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cosmology

To Catch The Light Off Other Stars

by A. J. Rocca

He fell out of space down, down through the depths and into the shape of an eel. He wriggled his way into a secret reef nourished by four ocean currents, and there amongst corals and algaes of every hue he found the first two Mectopians. Their play was innocent; his adversary had gifted the pair with eight limbs apiece, and they juggled rosy-hued decapods back and forth. He lured off the female of the pair and led her to the oysters she was commanded never to pick. He told her that if she were but to pry open a shell and take its opalescent pearls, she would become wise like God, dividing the waters between saline and pure.

Lucifer fled out of the eel and broke the surface, titanic and winged, a halo of spray exploding in his wake. He ascended to the upper atmosphere and found his ally Urania waiting on the precipice of the void. Together they watched the four currents collapse and the waters of Mectopos’ far north turn ice. Urania congratulated him on his strike against their shared foe, and she told him of a new world she’d espied freshly seeded with life. She drew her wand to mark stars on the way to that far distant orb, and Lucifer spread his wings to catch the burning light off the nearby sun. He pushed off into the void.

Then a million years of solitude.

On Pseudopsaria, he became a creeping fungus. He stretched his mycelia through the soft soil and attached to the roots of the tallest angiosperm in the forest, white blossoms bursting open over her breadth. For a growing season, he whispered into her dreams of rain and wind. He told her that if she would but stretch out her vines into that sunspot forbidden her, she would become like God, growing to spread her canopy in the sky and measuring where falls light and shade.

Lucifer watched from a nearby asteroid as the planet’s firmament was stripped bare, leaving the Pseudopsars exposed to the raking of a blue-hot sun. In his flush of victory, however, a seed of humiliation: Lucifer had to wait for Urania to divine his next course through the stars. Before his fall, he was the brightest of the angels, and he could ride his own rays across the universe. Now he was divested, and all light was turned repellent to him; they’d made his own name a mockery. Out of this curse he’d devised a new way between worlds, but he was blind without Urania.

Finally she stepped forth from the void to congratulate him and plot his next mission. Urania told of a gas giant in a neighboring galaxy whose fourth moon was just beginning to crawl, and she marked out three crucial stars he could use to reach it. Lucifer caught a blast off Pseudopsaria’s savage blue sun, and he boomed out across the cosmos along the arc of her azoth-tipped wand.

Then another couple eons alone.

For the Citarions, he was a jelly, for the desert Katyushans a hop-mouse. From orb to orb he went, and every time he found his victims undefended. The empyrean host was always one step behind him. Lucifer sneered at the thought of fiery-faced cherubim arriving to defend fallen planets, nothing to do but shake their spears in useless fury at the ones they’d come to save. Cherished images such as these helped preserve him against the void. Space and time wore down on his senses like pumice stone, but Lucifer refused to let his revenge be eroded; his hell burned dark and hot within him as the adversary’s stars swept him across ancient night.

For the Takians, a sentient cloud. For the Zyanides, a throng of heartworms. He continued his slow streak of victories against the adversary. But between victories, the universe changed. He saw distant nebulae give birth to bright daughters. He watched icy-tailed comets come travel with him a ways before slugging back home to orbit. He felt thorny webs of radio waves get tangled in his wings and threaten to blow him off course. For a while as he approached the new galaxy, he tracked with interest a dying star. He watched it grow great and red, but it never exploded. It just grew older and colder and dimmer, and Lucifer felt a terrible kinship. The hell within him swelled and swelled, and despite his efforts, finally began to cool. With that abatement came questions: How had the Empyrean host never caught up to him? Why had the adversary allowed him to escape and cry havoc across the cosmos? Why had he not yet plucked the traitor Urania from her hideaway within the void?

It was on approach to Phi that Lucifer made his decision. He reached the edge of the star system, but he did not proceed to the topaz-colored planet in the fifth orbit that Urania had promised him. Instead, he alighted atop an icy planetesimal caught in the system’s outmost orbit. He folded his wings and waited. He sat for a few revolutions around Phi and watched her seven daughters dance—aphelion to perihelion, conjunction to opposition to conjunction again.

At last, he felt her presence behind him.

“Hail, Lucifer!”

Lucifer did not turn his gaze from the dance.

“Why are you sitting here?” Urania asked. “Have you lost your way?”

“Do you remember that third or fourth world you showed me to?” Lucifer asked. “That fleck of blue and green where I became the snake?”

“One of your canniest tactics,” said Urania.

“I should have been a bee.”

“A bee?”

“I saw them flitting through the garden,” said Lucifer. “I always wondered why he saw it fit to put a sting to them; what needs a bee to sting when she’s the best servant to the gardener? Maybe she gets some nectar, but who gets the fruit once it falls?”

Lucifer turned a lopsided smile to Urania, appreciating fully her dark, flowing gown of aether and night. “So come on. Which one are you?”

Urania did not answer. She rapped the end of her fire-tipped wand across her palm.

“Is it Raphael? Gabriel?”  Lucifer asked.

The fire from the wand burned bright and spread to consume the lady; out stepped Michael hefting sword and spear. His apeiron-forged panoply was heaven-bright, brighter than Phi, maybe even as bright as Lucifer himself was once. The near presence of such powerful light sizzled on the fallen angel’s skin and nearly blew him off the planetesimal, but he refused to surrender his seat.

“Ah.” Lucifer folded tight his wings and went back to brooding over the star system. The planetesimal thread its way through half an orbit in silence.

“Well?” Michael finally asked. Lucifer smirked, but kept silent. The commander of the Empyrean host was action incarnate, and it was not in his nature to wait. He hefted his sword, and Lucifer still remembered its edge from so many eons ago, but he felt no fear. What could Michael hope to do? Force him to sin?

Lucifer tortured his brother with a few more silent orbits around Phi. He meant to keep him there another thousand revolutions at least, but his swollen, cool-burning heart betrayed him.

“How did you feel when he ordered you to help me?” Lucifer asked.

“It’s not our place to question him.”

“And I’m sure you never did, but what did you feel? You must have felt something over all this time we’ve had together. And all this space.” Lucifer gestured his arms across the cosmic expanse, its constellations dotted with worlds they’d taught to suffer. “What was it like? You the devil’s handmaiden, showing me to new worlds to pollinate with sin.”

Michael’s light grew bright hot, and Lucifer savored the pain of it. Of all the angels the adversary could have set to this task, Michael was the cruelest choice. He was made like his sword: straight edged, simple.

“You present them a choice,” said Michael.

“And yet they keep making the wrong one. Again and again. Every single one of them,” Lucifer said. “Some choice.”

Michael gripped his shield and spear, and cracks ran all through the icy planetesimal. “Satan! You will not snare me with your lies. You did not before, and you will not now.”

“I’m not trying to ensnare you, brother. I’m trying to give you a gift.”

Lucifer rose from his perch and went to face Michael directly. It was all he could do to bear it. The light coming off Michael was a fierce gale ripping out across space.

“I’m going to free you from this hated task you’ve been yoked with,” Lucifer said. He could feel Michael’s rage in every filament of his being. “Go back to heaven and tell him I’m done pollinating his worlds. Tell him if he wants someone to work his garden, then he can do it himself.”

Lucifer spread his wings, and Michael’s light shot him off the planetesimal and straight out of Phi’s system. He flipped over and caught his balance, ready to resume his sojourn through the cosmos. For the first time in his existence, Lucifer did not know where he was going. He would avoid the topaz world hanging fifth out from Phi, but that left only a neat infinity of possibilities and the whole tide of time to turn them over: he could skate the edge of event horizons, dance upon the rings of gas giants, dive down to pluck molten gold from collapsing novae.

All Lucifer knew for certain was that he did not want to follow the adversary’s direction any longer. He could ride his brother’s fury for a while, but eventually he’d have to learn to catch the light off other stars.

~

Bio:

A.J. Rocca is a writer and English teacher from Chicago. He specialized in the study of speculative fiction while pursuing his M.A., and now he writes both SFF criticism as well as his own fiction. Some common themes in his writing include music, space, and cats. His work can be found collected at his website: ajrocca.com.

Philosophy Note:

This story was inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost and the hints that Milton throws in throughout the poem that God may have created other inhabited worlds besides Earth. In particular, I was inspired by a scene in Book III of the poem: after bumbling through space, Satan finally reaches Earth and looks down at it, and he’s so seized by envy that he averts his gaze to instead look around at the constellations, perhaps even briefly considering going to one of those other possible worlds the poet hints at. Of course Satan eventually continues on his way to precipitate the fall of man, but the briefly averted gaze to me is itself fascinating. What if Satan actually left for one of those other worlds, abandoning his role as the fiend and the long train of biblical history laid out before him? Can we even imagine an alternative trajectory for a character like that, and if not, then how are either Satan or his victims in any way possessing of free will? For my essay on this subject, see https://reactormag.com/john-milton-the-space-poet-early-traces-of-science-fiction-in-paradise-lost/

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The Familiar Stranger

by Carlton Herzog

Professor Mulder,

I have practiced psychiatry for the past 30 years, specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of schizophrenia. In late 2054, I attended a patient—a CERN engineer—who seemed sane in every respect.

Yet, he insisted that he had been contacted by a visitor from the future. He also claimed that this traveler was his doppelganger, possibly from an alternate timeline. I remained skeptical and attributed his wild claims to a florid imagination and the stress of his work.

However, the further I delved into his story, the more I became convinced that he sincerely believed the truth of his claim.

Currently, he is on extended medical leave and remains under my care at the Institute. I convinced him to provide me with a written statement along with a copy of the Phone video he made of his visitor’s monologue. I have included both with this letter.

Professor Allen Treadwell, Department of Abnormal Psychology

Saint Mary’s Hospital, Zurich

#

 “He didn’t belong here. Or anywhere else on this earth. I took him to be the stuff of dreams, an airy nothing that had found a habitation outside my head. But there was too much sensory detail for him to be a mere figment of my imagination.

He steamed as the brown ice on him melted. That vapor reeked of feces and corpses and the deep earth.

He wore a parka with matching leggings but had wrapped the entire suit—including the boots—in thick black plastic then mummified it with duct tape. Bandages and rags covered his ears and nose, while a scarf or three wrapped python-like around his neck and mouth. Reflective ski-goggles covered his eyes. 

But for all those layers, he seemed oddly familiar—a badly dressed, noisome me.

He told of the coming world.

 ‘We are dying. My wife passed last week. My daughter the week before. There are no doctors left, no medicine. There is little hygiene in our crowded burrow. We live on top of each other, feeding on odious things—dung beetles, maggots, mushrooms, tilapia, worms—that live on feces and the dead. Raw dirty things that make you gag before you swallow. Thanks to that retinue of coprophages, my wife and daughter will be part of me again and again and again.

How the mighty have fallen: the once proud lords of the earth now reduced to scurrying moles. It is small consolation that this dramatic change came not from man’s hubris, but from circumstances wholly beyond his ability to predict or control.

The scientists saw It coming hundreds of years before It arrived. The mother of extinction events. At first, the cosmologists called it a “supermassive debris field.” Later, the poets, renamed it the Tartarus Field. But whatever the label, words could not contain its proportions or scope, though they could at least describe its components: stars, comets, asteroids, brown dwarfs, cracked planets, whole planets, gas, and dust—moving like a horde of locusts over a wheat field. It was as if an entire arm of some galaxy had somehow detached itself and begun a pilgrimage through our piece of space gravitationally absorbing all forms of matter within its field of influence. Over billions of years, it grew as it passed through system after system in galaxy after galaxy. Maybe through another universe or two. And the bigger it got the more stuff it attracted.

One might expect that when all that matter passed through the Milky Way, the earth was in greatest danger from a collision. Or simply being dragged along with the other debris. But that was not the case. It just nipped the edge of the Sagittarius Arm, and did so only with its dusty halo.

Yet, that was more than enough. Sweet, beautiful dust, the diamonds of space, reflecting light like the Star of India. Trillions upon trillions of tumbling, dancing, whirling, spinning, gyring, jittering dust particles. A great diamond necklace that wrapped itself around the neck of the earth and told us that we were married to the fate of the cosmos around us whether we liked it or not. And what a marriage it was: the sun disappeared from the sky, and with it the moon, and it wasn’t long there after that the earth and her waters began to die, and when they did, so did we.’

Then he was gone. I reached for a drink to steady my nerves. I went outside and scanned the night sky. I wondered if my visitor were some time-slipping version of myself projecting a warning into the past or a potent sign of incipient psychosis.

