. The capsules had only sub-light engines, only suitable for maneuvering within a solar system. The space station we were on had the machinery for sending the capsules into another universe, but the equipment needed to retrieve those capsules wasn't yet finished and would never be. We lacked the parts for that, parts that were going to be sent from Earth within two weeks of now.
Well, enough of just sitting in place. "Shall we?", I asked, rising up and looking at the others. There was nothing more to be accomplished here.
We had agreed on a meeting place, a star the shortest distance from all five planets. About fifteen million light years from each, give or take three million. Once we'd have seeded life on those worlds we'd guide their inhabitants through the ages, helping them discover technology and create their own societies. If all went well and everything was in order we'd have them build a space ship for us, as advanced as could possibly be built, and we'd journey to that meeting place to see each other again.
"See you all in a million years", I smiled to the others as Shirel and I went to our capsule. Oh, it was going to be a lot longer than that, and there were a million things that could go wrong and have us all wound up dead. But it sounded good.
"The locations have been programmed", Prime Speaker's voice echoed in our capsule. Perhaps one day an alien civilization would realize that this star hadn't died a natural death and find the AI when they came to explore, billions of years from now. "I'm initiating the dimensional transfer."
The world outside the capsule windows went white and I felt my touch on the world around us slipping away. Nobody could undergo a universe shift while fully conscious - we would all slip into a deep sleep of sorts before waking in an alien world.
Just before falling into the deeply unconscious state, a single thought popped into my mind from the depths of my brain. As I closed my eyes, I knew it was the last thing from this universe that I would ever remember.
But hey, isn't getting to play God the one thing everyone has always wanted?
The Prime Speaker's words fell into a sort of resigned silence. It wasn't that we hadn't known to expect them - over the last 24 hours, we had gone from observing over a thousand spaceborne objects to less than a dozen. We had been there, watching them go out one by one, unable to help with all our advanced machinery.
Man's final century had been an era of unparalleled change. The development of artifical intelligence had fostered an explosion in the speed of scientific progress, plunging dozens of technologies into the hands of men before society could properly adapt to them.
Cloning and the ability to copy minds like computer programs. Nanobots that could reconstruct a human body from a single strand of DNA. Weapons that could devastate planets.
Weapons so well shielded that they could travel into the sun and disrupt the fusion reactions going on in there. Make our sun, the giver of all life, go out prematurely.
Weapons that landed in the hands of fundamentalist doomsday cults before most of the populace even know such things existed.
Ours had been a scientific laboratory, hidden far from the solar system to protect Earth in case the research we were conducting would go awry. Built in an era when people still thought mankind would survive this time, our space station was the only one far enough to escape serious damage by the red dwarf that now marked the center of our system. Too far away to be too badly damaged, too far away to be of any help to the survivors.
There were ten of us left, all gathered in the main observation hall. Or perhaps one should say eight - there were three identical copies of Kiovan, made in the early days of braintaping. That had been before people realized it was no use to have identical copies of people working on the same research project - it would just create redundancy, as instead of having the benefit of three brilliant minds we'd just have one brilliant mind in three bodies.
Not that that mattered much, either. The Prime Speaker was the entity doing most of the work - we had long ago been relegated to mostly observing the process.
"I have finished the final calculations", the AI's voice broke into our reverie. "I have narrowed down the list of eighty-nine potential locations initially selected into the most suitable five."
Five, the magic number. Among us, there were five physicists and five biologists. Five self-sufficient capsules with space capability and five biology laboratories to go with them.
Though it didn't say so anywhere on our mission profile, we had been sent here to play god. Five scientists working on many-worlds theory, scanning the countless possible universes to find worlds in our universe that had the potential for life. Five biologists with the tools to seed life on those worlds, create whole new ecosystems from primodial goo.
"I'm still sure my version will be the best", Shirel said, offering a small smile in a desperate attempt to cheer up the mood. "You'll see."
You'll see, she said. We were all practically immortal - not only had the natural processes contributing to aging been stopped in our bodies, a swarm of self-repairing nanobots was constantly on patrol inside all of us, able to repair even the most serious damage we would suffer. Unless we chose otherwise, we would be able to live millions of years.
And that was the thing our plan relied on. Using the equipment installed on the station, Prime Speaker had scoured through billions of possible universes, studying their properties and laws of physics. Finally it had found what we had been looking for, a universe where the laws of physics allowed us to live and most of our machinery to function, but prevented the creation of such powerful weapons that had led to mankind's demise.
From there, it had found eighty-nine planets that could support life. We could use our machines to travel to that universe, leave our dead system behind and seed new life on new planets. Each of the five biologists had their own idea on how exactly we should do that, what sort of life we should create. We would shape the dominant species in our own image, but not an exact copy - mankind had had its chance. None of us wanted to recreate the thousands of years of suffering that made up humanity's history, so we would create a new sort of man on the planets. Different. Improved. And we all had differing opinions on what the improved man should be like.
There was just one problem - we only had five two-man capsules in our disposal to travel to those worlds, and the same laws of physics that allowed us to live in that universe and prevented the creation of sun-killers also prevented us from being all sent to the same system. The very set of physical conditions we needed to prevent this tragedy from repeating prevented any of the capsules from arriving within ten thousand light years of each other.
What was worse, we had no possibility for remote pickup. The capsules had only sub-light engines, only suitable for maneuvering within a solar system. The space station we were on had the machinery for sending the capsules into another universe, but the equipment needed to retrieve those capsules wasn't yet finished and would never be. We lacked the parts for that, parts that were going to be sent from Earth within two weeks of now.
Well, enough of just sitting in place. "Shall we?", I asked, rising up and looking at the others. There was nothing more to be accomplished here.
We had agreed on a meeting place, a star the shortest distance from all five planets. About fifteen million light years from each, give or take three million. Once we'd have seeded life on those worlds we'd guide their inhabitants through the ages, helping them discover technology and create their own societies. If all went well and everything was in order we'd have them build a space ship for us, as advanced as could possibly be built, and we'd journey to that meeting place to see each other again.
"See you all in a million years", I smiled to the others as Shirel and I went to our capsule. Oh, it was going to be a lot longer than that, and there were a million things that could go wrong and have us all wound up dead. But it sounded good.
"The locations have been programmed", Prime Speaker's voice echoed in our capsule. Perhaps one day an alien civilization would realize that this star hadn't died a natural death and find the AI when they came to explore, billions of years from now. "I'm initiating the dimensional transfer."
The world outside the capsule windows went white and I felt my touch on the world around us slipping away. Nobody could undergo a universe shift while fully conscious - we would all slip into a deep sleep of sorts before waking in an alien world.
Just before falling into the deeply unconscious state, a single thought popped into my mind from the depths of my brain. As I closed my eyes, I knew it was the last thing from this universe that I would ever remember.
But hey, isn't getting to play God the one thing everyone has always wanted?
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no subject
Date: 2005-08-31 08:31 am (UTC)Superb work, or then I'm just a fool and a sub-amateur, but there's my opinion anyway. It was delightful reading this.