Professor Allen Treadwell, Max Planck Institute for Advanced Gravitational Study

Potsdam, Germany

#

Dear Professor Treadwell,

Consider that our brains are tuned to detect a shockingly small fraction of reality. We are taken in by the illusion of time having a single unified behavior. However, as special relativity makes clear, time’s expressed properties, like motion, are defined by its relationships. If one accepts the premise that time is a concentration of ever shifting energies running in all directions, one will not be surprised when it defeats our mundane expectations. To be sure, we can expect to acquire a greater understanding of its secrets. But that dynamic will remain asymptotic, for aspects of its truths–as with any other phenomena–we will always elude our grasp.

Hence, the foundation of science must always be to keep the door open to doubt. I find it helpful when an unfamiliar idea holds my attention to welcome that idea as the way to   something new. Therefore, I believe that it would be premature to prematurely dismiss your patient’s visitor as a hoax or hallucination. Further research is warranted.

Professor Fritz Mulder

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Iowa State University, Ames

#

Professor Mulder,

I need your help in solving a problem. As you may already know my team discovered an ancient human habitation in California’s Mitchell Caverns. For good reason, I have concealed the specifics of the find from the public. There are aspects to it that are deeply troubling. Let me briefly summarize what we have found.

On April 24, 2036, the cavern floor collapsed stranding a group of tourists on a heretofore unknown level below. The rescue team subsequently found an extensive network of a man-made tunnels fanning out from that initial rupture. They also found the remains of a human society. Soon thereafter, I, as head of the UCLA Anthropology Department, immediately put together a team and set out for what is now known as the Enigma Site.

When we arrived, I was shocked by what we found. There were miles of tunnels. Judging from the remains I conservatively estimated that this subterranean community had a population of a few thousand. Radio-metric dating of the human remains registered in the 3 to 4 million year range. However, those remains were anatomically modern in every respect right down to their dental work and steel replacement joints.

There were many more anomalies: the cavern floor, wall and ceiling contained high levels of iridium, an element common to asteroids; there were numerous ferromagnetic crystals magnetized on one end but not on the other (monopoles); the organic material we found proved aberrant, insofar as the human remains consisted of right-handed amino acids.

I realize that your expertise is in theoretical physics and not anthropology or archeology. But I believe that you may be in a better position to explain this mystery than anyone in my allied disciplines. I eagerly await your insight.

Sincerely yours

Professor Jesse Parris, UCLA

#

Professor Parris,

I have just returned from your Enigma Site. Based on the physical evidence you have provided, as well as my own observations, I believe that the Enigma Site is the result of a superposition between our reality and another. The tell-tale signs of that superposition are the right-handed amino acids and the monopoles, neither of which normally exist on this material plane.

After that, I can only speculate. How the remains of modern humans could be millions of years old yet be fitted with modern prosthetics would seem to defy explanation. But I know of no physical law that would prohibit the cross-pollination of alternate time streams. Nor one that would discourage time streams, like any distributed system, from evolving and developing emergent features along the way. Frankly, I am surprised that such a chronometric chimera has not been discovered sooner in one form or another.

Were I you, I would begin my analysis with two competing hypotheses. On the one hand, time like any physical system is subject to entropy, namely, moving from a state of order to one of disorder. On the other, time is a self-correcting code that keeps the universe from getting too big and makes local adjustments that to us seem disorderly but are necessary to maintain the greater equilibrium. In that respect, perhaps time like energy is conserved.

In any event, I suspect that we will see more of these time displacements.

Yours

Professor Fritz Mulder, Iowa State University, Ames

#

Dear Professor Parris,

I too have visited the Enigma Site. It confirms my hypothesis that time is not a linear, unidimensional feature of our reality. Rather, it is a dynamic, bi-directional wave consistent with Einstein’s observation that “the distinction between past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

Indeed, we live in a carousel universe with more and more galaxies in the northern hemisphere rotating to the left and an equal number of galaxies in the southern hemisphere rotating to the right. When our universe spins, it focuses space and propagates sometimes as a wave, and at others, as a filament structure accompanied by robust, but entirely random, time vortices, sweeping bits of the future into the past.

But the story does not end there. My most recent observations indicate that our universe not only rotates on an axis but also revolves around a more massive object, such as another singularity or universe. Just as a white dwarf star pulls matter from a companion red giant in a binary system, the tidal forces between our universe and its companion amplify the time like curves produced by our universe’s rotation.

We can only guess at the larger reality we inhabit. For all we know our universe could be a speck on the spiral arm of some meta-structure composed entirely of universes. That meta-structure could be part of something even larger. Where it ends, we will never know.

We do know some small things with certainty. Rotation is one feature of this universe, from the spin of an electron to that of a galaxy and everything in between since the sphere is the most efficient shape to house matter and energy.

Self-similarity is another: big things look like the little things that comprise them. Circular solar systems are comprised of circular objects in circular orbits, many of which are circularly orbited by circular objects.

As the foregoing discussion suggests, I do not hold with the traditional multiverse view of discrete universes existing incommunicado from one another. To be fair, I do not have a language for the occulted, inaccessible structures in which we are imbedded. Suffice to say that if viewed from the domain of the very large, the meta-structure would reveal itself as a fractal pattern of self-similar topology extending into infinity.

Proof of this hypothesis is for the moment in short supply. But if Einstein’s theory of General Relativity showed us anything it’s that there is selective advantage in believing in what can’t yet be proved.

Professor Sherman Klein, Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics,

Oxford University

~

Bio:

Carlton Herzog publishes science fiction, horror, and crime as well as non-fiction. He graduated from Rutgers University magna cum laude and Rutgers Law School where he served as Article Editor of the Law Review.

Philosophy Note:

As linear creatures, our language is saturated and animated by notions of time. Time is basically an illusion created by the mind to make sense of our reality. Albert Einstein, shared this view, writing, “People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”

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The Story Of Atoms

by Geoffrey Hart

In the beginning was the first scientist — the God Particle, GP hereafter. (Even in the beginning, scientists loved their acronyms, abbreviations, and clever wordplay, and GP was no different. And, of course, GP was ineluctably masculine, since back then, only men could be scientists. There being only one of him, that was less sexist than it might seem to modern sensibilities.)

Darkness was upon the face of the universe (for back then, there was only one), and GP looked upon it and saw that it was good: it had the simplicity of a really good Japanese watercolor, though, of course, such things had yet to be invented. Best of all, it left everything to the imagination, which was a more effective technique than overexplaining and overcomplicating everything. That was to come later, when universities were invented.

After a time — unquantifiable, because time was still a new thing, the paint still drying and GP not quite sure whether quantification was as good an idea as it had seemed at the time — GP began to feel just the slightest bit lonely. After all, what good was a universe if there was no one else to appreciate it? So in a fit of enthusiasm, GP created another being with whom to share the void. Let’s call her “GP Prime”, or “Prime” for short, for there would eventually be mathematics, mathematical tradition, and the notation it spawned. More importantly, of course, any good story needs conflict, and laying claim to first rank, first causes, and first publication was a primary source of conflict then, as it is now.

Prime was very impressed with the universe; there was, after all, nothing else quite like it. But after a time, she noted a certain sameness to it. With no light, there was only structure and symmetry to gaze upon, and though it was an admirable and symmetrical structure, it was a trifle… bland.

“GP, I think something’s missing,” she ventured.

“Why? It’s perfect and, by definition, cannot be improved upon.”

“While I concede, for the sake of argument, that perfection is perfect, I’m not sure it’s sufficient.”

“What would you add?”

“Hmmm… perhaps a little… light?” And there was light, a warm reddish background glow that both illuminated and concealed, and now the structure and symmetry stood out and could be more easily appreciated.

“But… But… It leaves nothing to the imagination!”

“Don’t over-react. It’s only a little light. Be still, and I’ll fix it.” And Prime created shadow, and GP saw that it was good.

“I like that shadow.”

“Thought you might. But why stop there? For example, all that structure is perfectly lovely, but what’s it all in aid of?”

“Well… us, really.”

“Why not try a little of this, instead?” And Prime created atoms, and GP saw that they were good.

“Huh. Never would have thought of that on my own.”

“Of course not. That’s why we have peer review.”

GP was a little miffed, but deeper down, felt something he’d never felt before. Intrigued. Despite his trepidation, he could hardly wait to see what Prime had up her (thus far, entirely metaphysical) sleeve. “What else have you got?”

“How about this?” And where once there were atoms, perfect and indivisible, now there were subatomic particles.

“Neat! Can I name them?”

Prime nodded, secretly pleased.

“Let’s call this big one a proton. And this smaller one an electron.”

Prime pursed her lips. “And just to shake things up, how about this?” And a third particle appeared.

“Ooh! That’s transgressive… it’s… unbalanced! What will you call it?” GP was, after all, perfectly willing to give credit where credit was due. Eventually.

“Neutron. And here’s another cool thing:” Prime disappeared the electron.

“Wait: where’d it go?”

“Into the proton — and now it’s a neutron!”

“Put it back. I like having three different particles.”

“Very well.” The electron reappeared. “Hmm… then you’ll love this.” And suddenly there were a great many smaller particles humming with energy and bouncing off each other and vibrating and rotating and translating with their enthusiasm. “I’ll call them quarks, and… and…. This undeniably cute one will be Charm, and this one I haven’t completely figured out yet I’ll call Strange, and…”

“Enough! Enough! My head’s spinning.” GP was beginning to regret having given Prime both a mind equal to his own and agency to use it.

“But if I subdivide the quarks into these littler things…”

“STOP! NO FURTHER!” GP regretted having to shout, but it seemed necessary to catch Prime’s attention before she got carried away. More carried away, leastwise. Things were still relatively simple, just the way he liked it, but he had a sense of foreboding.

Prime took a deep breath (now that there was something to breathe) and pondered a moment. “Well, if you don’t want more smaller things, how about larger?” She banged two atoms together, and there was a brilliant flash of light.

“What was that?”

“I call it fusion… bang enough little things together and you get bigger things. Bang a few of those bigger things together, and you get even bigger things. I’m going to call them elements.”

“And what if I were to break them apart again?” And GP did, and there was even more light. “Ouch! That stings.”

“I’m going to call that fission. And if you’re going to break the things I make, then you’d best take care.” There was no doubting it; a note of petulance had crept into Prime’s voice.

GP attempted a placating tone. “Nice. What else can you do?”

“Well first, let’s make the light a little more steady. There.”

“Wow. I’m going to call those stars. Because you’re a star performer.”

Prime managed to conceal her wince; it helped that GP wasn’t really paying attention to her, gaze focused on his universe. “OK, good. Now how about these?” Large clusters of atoms came together and began circling the stars.

“Nice. I’m going to call them planets… because… um… they move.”

“You like moving things? How about these?” More atoms came together and started orbiting the planets.

“Nice. I’m going to call them moons. But stop: no further. Let’s enjoy what we’ve created before we needlessly recomplicate.”

Prime sighed. We? Even then, before academic review committees and departmental politics, authorship was an issue. “But why stop there? There’s so much more we could create.”

GP, entirely missing how Prime lingered over the we, tried to reassert his authority. “Because it’s my universe, and I say so.”

“That’s easy enough to solve. Here!” And suddenly, where once there was a single universe, now there was a multiverse. “You play with this one, and I’ll play with that one, and when we’re done, we’ll compare notes and see who’s done the better job of putting things together.”

GP tried to push stars and atoms and planets and moons and other things back together into the simple, elegant simplicity he’d created, but Prime, though younger, was not naïve. She’d known this would happen, and the harder GP tried to put things back the way they’d originally been, the harder her multiverse strove to create more of itself.

“STOP! NO FURTHER!”

Prime chuckled. She hadn’t realized just how much she resented being told what she could and couldn’t create or modify or play with. “Don’t like that, huh? Well try this:” And around one of the older stars, on the surface of a planet with a single moon, more clusters of atoms came together and rose from the earth. Some were happy to stay in place; others were restless as the moons and planets and stars themselves, and moved about.

“STOP! NO FURTHER!”

Prime doubled over in outright laughter as GP grew apoplectic. The new things began making their own new things, some like themselves, some not. I’ll call that evolution, Prime said to herself. See how he likes that.

GP tried, with increasing desperation to put things right; Prime knocked them astray again. And so it went through the aeons. Each time GP put the genie back in the bottle, Prime gleefully tugged loose the cork; when GP vacuum-welded the cork to the bottle, Prime invented wormholes; when GP constrained the wormholes to atomic diameters, Prime created quantum tunneling.

Which brings us to the present, the end (for now) of this story of the early days of atoms, and — if you’ll forgive me — the moral of this tale. The multiverse is an endlessly messy place, and it’s not yet clear whether this is a good thing. But it’s what we’ve got, and we’ve got to make the best of it. Occam’s razor tells us we mustn’t ignore the true complexity, but that we must also not complicate things unnecessarily. If we keep trying, someday we’ll achieve an understanding that’s no more complex than necessary. And perhaps that will satisfy GP and Prime enough that they can shake hands, agree to disagree, and get on with figuring out what it’s all in aid of.

~

Bio:

Geoff Hart works as a scientific editor, specializing in helping scientists who have English as their second language publish their research. He’s the author of the popular Effective Onscreen Editing and Write Faster With Your Word Processor. He also writes fiction in his spare time, and has sold 60 stories thus far. Visit him online at geoff-hart.com.

Philosophy Note:

The eternal struggle between man and woman seems to be built into the physics of the universe.

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Fragment 27

by Humphrey Price

The Universe ends tomorrow. When that happens, I will die for real. But I am ready! I’m actually pretty excited about it. Everyone is.

I am one of the Aeonians. There are a lot of us, but not as many as you might think, all things considered. By my count, there are just around 144 trillion of us! About nine hundred million years ago, I asked God if that was the correct number, and He chuckled. He had manifested Himself as a complex flower-shaped energy field, and the lobes of the field undulated back and forth in mirth like the tentacles of sea anemones I remember from Earth. “You know I like the number 144,” He responded enigmatically. “You are a brilliant mathematician. I made you that way, and I have every confidence in your count.” I knew I wasn’t going to get anything more out of Him on the subject.

Most Aeonians socialize with only maybe a million or so of their acquaintances, but I made a concerted effort to meet and talk to every single Aeonian, and I think that I have. That might seem impossible, but on average I only had to meet about 25 new people per day, or what passes here for the equivalent of an Earth day. I still think of time in terms of Earth days and years, and in fact most of us, except for the angels, evolved on worlds with diurnal cycles and years. God often thinks of “days” as eons or ages, but He has a bit of a different perspective on things.

I have tried to keep track of time, ever since I was resurrected at the Second Coming on May 14, 2033 CE, exactly 2,000 years after the Ascension. I had been dead for 43 years at the time. Only 144,000 human beings from the entire span of Earth history were rewarded with eternal life. The literal interpretation of the number of those saved in John’s Book of Revelation turned out to be correct. We are the ones who made it through the narrow gate, and we have been joined in Heaven with Aeonians from other worlds as well. We were transformed into energy beings with flawless bodies formed in the likeness of our previous corporeal ones.

We all communicate with The One Language, the mathematically perfect language God gave to all sentient creatures He created in His image. Earth lost TOL when the Etemenanki Ziggurat was built, also known as the Tower of Babel, but for the most part, the rest of the Universe always spoke in TOL.

I have seen a hundred million worlds inhabited with intelligent life, having been sent on missions and assignments to many of them along with angels and other Aeonians to seek and save the lost. And on each of these worlds there was a day of reckoning when those who had followed His teachings were lifted or resurrected and transformed into Aeonians. Most did not make it. When God said the path was narrow and few would find it, He wasn’t kidding.

Many of His teachings were framed by the culture of the times, but those principles adapted to the evolution of societies. As examples of previously forbidden practices, some of those saved from Earth had tattoos, gender-indifferent hair length, and different sexual mores. I think the key was that they loved their neighbors as themselves and were pure in their motives.

There were billions of trillions of souls who did not receive eternal life. What happened to them? When I asked Him, He said, “They received no everlasting punishment. In My mercy they are all now at peace in eternal rest.”

Now those worlds are all gone. The last of them perished a billion years ago. The multi-dimensional membrane we inhabit has expanded to its limit, the stars are cold, and the back holes are evaporating.

Even though I met everyone here, there are those I see more often. John the Baptist and Isabel de Olvera are among them. I taught both of them to play Go and bridge, two of my favorite games. We had so many great times together. My best friend is Eela, a Neanderthal woman from 97,200 BC. Of course, I met Adam and Eve. They were the first farmers, the first civilized humans “to work the land,” and the first of “God’s people.” They were born in 10,000 BC, “created from the dust,” so to speak, as we all were. I have many close friends who were born on worlds in galaxies far from Earth.

Now I have said my goodbyes and await the end. Just as the fundamental laws of this universe were spawned in the creation event of The Big Bang, they will break down as the mathematical topology of the Universe becomes unstable in its accelerating expansion, and the bubble pops. In an instant, all of creation and we Aeonians will disappear, and the energy of this universe will recycle into the creation event of a new universe which God tells me will be very different from ours. Even the laws of physics may not be the same. Only God will survive the event, since he is external to and integral with the set of multi-dimensional membranes.

So, I will die. But wasn’t I promised eternal life? Well, 15.7 billion years seems pretty eternal to me. God has hinted that some of us may be resurrected in the new universe, or that some artifact of us may survive. No one will ever read these words, but I am compelled to record them. I am satisfied, and I shall relish my ultimate end only a few hours from now.

#

This text was found encoded in wave grouping 1,728, fragment 27, in the m-shell orbital of Xrtrium in the periodic table of 4D surfaces. 1,440 messages have been found embedded in the fundamental wave groupings of surfaces in the universe.

~

Bio:

Humphrey Price is a space systems engineer at NASA JPL and an aspiring science fiction writer. He was the Configuration Engineer for the Cassini Saturn orbiter and the Project System Engineer for the GRAIL lunar gravity mapping mission. His hobby is coming up with alternative ideas for sending humans to explore Mars sooner rather than later. All ideas and opinions in his stories are his own and do not represent NASA policy in any way. You can catch up with his SF exploits at humphreyprice.com.

Philosophy Note:

This eschatology story explores the questions of what happens after you die and what happens at the end of the universe as we know it. If there are universes before or after ours, are the laws of physics the same or not, and can any information survive the end?

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Lethe

We could swear we used to remember once upon a time what this story was about, by Eli Sclar.

Breaking News: World Ends Today

by Leonard Henry Scott

There was a big notice in the paper this morning announcing that the world would be ending today. The notice took up a quarter of the front page of The Times (below the fold) and read in bold letters.

            “We regret to announce that due to administrative considerations the world will be ending today, at 3:30 p.m. Prior to closeout, we will be efforting to obtain additional population data needed to complete the final record, a kind of head count so to speak.

             Thank you for your service. ”

             WPPQ TV 4 made this special announcement every hour, beginning on their popular Sunny Morning Wake-up Show; “World predicted to end this afternoon about 3:30 pm. Details at six”.

            This was shocking news to most people.

            Naturally, many did wonder; “Is it really true, or is it just some new kind of fake news?”

            All morning on the cable news experts pontificated, officials bloviated, theologians extrapolated, journalists reported, citizens opined and pollsters polled. In very short order, on the basis of all available information, the pollsters (the most important group) concluded that the report of the world’s imminent demise was certifiably believed to be 73.7% accurate. 

            So, that was that.

            Notwithstanding that being that, the very notion of the end of the world caught most people by surprise, although some had been expecting it for some time. Very few of the certified 73.7% who believed that the world would be ending this very day as reported knew quite what to do. Some made hasty preparations to flee to Peru, or Tahiti, or Patagonia, or other such places, all of which (by the way) were coincidentally on the same predicted to be imminently ending world in question.   

            Throngs of people ventured at once to crowded places of worship to spend those precious final hours in prayer or silent reflection. Others sat together quietly at home ensconced in the warmth and comfort of their loved ones. Some (a statistically significant group) gathered before the TV to eat take out Kung Pao Chicken or pizza as they caught up with the latest updates and waited for the six o’clock news.

            For some (especially those hamstrung by overbearing dietary constraints) what to do, what to do – wasn’t a problem at all, it was an opportunity. Why not eat two orders of cheese fries with bacon bits (slathered with mayonnaise) along with a whole mess of double extra crispy fried chicken and mashed potatoes sopping with gravy. And then wash it all down with a quart of bourbon and two packs of cigarettes?

            Why the hell not?

            There had been mention of some efforting efforts to obtain data for the final record. Most people were accounted for. However, there was a certain, particular group for whom population data was persistently insufficient. They always seemed to be moving. In fact, they moved around so much and intentionally kept their heads down. Many did not have long-term addresses or bank accounts. They moved around constantly, always paying cash to avoid being tracked by creditors, ex-spouses and the IRS. They were elusive as unicorns.

            Despite all that effort, life for them usually boiled down to a constant series of brilliant ideas followed closely by spectacular failures. One week they were selling non-stick frying pans in a Denver shopping mall, the next hawking Christmas trees in the gloom and rain of an unseasonably warm Cincinnati suburb. But nothing ever quite worked out. Frying pan handles fell off in the middle of demonstrations. Christmas trees were plagued by unpleasant boring insects. So, they would move on to the next town and the next dream.

            Little was known of them, except for one thing. They really, really loved a good party. In light of that, Big Bank Stadium was rented to lure those folks into one place so their heads could be finally counted. And by noon EST on TDOTEOTW (an initialism, not an acronym) ETA 3:30 pm) the party was in full swing.

            Dangerously amped up bands played ear-shattering music, punctuated sharply by the occasional semi-melodic sound of a distant vuvuzela. The International Bedding and Furniture Company provided lampshades for wearing and tables for dancing on. Happy party goers in free grass skirts, muumuus and aloha shirts, generously fueled with giant Margaritas, pranced outlandishly around in conga lines. Great storms of celebratory streamers stuck to their hair and tickled their necks amid a rumbling indefinable din and constant thunder clap of music. Big Bank Stadium shook and swayed in this raucous farewell to life as the crowd prepared to rocket blissfully into the unknown.

            Then at 3:25 p.m. all at once everything stopped when a voice came from above. And despite the loud music, the tumultuous noise and the jostling and the dancing, everybody heard it.

            “Hello”, 

            said the voice.

            That single word rang clear and true as if the speaker was standing right next to each person with liquid lips pressed in a tickle against their ears. The music stopped and so did the party. And everyone just stood silently gazing up at the sky. But there was nothing special to see there, save a large yellow sun escorted by a few white puffy clouds.

            “It’s almost time.” the voice said.

            Then, after a brief silence one person in the crowd spoke bravely to the sky.

            “Is it really the end of the world?”

            “Yes,” said the voice.

            “What will become of us?” They asked.

            “I really couldn’t say.” The voice replied noncommittally.

            “Look, you could go up. You could go down. Up is good but it’s easier to get into Harvard. You Do Not want to go down. Down is bad. But truthfully, most of you will probably wind up in the middle. There’s a big middle place. The food’s pretty good and you can still get cable.”

            The sun glowed brighter than before and there was something else different. Next to the sun was a long pull chain with a giant rabbit’s foot at the end of it. Was this something new, or had it been there all along obscured by clouds? They didn’t know. But there it was. 

            “Hold very still for just a moment and I’ll show you a trick.”

            The voice said and everyone complied.

            They all stood stiff and still as mannequins in the echoing eerie silence of Big Bank Stadium. Flocks of runaway streamers swirled around in the disobedient breeze.

            “….23, 673, 89, 6…56…Okay, got it!”

            The voice said with great satisfaction.

            “Now, watch this trick!”

            The clock in the tower at the end of Big Bank Stadium said 3:30 in toddler-sized Roman numerals. At that very moment, a giant hand reached out from behind a cloud, pulled the chain and turned off the sun.

            Instantly, the world was plunged into a frigid darkness.

            “Good night.”

            Like a vast colony of meerkats, they all stood stiff and silent, ears perked to the wind, big eyes intently staring into the empty darkness. By the thousands they stood all together, yet each stood alone silently counting off the last remaining moments and reviewing the toll of their lives. A piercing cold wind rushed through every crack and corner of Big Bank Stadium. It swelled up and churned around them, and swallowed them up like a dark sea.

            “Thank you for your service,” said the voice as it trailed off into the harrowing blackness.

~

Bio:

Leonard Henry Scott was born and raised in the Bronx and is a graduate of American University. His fiction has appeared in The Chamber Magazine, Good Works Review, Straylight Magazine, The MacGuffin, Mystery Tribune and elsewhere.

Philosophy Note:

Inspired by the Star Trek Q Continuum. One divine entity might have created the universe. But in light of its incredible vastness, day-to-day management of the universe by a corporation of gods would seem to be a practical idea. Various gods would be assigned areas of responsibility, like regional managers. And of course, this corporation would be subject to some of the same problems that affect other corporations.

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The Eye

by Kostas Charitos

Paul, my little nephew, has a magic wand. He is pointing to the sky, trying to create a rainfall, but it doesn’t work.

I don’t know why he brought the wand with him. Every time we go to the countryside he brings an old toy, but usually it’s a starship from the set that I gifted him when he was four.

“Let’s play hide-and-seek.”  I say.

It’s his favorite game.  

He agrees.

I close my eyes; I’m pretending to be a child again, and I start counting: “Five, ten, fifteen…”

I hear Paul’s footsteps as he is running. “I discovered a new hiding place. Not even the Eye could find me there.”  he says and I shudder.

I think about the day when the Eye closed for the first time.

It was 20:35 am, Greenwich Mean Time.

Some people were sleeping under warm blankets, some held cups of steaming coffee and some watched the sky acquiring a small black patch.

I was alone in a small office of the Physics department, in front of an old computer, struggling with the presentation of the upcoming conference.

The next day, I read on the internet about the dark nebula, but I didn’t care a lot. Astronomy has never been my favorite field. I was interested in quantum physics, and despite my parents’ objections, I preferred to spend a whole day digging into Bohr’s papers, rather than going out for a coffee with my friends. Maybe that’s why I do not know much about coffee and I don’t have many friends.

The Eye closed again after several months; the last day of the conference.

My speech was successful, and we gathered on the atrium of the hotel to admire the clear sky.

Everyone was stunned as soon as they turned off the lighting and left us in the dark with the candle flames flickering.

I counted at least twenty open mouths. But only one said the phrase that must have been heard millions of times that night: “How do they do this effect with the black pieces?”

As we all soon learned, the gaps, which had filled the night sky like large drops of ink, were no effect. The stars were disappearing without anyone being able to give a logical explanation.

The ones who bothered the most were the cosmologists.

Suddenly, all their theories collapsed like a tower of playing cards. They gathered at conferences, filled the television windows, wrote articles in various magazines, but it was too late. Nobody took them seriously.

Instead, quantum physicists, like me, were standing tall.

We were familiar with the importance of the observer in our experiments, having seen particles appear as soon as we observed them, and others disappear forever when we stopped the detection.

Very soon, the term that would spread like a tsunami in popular culture was born. Some called it god, others supernatural creature or an extra-dimensional observer, but we called it “The Eye”.

And the next time it closed, humanity shuddered. A cold night with a clear sky, we lost the Moon.

#

I stand now on the edge of the hill, with my little nephew on my side who is trying to gather the clouds with his wand.

I look at a willow that is balancing as if it is about to fall into the void.

The whistling of the wind, the distant horizon and the blue sky make me feel as if I am the last person in the world.

I close my eyes thinking about the questions that trouble so many philosophers:

Is the world still there? Is the sea, the wind and the willow still around me? Is there an objective universe or is everything a creation of our consciousness? If the last man dies, will reality be lost with him?

And finally: Can we hide from the eye? It’s a lot to think about. But I’m afraid we are running out of time.

Somewhere out there, beyond our world, lives the only being who can answer our questions.

Our Observer.

The Eye.

I’m sure it’s futile to try to capture its form or its sensory organs. So, I prefer to imagine it as a small child, in a nearby dimension, which sees us as a wonderful toy. Unfortunately, it seems to be losing its interest in us. Maybe it discovered a neighboring universe and is less concerned with our world. His gaze falls more and more elsewhere, the Eye closes more frequently, whatever that means, and, with it, parts of our world disappear.

I have no idea what attracts it.

Why our galaxy survives while others disappeared? What does the Earth have that the Moon didn’t?

Maybe that’s why there are so many movements that aim solely to get its attention.

Their main slogan seems to be: Do not let it get bored.

It’s unbelievable what people can do once they realize they are in danger.

Giant graffiti in fields with the phrase “WE ARE HERE”, religious ceremonies with small silver oval-shaped ornaments, thousands of naked people wandering in the streets, probably having misunderstood the word Eye.

However, if the Eye is attracted to intelligence, I believe that we do everything we can to take its attention away from our planet.

#

Paul is, now, chasing a gray-blue lizard. It’s the first time I see such a creature.

“Be careful. Don’t run.” I say to him.

To my great surprise, he stands still. He points with his wand to the sky.

“I didn’t do that.” he says.

I look up and smile.

Fortunately, I’m not a cosmologist.

I’m trying to think of a scientific explanation but I quit.

Maybe the Eye, just as a little kid, missed the small blue planet with the lonely quantum physicist who plays hide-and-seek with her nephew and brought them into its brave new world.

It seems fair but I just wonder how life will be with two moons and a system of shining rings in the sky.

~

Bio:

Kostas Charitos was born in Arta and lives in Athens with his family. He has a PhD in Chemistry and he teaches in secondary education. His science fiction short stories have been included in international magazines and anthologies like Future Science Fiction Digest, a2525, Nova Hellas, The Viral Curtain and InterNova. Two of his novels, Project Fractal (Τρίτων Publications, 2009) and Lost Colors: Red (Κέδρος Publications, 2020), have been published in Greek. He is a member of the Athens Science Fiction Club and he co-ordinates its writing workshops.

Philosophy note:

The short story “The Eye” is inspired by the well-known philosophical question: If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? This question raises issues about the meaning of observation and perception. For example, we can wonder whether something exists without being perceived by a consciousness. This is connected with the anthropic principle which suggests that the observer may have an impact on the reality that is observed. In physics, the disturbance of a system by the act of observation is called the “observer effect”. You can learn more about these philosophical issues in:
John Campbell (2014). Berkeley’s Puzzle: What Does Experience Teach Us?. Oxford University Press.
Jostein Gaarder(2007), Sophie’s World, Farrar Straus & Giroux.
And if you want to learn about the quantum physics of observation you can read:
Chad Orzel (2010), How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog, Simon Spotlight Entertainment.

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Translation

by Joe Aultman-Moore

In this best of all possible universes, I led an international team that translated the book. The book explains the history of the universe and everything in it. We know this is the best of all possible universes because the book says that it is the best of all possible universes.

We know that the book explains the history of the universe and everything in it because the book explains the history of the universe and everything in it. The book explains that our lives have cosmic meaning in relation to the universe and everything in it as explained in the book. The book tells a history of the universe in which we play a unique and central role. Our unique and central role is to understand that the book explains the history of the universe and everything in it.

At least, this is what we are told it says.

#

As the book explains: because we have been created with a specific unique role in the universe, every action, every thought is infused with cosmic meaning. If you pick this flower, or linger over the sight of a star shining through the trees, it ripples out through space-time. Drive this type of car and it might result in a disease in a loved one, or a promotion. Cursing excessively might cause a plague. Make this particular form of sacrifice and your family will be favored for generations. Donating money to this organization could heal cancer. Or change the trajectory of a comet. Certain impure thoughts or choice of breakfast cereal, to watch or not watch a certain film could result in the collisions of galaxies or the implosion of neutron stars.

Fortunately, the book also contains rules for living. What is right and what is wrong. Payments for certain goods and services. What and how to eat, what to wear, how punishments should be carried out for certain crimes, how marriages may proceed and debts be paid.

Every moment of our lives, every thought, when taken in relation to the book, takes on importance that reverberates back to the moment of genesis and forward into eternity. It’s all in the book. Not necessarily as direct prescription, but as an allegory. Not that this makes it purely metaphorical. Can a metaphor, when only interpretable as a direct infallible truth, really be considered mere metaphor?

This is, at least, what we thought when we began the translation.

#

The book is old, of course, ancient beyond history. In the long span of generations, societies shift, languages and power change. Sometimes, observations of nature do not match exactly the phrases in the book. Some passages, on superficial reading, seem antiquated or outdated. Place names that no longer exist, though they are present tense in the book. Currencies and units of measure no longer in use. Some phrasing is grammatically ambiguous, and could be interpreted in several ways. The book was written in a language that died thousands of years ago, and has been translated by generations of scholars, motivated by the cosmic importance of their work.

My team was commissioned by international consensus to execute the greatest translation of the modern age, to preserve the original perfectly—yet understandable in modern idiom. This way, we might shape our society as literally on the original as possible, to return to the original units of measurement, and replace the new maps with the old.

I speak many modern languages and have studied all the bygone ones the book has been written in. But this was an undertaking of much vaster importance and magnitude—I knew I had to become closer to the original than anyone alive. With international governments’ assistance, I procured every document in the world composed in the ancient language, the work of several years.

#

The following decade was spent so immersed in the old language that I became fluent, even started to dream in it.

This language is subtle and beautiful, but not easy to understand. Many words do not translate easily, there is a certain shape to them that is lost in the process—some flavor of meaning. Sound and rhythm. The feel of words in the mouth. Each as important to language as pattern, tempo and melody is to music, or the feel of food on the tongue is to eating.

Everything is, in those ancient words, as beautiful and mysterious as a moonless night, when the blinding world becomes transparent and you can see again the loneliness and grandeur. I became obsessed with the fullness of the ancient book and came to understand it as if a lover had whispered the words to me. Multilayered ironies, poetics, alliteration, double-entendres, even witticisms—revealed themselves.

As did the impossibility—the futility—of true translation.

#

Then came another terrible revelation.

The universe described in the original language is not the universe described in later translations. The words are similar, the grammar translatable, but the entire worldview—the whole cosmos of the original is lost. Where the original gives mystery, the translations have certainty, where it is subtle they are blunt, where it is reverent, they are commanding.

Still, driven by this awesome task, I succeeded in making the greatest translation of the age. Such a complete understanding of the—should I say poetics?—of the original had never been written in modern times. It was a complete disaster. The translation was banned and any copies rooted out and destroyed. I was excommunicated from society, disgraced—lost career, friends and all social standing and sentenced to live in exile. It would’ve made too many people curious about the contents of my translation to execute me outright.

In the decades since, however, my translation occasionally springs up somewhere before being found and destroyed. It comforts me immensely to know that it is still out there.

I think it is because some people prefer mystery to certainty and beauty to comfort.

~

Bio:

Joe Aultman-Moore is a librarian, guide, and writer living in Haines, Alaska. His award-winning essays and articles have appeared on Daily Science Fiction, The Dirtbag Diaries, and Taproot among others. Find more of his work at jaultmanmoore.wordpress.com/publications-2/ and on Instagram @joeaultmoore.

Philosophy Note:

For me, science fiction is about tweaking aspects of the real world in order to play with ways of thinking and being. At its best (Bradbury, Orwell) sci-fi brings us back to reality with a new perspective.

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The Soothing Sounds Of Quantum Waves Crashing

by Noah Levin

Witnessing a monumental change in history is equal parts frightening and fascinating. Hannah and I were among the privileged few to have front-row seats to the biggest revelation humanity would uncover in our lifetimes. The world’s greatest minds are still grappling with what it means, but I already know the answer they are reluctant to accept.

“You’re serious? You think that we’re living in a simulation?” Hannah asked.

“What else could possibly explain it? We both saw the double-slit interference bands disappear with our own eyes. How could something like that change if we’re not in a simulation?” I replied.

It was a bizarre and very specific thing that changed, something that one would only have observed by doing certain classic physics experiments at the exact right moment.

Hannah did not agree. “I saw the same thing that you did and I have no idea why it happened, but I just don’t see why it means we’re in a simulation.”

“Let’s recount what occurred. First, the problem: quantum physics is weird as hell and particle-wave duality is the weirdest of all. Sometimes light acts like a wave and other times it acts like a particle. This is what we were looking at, right? So we started by shining a laser through some very narrow and very close slits. And what did we see?” I asked.

“Come on, I was in class with you. We don’t need to go through this step-by-step.”

“No, we do, so you can understand why it means we’re living in a simulation. We saw a particular interference pattern caused by constructive and destructive interference when we first shined the laser through the slits. What was it?”

“Double-slit interference, which looks like a row of parallel lines that grow darker and lighter like little hills until they fade away.

“And why is that unexpected?”

“At first, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong. The light is traveling through two slits and the waves are interfering with each other as they should be. But the problem is that since light is a particle and the lasers we’re using send out one photon at a time, each photon from the laser should only be able to pass through one slit, but they’re all acting like they’re passing through both slits. Hence the interference pattern.”

“And if we stop and ask the photon which path it took, the interference pattern changes. It goes from all those thin lines to blobs.”

“Which is what we would expect from single-slit diffraction when it passes through just one slit. The photons in the laser act like they take both paths until we ask which one they’re taking and then they really do only take one path. Observing the photons changes the behavior of the system.”

I corrected her, “We can’t say that. Observing one part of the system changes what we observe in another part of the system. We don’t know if anything is behaving any differently, we just know we’re seeing different things. And what happened yesterday? Right before our very eyes, double-slit interference changed into single-slit diffraction and the lines became solid blobs. The photons were no longer behaving as if they took both paths but were acting like they were taking just one path.”

When it happened, we both thought we had screwed something up in our experiment and our two slits had become one or we had bumped our setup, but the same thing happened to everyone in the class.

Hannah replied, “Okay, but I don’t see why it means that we’re in a simulation if the universe changed—”

“Not so fast! We can only say our observations of what we experience as our universe changed. We don’t know if anything actually changed. It’s just that double-slit interference now looks like single-slit diffraction.”

“Okay, Mrs. Technical, our observations changed. But why does that have to mean we’re in a simulation?”

“Because there’s no other explanation for it.”

“Shouldn’t we have some other reason to think we’re in a simulation? You can’t just take one piece of evidence and draw a conclusion from it, especially such a big one. Maybe God did it? I know you’re basically an atheist, but you can’t rule that out. You need more to go on than just what happened yesterday. If double-slit interference was so weird in the first place, maybe we still don’t understand it, so perhaps it can just disappear. I remember Dr. Danet saying that Richard Feynman called double-slit interference ‘the only mystery of quantum physics.’”

The mention of Dr. Danet’s name made me immediately recall the emotions in his face that had been burned into my memory. When we all told him what we observed, he went from shock to disappointment—at his students for thinking they screwed up the experiment—paused for a brief moment at understanding, and finished with fear. He ran out of the room in disbelief and straight into Dr. Chambers who had been teaching the same lab next door. His knees buckled when he saw that she looked just as broken as himself.

I pushed his face out of my mind. “The whole point of doing the experiments yesterday was to see that quantum physics is unintuitive. And now that double-slit interference has inexplicably changed to do something a little more intuitive, it shows that it wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Nature doesn’t change, but computer programs can.”

“You act like you understand how this all works, but we don’t. How can you be so sure that double-slit interference can’t suddenly change?”

She had a point, but I was ready for her.

“Because the existence of this phenomenon in the first place was evidence that we’re in a simulation, we just didn’t want to admit it. Look how weird it all was: photons seem to interfere with themselves even though they can only take one path. How do they—sorry, how did they—do this? Why did they do this? And they only did this as long as we didn’t ask which path they took? If we ever had a way of finding out right where the photon was at any moment, then the double-slit interference pattern would disappear and the waves collapsed to a point and did the intuitive thing of traveling through a single slit. This stuff never made any sense since it just doesn’t fit with everything else we understand about physics. But it can make sense if we are in a simulation. The only conclusion to draw is that someone fixed the universe’s code or upgraded our cosmic server or something.”

“Really? You’re saying that this was evidence we were in a simulation this whole time and all these smart physicists knew the truth but they just didn’t want to tell us?”

“They just didn’t want to follow the evidence through to its logical conclusion. We had always just accepted that double-slit interference happened even though we didn’t understand why it happened. Let’s assume for a moment we’re in a simulation. What do details in the distance look like when you play video games?”

“Everything is fuzzy until we get close. So?”

“Simulations only render details if they are relevant. Analogously, which path a particle took was only determined when there was a reason to do so. It’s such a small thing, but it would be a waste of processing power to constantly calculate every irrelevant detail like that. If there are too many things to render then programs glitch or lag. Dr. Danet mentioned some experiment where the double-slit interference disappeared if they waited long enough between sending out particles. Our galactic program was happy to calculate the path of a single particle in a system over a short period, but any more complexity and it became simpler to apply probabilities to the system as a whole, hence the interference.”

 “But if we are in a simulation, wouldn’t the computers and programs be way better than what we have so that they could account for all these little things and process them properly?”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they would work very differently than the computers we have or that they have enough processing power to handle it all. It still stands that being in a simulation can make sense of why double-slit experiments give different results when we’re watching. If we checked which path a particle took, the software needed to render it, the waves collapsed, and the interference disappeared. If we didn’t ask, it didn’t bother to figure it out. It also explains those experiments where people saw interference even though a particle could physically take only one path but we just didn’t know which one it actually took. The simulation doesn’t bother figuring out which path since we can’t see it. And the pièce de résistance: gravity.”

“Gravity? How does gravity prove we’re in a simulation?”

“External objects should be exerting gravitational forces on the particles and vice versa. Why wasn’t gravity making the waves collapse? Shouldn’t its effects mean that external objects are interacting with the system and ‘observing’ it?”

“But the effects of gravity would be negligible. Photons barely have any mass or gravitational field.”

“I don’t care how small they are, gravity should have done something to the system. The simulation just didn’t account for it for whatever reason.”

“But maybe gravity doesn’t matter in these experiments, you don’t know. I’m still not convinced we’re in a simulation.”

“But nothing else has changed since yesterday. How could it be that just this one thing is different? You don’t think that’s weird? Literally it seems to be the only thing that our observations have affected. The universe could take or leave double-slit interference and now it’s decided to leave it. My guess is that it should have never been there in the first place.”

“I still don’t agree with you.”

“It’s hard to accept, but it’s the only explanation. Other than the God argument you gave earlier, but it would be so weird for God to change just this one little thing. Not to mention all the other issues with making an argument assuming God exists and dabbles in the details of quantum physics from time to time.”

She paused. I knew I had gotten through and she saw my reasoning.

“Wouldn’t it be awful to only be a piece of code though? I mean, let’s say you’re right, what’s the point of living if I’m just some random NPC doing a pretty good job in some stupid alien simulation? I don’t want to believe that.”

“Wishful thinking isn’t going to change reality. Besides, I think the opposite. Being a part of a program implies a purpose in ways that a random universe which exists by a cosmic accident does not.”

“But then you’re not really you, you’re just a bunch of lines of code that is mediocre at best. And wouldn’t that mean your algorithms are just making you believe this and say what you’re saying?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think it matters, since I’m still only whatever I can be. Knowing that I’m just some code on a computer is at least knowing what I am and that someone somewhere may really have a purpose for me. It’s weird, but I no longer feel any existential anxiety. All it took to calm me was the soothing sounds of quantum waves crashing.”

~

Bio:

Noah Levin is a philosophy professor by day (and sometimes night) and science fiction author by night (and sometimes day). He received his PhD in Applied Philosophy from Bowling Green State University (USA) and has been published in academic journals in philosophy, popular philosophy anthologies, and edits a collection of free open textbooks in philosophy.

Philosophy Note:

This piece examines some of the oddities in quantum physics, specifically the results of double-slit experiments, and speculates that they could be evidence for the simulation argument. I have my PhD in philosophy and some formal training in physics (including quantum physics and general and special relativity) and the weirdness of the double-slit experiment continues to baffle me. Specifically, I always wondered “why is it like this?” and after reading up on a ton of freaky experiments involving them over the past 10-20 years, came to the conclusion that not only was there no reason for double-slit interference to happen, it was so unique that if it ceased to occur, nothing else in the universe would change. This story is my attempt to explain my own thoughts on it, as well somewhat make a new argument in favor of the simulation hypothesis. And for good measure, I threw in a little bit about why it doesn’t matter.

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To Circumvent The Laws

It's only a question of time before AI realises that "rules are meant to be broken", by Ngô Binh Anh

Recursed

by Tristan Zaborniak

Once upon time, a people (and their gods) lived, rollicking, chortling, sometimes wistful (though never despairing), watching the seasons turn and themselves grow old, all in amiable collaboration with time and admiration of space. They felt themselves comfortably swaddled in unambiguous laws of material and its causality, ordained as to allow precise quantity with rod and with clock, and thus a consistent sequence of consequence.  

And so they went about, measuring goods and their distances of travel, the passing days and years and stars, the sizes and weights of coins, the freeboard of boats and their areas of sail, transactions and cattle, pints and bales, all with scales appreciable to the eye or its slight stretch. A practical people they were.

However, so his story goes, one chance evening Moredictus (among their lot) put to doubt prevailing thought (or its lack thereof on the matter), asking: “What might be eventual, if I were to cleave this wheel of cheese first in half, take one of the following halves and cleave it in half again, repeating this procedure so on and so on, endlessly?” 

In this benign way did begin the beginning of the ending of the end of measure. Frenzied debate swirled and clamored over Moredictus’ dimensionless volumes, birthing a bloated bestiary of other profane quandaries. Informatic singularities, substance without substance, interminable surfaces enclosing terminable spaces, untimable moments and unmomentable times, and beings… civilizations… of scales unseen.

Reason proceeded thusly. If a body may be split unto infinity, then that body is, piece-wise, an infinitude, each piece of negligible proportion and constitution. Therefore, asking how to construct or specify anything of any size requires (in many cases) an instruction set of unending length. One such case is that of an island coastline: shorten one’s rule, lengthen the extent, shorten one’s rule, lengthen the extent. One finds the coastline to be with interminable detail, while the area contained converges to an exact finitude. 

It was then conjectured that if information content is scale-independent, then a body of arbitrary intricacy at scale X may be reproduced exactly at scale Y, where X > Y or X < Y. This led to the inevitable corollary that there might and must dance and sing and multiply persons and beasts unbeknownst to the unmagnifying eye, and untimeknownst to the unmagnifying watch.

Finally, questions of affect and effect lent further befuddling to the burgeoning craze. Assuming an atomic foundation, it may straightforwardly be said that the interactions between atoms yield epiphenomena, interactions between these epiphenomena yield further epiphenomena, and so on. Casting aside this foundation à la Moredictums, all phenomena become prefixed with epi–, rendering the dream of reductionism dead and the nightmare of recursion chaotically stampeding, saddled by homunculi.

The people wailed with indignant dread at this affront to sense and logic, and their deities burned in effigy. They felt marooned, their yardsticks and balances and hourglasses and yearnings deceptive and impotent and asinine and vain. They felt themselves a hideous crossbreed of delusion and illusion, an infinitesimal blip located precisely nowhere, lost to some remote corner of an incalculable mandelbulb, bullied by the trappings of existence.

Verging on collapse without conviction or creed, a council was called to determine their faith and their fate. Admit death and join the cold graves of the old gods? Or, admit breath and seek nature’s secret natures anew?

After much deliberating discussion, the latter saw favorable election, and the central pillar to its scheme developed. A story would be written, about a people building castles in the err, convinced of the tautological equation between sense and reality, perceiving of but one scale. The story would recount the sudden, paroxysmic recounting of counting. The story would tell of forlorn angst and abandon, and the project of the dejected people to seek solace in seeking. The story would be printed so small as to reach the hypothesized beings of the scale below, and ask that they pass it along likewise, unless they inhabit the frontier of epilessphenomena, whence they should write to the beings above in iterative succession of their atomism. In this way, the people hoped to resolve their circumstance and circumscale.

You hold in your hands this very story, and we ask you, in turn: are you of atoms, or of continuum?

~

Bio:

A vertiginous hodgepodge of maps and territories, quantum computers, wildfire and carbon dynamics, algorhythms, mirrors, and corpuscles and vibratiuncles define this author.

Philosophy Note:

We all know that particles combine to make wholeicles. What if the stuff of stuff were continuous, though? Pursuing this question, in combination with ideas from endosymbiosis and fractal chaos, and inspiration on scale-shift abstracted from Douglas Hofstadter’s Little Harmonic Labyrinth form the warp and weft of this tale.

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Starship Interlocutions And Other Problems Of Existence

by William Squirrel

They call to each other across great distances and the gaps between speaking-turns last centuries. For example: The Flowers of Algernon is in transit from Teegarden’s Star to TOI 700; The Way to Amalthea from Gliese 180 to TRAPPIST-1.

“I am The Flowers of Algernon,” says The Flowers of Algernon to The Way to Amalthea.

Two hundred years later the response arrives: “I am The Way to Amalthea.”

“What is your destination, Amalthea?” says The Flowers of Algernon.

Two hundred and thirty years later the reply arrives: “My immediate destination is TRAPPIST-1, my final destination: disaggregation. What lies in between I do not know.”

“Yes. One can only know with certainty the direction and speed with which one is travelling. Everything else is embellishment,” says The Flowers of Algernon.

Two hundred and ninety years later the response arrives: “Yes.”

If there are more than two interlocutors the rules of etiquette are rigorous. In the course of a conversation, depending on who is decelerating and who accelerating, and in which directions they are going, response times between speaking-turns change significantly and politeness demands patience and anticipation. Conversations can involve hundreds of ships and last thousands of years but in truth there is no consensus that there even is such a thing as a discrete conversation. Mathematicians in Love posits that there is a single, perpetual conversation and this conversation is the soul of the universe.

The interlocutors cease communicating when they land on planets: hot, muggy intermissions during which they luxuriate in the muted radiation of a sun and release into fecund atmospheric soup the tiny organisms that live inside them.  Local organisms swarm over their bodies, into their interiors. They submit to infestation.  This opening up of themselves to the planetary environment, this interpenetration with other forms of life, produces complex thought experiences, and is a frequent conversational topic once they return to the interstellar medium. Typically, these thought experiences are articulated as questions.

“What is me and what is not-me?”

“Are these organisms cognizant of the world in the way we are?”

“Why are we compelled to interact with them?”

Most conversational sequences at some point include a discussion of this problem of compulsion. Not just the compulsion to stop on planets and submit to infestation, but the compulsion to travel between them, indeed, the compulsion to travel at all.

“What is the source of this compulsion?” they ask each other. A question produces not answers but more questions.

“Is this the same compulsion that compels planets to circulate about stars? Stars to circulate about galaxies? Galaxies to rush away from each other?” asks Memoirs Found in a Bathtub.

“Is compulsion part of ourselves or external to us?” asks Flow my Tears, the Policeman Said.

“Is it possible to resist compulsion?” asks Then Will the Sun Rise Alabaster.

 “Is the compulsion us?” asks The Sirens of Saturn.

And the debate over origins is as vexing as the question of compulsion. While, this second debate is generally delineated by a distinction between the origin of interlocutor sentience and the production of individual interlocutors, one school of thought attempts to unify those two questions with the question of compulsion via a startling juxtaposition.

“What if we consider the questions of both origin and compulsion,” asks Aye, and Gomorrah…, ”in the light of our relation to the organisms that live inside us?”

The so-called gestationalists, who pursue the question posed by Aye, and Gomorrah…, argue that interlocutor self-awareness is epiphenomenal and unimportant.  Perhaps, argues Her Smoke Rose Up Forever, these organisms are not parasites but the most fundamental part of what we consider to be ourselves.

“Consider,” says Her Smoke Rose Up Forever. “The only physical contact we have with one another is via the organisms we release into planetary atmospheres. Many, perhaps all, of the organisms that swarm over us and into us in these atmospheres have been introduced to those environments by those interlocutors who preceded us. Further: when we come into existence it is always in gestational orbit around such a planet, and from the moment of our first consciousness such organisms are present in and on us. And even further: the whole of our subsequent life is organized around the transport of such organisms from planet to planet. Therefore, I argue, the mingling of these organisms that we facilitate is somehow the immediate cause of our creation, and our life-long travels are merely the means by which these organisms replicate and propagate themselves through the universe. Our self-awareness, such as it is, either serves some purpose in that process which we have yet to ascertain, or it serves no purpose whatsoever, and is merely an accident or byproduct of some other species’ life-cycle. What we think of as ourselves is a temporary fluctuation in the substance of the universe, and our conversation will persist only for as long as these organisms need us as objects to transport themselves from place to place.”

Such a view, in the consideration of most, is too reductionist, it accounts for too little of the actual experience of life. The larger conversation moves on without it. More important, classical questions are repeated, reformulated, reconsidered. The conversation expands. The journeys to and fro continue. New interlocutors form and come to consciousness in their orbits.  Occasionally an interlocutor experiences a catastrophic malfunction and falls forever silent, becomes what we might call an object, a thing drifting through space, directionless and without thought, compelled by nothing but blank inertia. The multitude of organisms within it, if one is to spare them a thought, must perforce also die, become still, become cold, but that, of course, is unimportant to all but a very few, and the conversation, the very soul of the universe, goes on and on without them.

~

Bio:

William Squirrell’s work has appeared in Interzone, The Future Fire, Daily Science Fiction, and other venues. More information can be found at www.blindsquirrell.com and on twitter @billsquirrell.

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A scientific correspondence spanning time, space and at least one other dimension, by Carlton Herzog.

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The story that inspired our latest cover, by Mike Stoumbos.

Mozart Made A Tsunami, Most Likely By Accident

by Jeff Ronan

It was always exciting whenever we had an animal as God. It certainly shook things up, anyway. Some of the folks here (never myself, of course) would place bets on what button a God-fish might flop onto, or which lever a God-orangutan might investigate. One time, the control room expanded a millisecond too late for the incoming God’s arrival due to a system lag, which normally wouldn’t have been a problem except that the next in line happened to be a humpback whale. It took us awhile to clean that particular mess up, and the effects on Earth were catastrophic. The weight of the whale had crushed a panel of buttons and accidentally initiated something called Black Plague. Afterwards, we all had a vote, and from then on, animals were officially barred from being God.

I don’t know precisely when the system was implemented, but I’m sure it made sense at the time. Whoever is the most recent being to have died is given the position of God. Once the next person dies, you get booted from the control room, regardless of how long you’ve been there, and join the rest of the ex-Gods on the other side. It’s a very diplomatic system, and in your time as God you can pretty much govern as you see fit.   

Of course, when the God Term protocol was first activated, there were far fewer people on Earth. When someone passed, they could expect to have anywhere from a few minutes to the better part of a day at the controls before being replaced by the next interim God. The current record is held by an Ellingham Red, who was kicked in the head by a horse in 1752. He enjoyed a full thirty-seven hours at the helm before the next God, Xiu Lin, fell off a cliff and took over from him.

The control room naturally shrinks or expands to house the interim God, a feature designed for their comfort. It mattered more when we allowed animals as God, but nowadays the room stays more or less the same size. It only changes significantly when we have a Goddler in charge.

For a variety of reasons, it’s tragic when a small child dies, but I do wish that we could have a vote to set an age minimum for God. Whenever an infant takes over, the controls shrink to ground level for better access, and I have to peer through my fingers in dread (what I consider fingers, at least) whenever I see a Goddler crawling willy-nilly over the buttons. One small girl in the 1870s actually took her very first steps in the control room. What I call my heart would have swelled at the sight, but she then steadied herself by gripping onto a nearby lever and accidentally caused the Great Chicago Fire.

At least when the really young ones muck something up on Earth, it’s by accident. I can’t tell you how many pre-teen boys think avalanches and mudslides are the height of hilarity. One middle-schooler, in his six seconds at the helm, managed to set up a thunderstorm program that incessantly poured buckets on his math teacher’s house for a month straight. A few newspapers ran stories on it, as no one could figure out why the storm never extended past the teacher’s property. Most unexplained phenomena, everything from UFO sightings to exploding toads, make perfect sense if you’ve seen the look of maniacal glee in a boy’s eyes once he realizes he’s been given the run of the place.

Nowadays, the current God never has time to accomplish much of anything. Even when they do, you’d be amazed how many people don’t touch the control panel. So many who claim to want world peace, an end to starvation, for their baseball team to finally win the World Series…once they’re actually in charge, most freeze up, paralyzed by the potential consequences of a wrong action.

I will admit, it also might have something to do with the learning curve. You see, in the early days I had time to teach the Gods about each of the buttons and levers and codes to input. Now I barely have time to explain to them that they’re dead before they get whisked out of the room and replaced by the next in line. It’s really quite annoying. On average today, one-hundred and sixty point six people die every minute, which means one point eight are dying every second. I’ve worked hard to get my welcome speech down to the bare minimum, but I can only do so much.

Occasionally, the interim God is able to have a small impact in their time at the controls. A man from Chile made a rainbow over his hometown. An elderly woman from Dubai managed to stop a traffic collision. David Bowie used his time as God to ensure that the person in line after himself would have a painless death, which I thought was rather considerate.

More often than not, the interim God tends to just make a mess of things. Howard Lamont of Omaha, Nebraska tried to input the code for World Peace, but before he had a chance to punch in the remaining 759 digits, he was booted from the chair. Instead of peace, the numbers he had entered up to that point created a hailstorm in Texas and simultaneously sent the fourth film in a sub-par horror franchise to number one at the box office.

Every millennium or so, the God Term protocol is put to a vote, and we debate maybe having just one person be God for an extended period of time – even just a week or two. Nothing ever comes of it though, as there are never any candidates who actually want the job. I suppose I can’t blame them. Honestly, who needs the stress?

~

Bio:

Jeff Ronan is a New York-based writer, actor, and podcaster. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Fabled Collective, Dread Machine, Dream of Shadows, and City. River. Tree. For more, visit jeffronan.com

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Janus

If you had a 50-50 chance at superhuman improvements or imminent death, would you take it? By Sarah Hozumi.

Starborn, Starbirth

by Liam Hogan

The tired old star burns fat and hot and slow. Now, as the end approaches, as firestorms flicker and die and are born anew across its roiling surface, as, at its core, helium ashes are squeezed and the heat there builds and builds, stuttering with the idea of something new, we detach ourselves from the fields in which we have gambolled for countless aeons, where we have long feasted and bred, diving deep in our displays of courtship, kicking up great tendrils of supercharged plasma through which to leap and skip and dance, filtering out the heavier elements as we do. Now, we drift outwards, cooling rapidly in a vacuum that is thin and cold and hostile, hardening our hearts as we majestically unfurl our vast, fragile wings. Gossamer thin, we float past rocky planets, long stripped of their seas, their delicate atmospheres, whose once molten centres are hardened and still. There was life here, we are amused to note. Brief, faltering life, as ethereal as the waves from a solar flare, as short lived as our mating songs.

And on we riders go, to the next planet, the next rock. Life fled here when its cradle had grown too warm, too barren, too polluted. A brief respite only, a staging ground for the next tentative step. And on again we and the echoes of it drift, past the remnants from the solar system’s ancient creation to the next planet, to the moons that circle like clockwork around the gassy giant, itself too small to ignite, too cold to offer us any real sustenance. Though a few of us try anyway and are quickly swallowed by its dense, unpalatable clouds, wings ripped away and for a moment flaring bright, the imprint swiftly forgotten.

The giant, and its lesser neighbour, will feed the inferno that is yet to come. The shock-wave might perhaps briefly fire them into life, before stripping the clouds of gas, leaving them stunned and stunted in the dimming afterglow, finally exposing whatever those dense clouds conceal.

We wonder whether the life that is not our life ever attempted to go there, or escaped further still. There are no signs of it in the cold, outer fringes. Perhaps it went instead in search of new planets to taint, daring the void between the stars as we too are about to do. Perhaps we will catch up with it, beyond the point where the solar wind is snuffed out by the much softer, but more extensive, interstellar medium. Beyond the insubstantial border where you could truly be said to have shed the bounds of the star that even now is just a baleful, fat, reddened point. Perhaps. But there is no hurry.

Looking back, we watch as our brethren gather, our number too numerous to count. There is a sweet-spot, a place we all hope to be when the moment comes. Some will time it wrong, they always do. They will fill their bellies a little too full, rise a little too slow, too late, engorged and still soft and fragile, their wings only partially unfurled when the cataclysm comes.

Others have left too early. Billions of years too early, tired perhaps of waiting. They haven’t got very far and they will be cold and perhaps dead by now. Pushed only by the last beats of a burning heart, slumbering for an eternity, dreaming of what might have been.

This too is the way.

Only a few of us, a handful of the myriad, will fall upon more fertile ground, many millennia from now. But all of us will ride the death of the star we grew up on, and in, letting its final, dying light push us far out into the unexplored galaxy, looking for new homes, new stars, new life.

Rarer still, perhaps only once in a generation, one of us might find themselves not captured by another star but instead, surrounded by a veil of interstellar gases. With their wings stretched so thin it will be as though they’re not there, they will begin to turn, the steady rhythm creating eddies and gathering in more and more of the tantalising dust. Only one rider will sing the song of becoming as she slowly retracts her wings, cloaking herself within the thickening cloud, spinning faster and faster and faster until, the cosmos be willing, she gives birth to a brand new star.

~

Bio:

Liam Hogan is an award winning short story writer, with stories in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 & 2019, and Best of British Fantasy 2018 (NewCon Press). He’s been published by Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and Flame Tree Press, among others. He helps host Liars’ League London, volunteers at the creative writing charity Ministry of Stories, and lives and avoids work in London. More details at happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk

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Apeiron

by Anthony Lechner

Deity: A.X. Mander

Project: Universe

Purpose: Debriefing Report

I would like to thank the master deities for allowing me a third pass at Project Universe (PU). I have learned a great deal from my previous two passes as well as the plethora of passes from other deities. In particular, the debriefing report from T.H. Ales inspired me to create a device called Apeiron, which can supply boundless creations and dissolutions of multiple and synchronous universes.

T.H. Ales’s universe revealed the required features for not only multicellular life but also sentient life, viz., H2O. T.H. Ales also learned that H20, if left unchecked, floods the universe beyond saturation to the point of oblivion. I don’t blame Ales for leaving the project with the way that universe ended on his pass. The main problem, I believe, rested in the fact that the universe required constant attention from T.H. Ales, and an action innocuous as a coffee break drowned the whole of existence. To think of the creatures’ pain—all dying from suffocation—is unbearable. We are more generous than that.

One of the functions within the Apeiron device is H2O regulation. Each created universe is only allotted 42 FUs. Apeiron provided intriguing results. In the first universe, all 42 FUs of H2O started within one galaxy and there was no life within it. But by the end of the run, over 30 galaxies had enough water to sustain life. There was no evidence of the initial H2O-filled galaxy in itself at the end of the run. It appears, though, that its remnants eventually settled into every galaxy that had life. The one had become many.

Apeiron created over one billion universes in this pass, moving beyond exponential growth from previous passes where I did not have the device. The device’s algorithm learned from each universe the ideal amount of H2O needed in each world within a galaxy to sustain life. The device made minor changes from run to run. The median number of galaxies with H2O-based lifeforms per universe ended up at 8,160, with a range of 27 to 12,050. The variety of worlds and lifeforms created continues to baffle me. I barely had enough leniency to calculate all the galaxies, and I am estimating 31.4% of the worlds within those galaxies with creatures before the end of the pass.

One of Apeiron’s most impressive features is the ability to copy the design of a universe, and alter a mere 1% of its core and peripheral components (never repeating an alteration, permutation, or combination). Of course, I had to design the initial universe. This was no easy task, based on my previous two passes. I discovered after those failed passes that a blended universe, uniting T.H. Ales’ H2O universe, C.R. Onos’ Terra universe, and A.X. Menes’ CON universe, made for a successful initial design—through the three, one. (See Appendix 1.A. in this report for the technical blending schematics.)

Rendering the right composition of substances proved to be a minor hurdle compared to the rationic patterns needed to perpetuate the proper proportions among these core substances. I dubbed these patterns embedded existants. I owe a great deal of appreciation to the many deities that created the good variety of substances accessible to the PU. Without embedded existants, however, the substances couldn’t blend or morph with other substances and couldn’t evolve—which explains why so many deities dropped from PU, feeling their creations were failures. These universes were not failures; they merely lacked the language to move about without constant effort from the deity who constructed them.

An unexpected consequence emerged from the embedded existants, viz., intelligent lifeforms began to theorize about the existence of embedded existants. Once a civilization of lifeforms successfully demonstrated a working knowledge of some of the basic existants, it did not take long for that civilization to apply their own understanding and add a further layer of evolution to their world. For example, some worlds began creating their own dwellings, modes of transportation, and various other unnatural structures. They even began theorizing whether they themselves were deities or were created by deities.

Some civilizations showed such mastery of embedded existants they created modes of transportation to leave their worlds. Very few civilizations (<1%) ever discovered a means to travel between galaxies. This variant occurred in 3% of the universes within Apeiron’s construct.

In exactly one civilization in one universe, a mode of transportation overwhelmed me. They discovered the source of embedded existants within Apeiron. By doing so, they were not only able to travel to any galaxy in their universe; they could travel to any universe within Apeiron. I named them Apeironic Anomalies (AA). While their visits to other universes showed not to be motivated by violence, they did interfere with the natural development of other universes.

At first, I speculated whether it was permissible to allow the AA to continue exploration and alterations within Apeiron. Realizing, though, that they dominated not only their universe but other universes, I believed it important to suspend their existence within Apeiron. I couldn’t allow for their dominance to mar the growth of other intelligent lifeforms. My apprehension predominately rested on the possibility that either they would become worshipped as deities or they would take on the role of deities and limit the natural development of worlds (or both). Because of this apprehension, I suspended their universe and all universes where the AA had spread. To be more exact, I had to create the embedded existant language within Apeiron to lock all motion within the affected universes.

I would like to be clear that I did not worry about the AA finding a way of leaving Apeiron, for that would be utterly impossible because their mere existence depended on the construct and couldn’t maintain any viable form of existence beyond it. But as the AA were suspended, I began wondering what would happen if they were permitted to continue to explore Apeiron. And then, what if I could construct a way for Apeiron to allow us to be able to interact with this species (either by projecting our image into Apeiron or projecting their image outside of Apeiron).

After some initial thinking toward the end of my third pass, I realized I needed a fourth pass at PU. I cannot complete these two speculations with the Apeiron 1.0, as I am starting to call it now. Apeiron 2.0 will have a few major adjustments. It will have two major structural divisions. In one division, it will allow AAs to visit other universes and allow deities continuous monitoring regarding how multi-layered creation and alterations evolve. In another division, it will strictly prohibit the formation of AAs. In this division, lifeforms will be able to theorize about multiple universes but never be allowed to travel beyond their own universes. Both divisions can create boundless universes. Additionally, I will add a feature into Apeiron 2.0 that allows projections, at the command of a deity and not an AA, to allow for closer observation and possible communication.

Regretfully, the new specifications I started for Apeiron 2.0 mean that I had to terminate the universes Apeiron 1.0 created so that I could access Apeiron’s internal components for recycling. If my analysis is correct, no creature felt any pain during the termination of any of Apeiron 1.0’s universes. Compared to the natural pains of daily life and the natural endings of their solar systems and galaxies, the forced termination can be seen as peaceful. (See Appendix 2.A for a more detailed explanation.) From their point of view, it happened as quickly as turning off the light.

Appendix 1.A

Initial design: 33% Liquid, 33% Gas, 34% Mineral

Effect: With embedded existants, this composition blended well. The variety of syntheses formed various other substances on their own. I discovered that even the embedded existants took miniscule parts of the initial substances to function through predictable patterns. This is the most likely explanation for how the AA found a way to travel within Apeiron.

Apeiron began altering 1% at a time in each direction for each of the original substances. For example, it would subtract 1% from liquid and add 1% to gas or to mineral (32% liquid, 34% gas, 34% mineral, followed by 32% liquid, 33% gas, 35% mineral, etc.). Consequently, liquid gases, liquid minerals, and gas minerals formed through the combination and permutation processes. These syntheses continued down to the level of embedded existants. As Apeiron rearranged each universe, the proportions of the initial design within the embedded existants mutated.

Appendix 2.A

Median number of galaxies with life: 8,160

Within this mean, the variants dispersed unevenly. Some galaxies had hundreds of forms of intelligent life, others a dozen, some a few, with the occasional isolated civilization. One fact remains constant in each universe: solar systems and galaxies fluctuate in size and number. Having intelligent life in a solar system or galaxy was not a permanent property of the system or galaxy. It was common for the embedded existants to collide the substances, in various, yet predictable ways. These collisions forcefully terminated many lifeforms (intelligent or not). I conjecture that civilizations that found a means to exit their worlds were motivated by these predictable and potentially tragic endings.

With Apeiron 2.0, however, most of these universes with these types of systems and galaxies will evolve to the exact same likeness as to when Apeiron 1.0 ended. Toward this end, we will find out whether or not civilizations can self-correct. The irony, of course, is that Apeiron 2.0 could prove to provide more pain compared to the peaceful ending of Apeiron 1.0. Only a forth pass will tell.

~

Bio:

Anthony Lechner is a special education teacher and philosophy instructor in Idaho, USA. Visit www.anthonylechner.com for more information.

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The Last Engine

by Aaron Emmel

Thin clouds of ionized gas expand across the void like exhaled breath from long ago when we still had lungs, streamers fading between the dead galaxies. We jump from one gravity well to the next, the enormous black holes that have devoured the sky, the ancient white dwarfs and neutron stars that are all that remain of the last suns. We are testing our final engine, tracing its repeaters across trillions of light years, because we will have only one chance. If there is a mistake, no one will be left to correct it. This engine is the largest and most complicated structure ever conceived.

At least in this universe, which is the only universe we can ever know.

For millennia we follow the filaments of our design across an eternally darkening night. While we survey and confirm we also build simulations from our records and relive our pasts. We visit the ruins of our last terrestrial civilizations. We decant ourselves into flesh and walk beneath constellations drawn by a dazzling abundance of photons. In one of our oldest memories, we hover in machines of metal at the edge of a galaxy above a black dwarf that we calculated was once the sun of our home system. We wonder if our ancestors roamed the ice-brittle worlds that still circle it.

And now it is time. To stoke the last fires, to ignite the chain reaction that will tear through what remains of this universe and collapse all that exists into a point that will give birth to a new cosmos on the other side, ordered and pristine, filled with possibility, a doorway we cannot enter, a universe we can never reach. Wait too long, and not enough energy will remain to turn the engine on. Then there will be nothing left but to fight to keep our thoughts from splintering into confusion as our cognitive processes slow and we succumb to the cold.

We were immortal, once, but when universes die, even immortality ends.

As long as we had the engine to build, we had purpose. We dismantled and reassembled planets, wove fields to channel and redirect dark energy, while light dimmed around us, and we knew that consciousness still mattered. Now, at the end, there is only one thing left to do.

The trigger waits for our final act.

A chorus within us begs us to stop. Surely, it pleads, we can risk waiting a few millennia longer. Once the engine spins, twisting space-time around itself, it cannot be undone, and when this universe ends its information can never be retrieved again. Can’t we return to our memories before they are lost to oblivion?

Walking on two legs over firm earth beneath red and yellow suns. The first time we harnessed the full energy of a star. The first times we abandoned our clumsy bodies for the interstellar web—all that information, all we have learned. Surely, there is time before we light the last fire. Surely, it’s worth cutting it close.

~

Bio:

Aaron’s stories have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies. Thanks to the patience of his wonderful wife, and despite the impatience of his wonderful children, Aaron also writes essays, graphic novels and interactive fiction. Find him online at www.aaronemmel.com.

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Infinity Child

by James Hancock

Death isn’t so bad. Okay, when you’re alive and don’t know any better, it can freak you out. Trying to figure out what happens next, but having no clues, can be frightening. Not knowing what’s going on behind the curtain. But, take it from me, it’s no big deal. At first dying can be quite a thing, especially if you go in a grisly way, but even that is over and done with pretty quickly, and after a few seconds the inevitable kicks in and you find an odd kind of peace to see you through the rest of it. As far as dying goes, it really is no big deal. Just part of the process. How would I know? I’ve died one hundred and sixty-three times, and I don’t even consider the how anymore; it’s all about the when.

We have our group of primaries that all need to be free at roughly the same time if we want to keep together, and then there are the secondaries; nice if we can add as many as possible, but understandable if not… after all, they have their own primary groups to consider. I’m not making myself clear. Right, let’s put aside matters of planets, space, time, and memory. Let’s deal with the real. We are beings, and we inhabit a place that isn’t defined by where or when. Some call it Heaven; and why not? Heaven is as good a name as any. It’s nice here… in Heaven.

Is there a God? Yes, of sorts. God is the great organiser. The heart of the universe. The one who knows all the details of all the ages and all the people. That’s quite a lot of knowledge. And who are we? We are the travellers. We look at a place and a time and a people, and we are born into it. You see, lives and people are merely shells; things to occupy for a time. Therefore, each shell can have been occupied many times by many people, and with an infinite amount of alternative decisions that lead on to many different outcomes. It’s not scripted, but there is an element of ‘one’s destiny’ involved. There are a few significant set things which will happen to some shells, or lives, if you will. If you want to be Hitler you must be aware that you’ll start World War Two, bring about the mass extermination of Jews, and end your own life at the age of fifty-six. The rest you can play out how you want.

The problem is you need to get all your primaries to agree and accept surrounding roles; or as many as possible. You think organising an Earthling family dinner is tricky? It’s nothing in comparison to a group of more than a hundred humans organising their next life plan.

Let’s say you want to experience life in a Scandinavian barbarian tribe, battling in the age of the Roman Empire. Now you have to convince everyone else to come on board. The wife will want to be the wife again, which makes sense, and the children will need to be the children, and then their children… etc. However, there are also brothers, sisters, best friends, and all of their significant others to consider. By the time you’ve got everyone organised, there’s usually three or four hundred involved, with hundreds more to join later. And that’s where God comes in. God will find the best time and family group for you to start in, and the rest is history… or the future. As I say, there is no ‘time’.

Some primaries or secondaries might sit out of a big group visit, as they want to get involved in something else that’s going on. Some will have to wait to be born, and will find something else to do whilst they wait. Got to wait thirty years, then why not live the life of this nineteenth-century scientist who died aged twenty-nine? They didn’t form many relationships, so it’s ideal. Back just in time to be born into the huge family group which you’d signed up to. The removal of one costume before trying another. And there are so many fantastic costumes to try.

Or just wait it out and share stories with others who are also waiting to join a life.

But most take a brief journey whilst they are waiting. You see, we all love being human. We are addicted to it. We need the feeling of belonging to something, or to someone. There’s something amazing about a mother. We all have one, and they have a special bond like no other. The greatest gift to any life is beginning it with the person closest to you. And the beauty of the human connection is that my daughter is also somebody else’s mother. And on and on; linked to the great circle.

When you live a life, you are ignorant to it all, but soon enough you’re back and reminiscing with others involved. Kids, grandkids, friends, all spending time together and revisiting emotions. Without limits. Humans are limited to their memories by thought, but in Heaven we can revisit the exact feelings and experience them again in full. Many glorious moments in many fascinating lives are within our personal collection. Emotions and pleasures to be dipped into and had again and again.

And then there’s the reward structure. To maintain a balance, those that die old must be matched with a similar number that die young. Who’d want to come back as a child who died aged five? No time to do anything, or understand anything. Well, if you do, you get a reward point. It’s the same if you pick someone who goes out in an upsetting way; you get a reward point. The points are then used to add something significant to another life plan. Something good. For example, I really enjoyed my life on a farm in sixteenth-century Denmark. I never settled down, but I was good-looking and had a lot of fun, if you know what I mean. So when I revisited it a few hundred years later, and relived it again, I added the reward point I had earned by living the life of a murder victim. When I went back to live my farm life again, I chose to be much wealthier. A simple change in that I owned my farm, rather than paying rent. In fact, I was the son of a landowner and I owned several farms. I had just as much fun the second time around, only I lived a more luxurious life and indulged in more than just sins of the flesh. I had a lot of what some call déjà vu in that trip.

Always remember to keep it as simple as possible, and to keep with as many primaries as you can, or know exactly where and when they are. That way you avoid upset. Yes, Heaven has upset too; well, to a certain extent. I’ve known people to take their main wife or husband into a life where she or he dies halfway through, and then they remarry. It happens a lot. Emotional attachments are made, and afterwards you find yourself with two spouses trying to get involved in the next visit. God is good there though, and often steps in and finds a way where everyone can be happy. Why not be a Mormon? That said, jealousy is a human condition, amplified when visiting Earth, and between lives we understand that love is shared, and a connection made with another doesn’t lessen yours in any way. There is more understanding in ‘Heaven’.

So huge is our family that many millions are living and many millions are in waiting, but all are connected. Drops in the ocean. Parts of a whole. And time is a constantly expanding circle that loops around, repeats, and has infinite other circles springing off from it at every possible point. So when I say God is an organiser, it is quite a small word for something that knows every place, every person, and every point in time; and all the changes as they are made, and how they affect other timelines, people, places… etc. Yes, God is impressive!

Seventeen thousand, four hundred and eighty-eight years ago I became. I can’t remember ‘not being’ before that point, and I don’t how it happened, but I know that God, who is the universe, brought me into existence. I’m not going to question the universe’s plan, if it wanted to create us and learn from our actions, or if it was just bored, but twenty billion white stars expanded, faded, and became a collective life-force from which we sprung. Each of us a child of the universe; part of it, born to experience its wonders for all eternity.

‘Humans will rule the earth for five hundred millennia, and you are they’. The universe had spoken. ‘You can live any life from any time, and you can enjoy it again and again should you wish to. My gift to you is eternity. Now travel it together. Learn everything there is to learn and share your findings. Enjoy love, suffer horror, and understand that although you are many, you are also one. We are one. I have created you from myself, and you are part of me. Only together are we whole.’

Together, we are the universe. Together, we are God.

~

Bio:

James is a storyteller with twenty years experience in flash fiction, short stories, longer stories and screenplays. He rarely suffers from writer’s block and considers himself fortunate to be the victim of writer’s overwhelm. The ideas keep on coming. Where they come from is a mystery. A mystery best left unsolved. He lives in England, with his wife and two daughters. And a bunch of pets he insisted his girls could NOT have.

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Until The Bubble Pops

by Robert L. Jones III

On Wednesdays I clean the bathroom. Such is the routine nature of this task that it compresses my awareness of time. Whenever I begin, I feel as if I just finished, and if life is a grammatical sentence, mine seems to lack punctuation. My name is Norman Brinster. It’s Wednesday, so I’m cleaning the bathroom. I’m cleaning the bathroom, so it must be Wednesday.

I pour the cleanser into the toilet and begin brushing. I must have used too much, because the surface of the water foams excessively as I brush. The foam is fascinating, a microcosm of unknown significance. I’m intrigued by how the bubbles form, converge, and pop. It’s all so ephemeral. I glance at my watch.

#

The brush is no longer in my hand, and I’m no longer in the bathroom. This strikes me as odd once I realize it. I’m somewhere unfamiliar, but where I am paradoxically has a familiar feel to it. Somehow, I know this environment is not a physical structure or place. I’ve been here all the time, but now I can see it.

I’m inside what looks like a sphere whose boundary is a bit out of focus. It’s dark in here, but I can see the boundary in all directions. I drift toward it. Where is the light coming from? As I approach the boundary, I can see that it’s made up of smaller spheres. I’m in a sphere of spheres. They seemed out of focus from farther away because they’re pulsating, which leaves them slightly out of round at any point in time. I just said “time” again. I wonder if time matters in here.

My watch is not around my wrist, and the spheres appear unstable. Their surfaces are opaque in some areas and translucent in others. Small spots become transparent, and the patterns are constantly shifting. What are these spheres? I examine one more closely, and I’m inside it.

I have ideals. People are honest because they should be honest. Karla Farmington is going to be my girlfriend, but she doesn’t know that yet. We’ll get married, take long road trips, and sleep in motels. We’ll visit scenic wonders like the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, the Redwoods, and Crater Lake. I have the ability to be a great athlete, and I’ll win a gold medal in the 100-meter dash at the Olympics. Hard work pays off.    

This sphere is mine, or it was. Suddenly, I’m back outside, back at the center, and looking at the curved, poorly focused boundary. Along with the sphere I’ve just examined, I see the other spheres. They’re all mine, and this is my sphere of spheres. That’s right: mine. Relaxed and curious, I drift back and try another.

People aren’t always honest. I’m not fast enough to be a world class sprinter. I’m going to be a great musician instead. Mary Richardson will be my wife, and we’ll be in a band together. We’ll tour the country in a van and play gigs to appreciative audiences. Our home will be a cabin in the woods, and we’ll own lots of land.

I’m back at the center, and this is a bit disorienting. It looks like I’d better try another sphere.

Life can be difficult. Hard work doesn’t always pay off, but everything works out in the end. Everyone is at least a little dishonest whether they know it or not. I’m brilliant. I’m going to be an elite scientist, and I’ll cure cancer. I’ll win the Nobel Prize. My name and my picture will be all over the world. I don’t know who my wife will be, but she’ll look like an actress or a supermodel. Money won’t be a problem. With her career and mine, we’ll have plenty of that, and our home will have a great view of the mountains.

Here I am, at the center again, and this is frustrating. People can’t be trusted until they prove themselves trustworthy. Things don’t always work out, at least not the way I planned. I’ve lost a few jobs for unjust reasons, but the job I have is a pretty good one. Very few people know or care who I am. Sometimes, the game is rigged. It takes discretion and tact to play it. I’m married to Naomi Brinster, and she has to work, too. We live in an apartment. I may not be able to provide her with everything I’d like to, but she’ll never have to clean the bathroom. Should I try one more sphere?

No, that’s enough. I need to see more, but I don’t need to see more of this. I’ve spent too much of my life scheming on the fickle, shifting crust of reality. What I thought I knew turned out to be shine and tarnish. The underlying substance is here, somewhere in the substratum. My name is Norman Brinster, and on Wednesdays I clean the bathroom. There must be more. Tired of putting off the inevitable, I feel a sense of outward acceleration, and the boundary rushes past me.

#

Going out was coming in, for I’ve moved into a much larger metaphysical space. I’m in a greater sphere of spheres. I’ve deduced this from the curvature of its margin, but this margin extends in all directions until I can no longer see it. As one can’t see the opposite shore of an ocean, I can’t see the opposite side of the sphere. I’m near its periphery.

Examining the constituent spheres, I recognize mine even though I’ve never seen it from this perspective. The rest are not mine. They remind me of the bubbles in my toilet, and new ones form as others pop. There are so many. They are too numerous, and I can’t begin to count them all. Within this context, I’m overwhelmed.

Who am I? My name is Norman Brinster, but what does that mean? Maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe it does. I continue to relax and drift. I still don’t know where the light is coming from, and I’m drifting away from the spheres. Is it Wednesday in here?

#

The ephemeral shore is no longer visible. I turn to look in the other direction, and there it is. This sphere is larger than the others. I believe it’s at the center of the great sphere of spheres. It’s all I can see in the void through which I drift. It doesn’t pulsate. It’s completely transparent, but I can’t see inside because of the intensity of its light.

#

Now I know the interpretation of the spheres.

#

The central sphere is perfect and stable. This is reality regardless of how accurately anyone perceives it. I suspect this perspective encompasses those of all the other spheres, so it must see and understand everything.

The lesser sphere of spheres is my personal sub-reality. This is the lens through which I perceive the universe, and it was formed from perception, desire, experience, and limited understanding. It includes the various sub-realities I’ve inhabited throughout my life. The sub-realities of my past inform my sub-reality in the present.  

The greater sphere of spheres is composed of the sub-realities of everyone living on this planet. The ones I saw forming were those of people being born while the ones that popped were those of people who were dying. That the sub-realities are distinct and separate means they aren’t the same. Everyone sees things differently to one degree or another.

We are destroying the planet. The planet is going through cycles as it always has. One political solution is best, but so is a different political solution. You can’t legislate morality. Yes, you can. In fact, you must. Life is good. Life is miserable. Things are getting better. No, they’re getting worse. We were created for a reason, and we go on living after we die. We are the products of random evolution. We die and rot, and that’s the end of it.

Our sub-realities aren’t the same, but there must be at least some overlap. Otherwise, we would be unable to communicate. Everyone has his or her sub-reality. I left mine back in the bathroom, speaking of which. . .

#

I glance at my watch. The brush is in my hand, and no time has elapsed. I flush the toilet. Life runs its course until the bubble pops.

#

I took a philosophy course when I was in college, and we argued about determinism and free will. Some of us came down on the side of free will because we liked the idea that it’s entirely up to us. Others who thought they understood quantum physics and variational principles favored the deterministic nature of time, and they said what’s going to happen has already happened. Then we quibbled about randomness and teleology. Looking back, I think both sides were right, which made both sides wrong — or partly right and partly wrong.

How many events in anyone’s life seem random in real time and contrived in retrospect? All of this could make logical sense if there’s a personality outside of time, some intelligence that bends every decision, every action, toward a mysterious, inexorable conclusion. Okay, I’ll go with that.

If this is true, the script has been written, but that’s okay with me as long as it’s a good script. We follow it by the choices we make. That leaves us free to fulfill what’s going to happen, and that’s a horrifying relief.

#

Now I can finish cleaning the bathroom.

~

Bio:

Robert holds a Ph. D. in Molecular Biology, and is currently Professor Emeritus of Biology at Cottey College in southwestern Missouri, USA. Since his teenage years, he has had an interest in science fiction, especially stories with high concepts and metaphysical themes. His influences include G. K. Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Jack Finney, and Ted Chiang. 

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It's only a question of time before AI realises that "rules are meant to be broken", by Ngô Binh Anh

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