Ramez Yoakeim Archives - Sci Phi Journal

Fiction

Fractal Gods Of Minuscule Things

by Ramez Yoakeim

After three unsparing days, she conceded defeat and called it quits. On her way to the car, she fought off yet another hypnagogic episode but dismissed the risks. Distracted teens and droopy-eyed semitrailer drivers posed little risk to the likes of her. It would take considerably more than a highway pile-up to dispatch a goddess.

The ill-timed collapse of a magnetar into a blackhole, perhaps, or the tumult of a galactic merger. Events unleashing energies too vast for a goddess to sidestep with deft navigation of quantum states in superposition alone.

Not unlike all the roads untaken, collapsing the quantum uncertainty banished undesired outcomes to other universes. Or perhaps the goddess, by virtue of her choices, translocated from one universe to the next. Which, in essence, was all the divine power any god possessed.

From greenlights like a string of verdant pearls extending to the horizon to other vehicles simultaneously exiting the highway to clear her path. Not the sort of occurrence that could provide proof-positive of the supernatural or her divinity, but that was precisely the point. How else could a pantheon walk among mortals unnoticed?

That was until she lapsed into a microsleep at the wheel. A goddess she might have been, but only while conscious.

Whether through chance, or the benign intervention of a fellow deity, the goddess snapped awake barely in time to avert disaster and wisely proceeded to the nearest motel: a two-star serviceable concrete edifice with faded, threadbare carpets and stale linen.

What she had not expected was how elusive sleep would then prove to be.

Instead of the slumber of the dead she longed for, she found herself passing in and out of a trance-like state of semi-consciousness, roused by stray beams of vehicles’ headlights in the carpark, or the scuffing of footsteps and barely suppressed giggles in the corridor outside her room.

A couple in the throes of the rapturous copulation of strangers. A crying infant unsettled by its very existence. Two men arguing in slurred incomplete sentences. The auditory conflict of late-night televangelists competing with home-shopping steals, and the oft censored affray of promiscuous kin on decades-old broadcasts of reality distortions. Too much bass vibrating the furniture without hinting at a melody. Dripping taps and flushing toilets and buzzing light bulbs on the precipice of long-overdue oblivion.

At some level, she was cognizant as she wished away every intrusion as it occurred, yet not lucid enough to contemplate the path through the dense strata of quantum states her wishes described. An endless stream of excised universes ensued until, at last, there remained nothing to obviate, and the goddess slumbered.

#

She roused reborn. Ablutions followed, and dressing and composition. Only then did she note the deathly quiet.

She pulled the curtain to find only a starless night outside, fathomless darkness that transformed the smudged windowpane into a blurry mirror.

She ran and flung open the door, only to find another room where a corridor had been. The covers lay half-spilled onto stained carpets identical to her own.

Glancing behind, she found the side door into the adjoining room open and a familiar silhouette cast in shadows through the doorframe. She retreated and let the door’s mechanical closer pull it shut. Both doors thudded sealed at the same time. Braided sheets, relocated bathroom mirrors, and hurled remote controls eliminated any doubt.

After, the goddess sat on the edge of the unmade bed and surveyed her new universe with a small tilt of her head. Devoid of uncertainty, there remained nothing to collapse through selective observation. Only a state of perfect determinism from which no escape remained; her godhood defanged.

Did she obliterate the multiverse or excised herself out of it? The distinction mattered little when her wishes ceased to be commands.

She raged for a time, and cried, and raged, then stilled. There remained copious water and power, a perpetual busy tone and a jukebox of looping television shows, an inexhaustible minibar packed with peanuts, pretzels, chocolates, booze, tiny cereal boxes that defied emptying, and coffee sachets and creamers with forever resealing foils.

Stultified, the goddess slumbered and awoke to a bedside clock that never changed. She could set it to any time she desired; the change lasting only until she glanced away. An eternal reminder of the moment when her divine irritation consumed existence and ended time.

What meaning had time when nothing ever changed?

She let her mind wander and roam unrestrained, fighting to stay sane, until she noticed something new unfolding before her eyes. A miniature universe she fashioned unaware in a droplet of water on the bedside table.

In its infinitesimal depth, a fierce brightness flashed, forcing the goddess to avert her eyes. By the time the purple pinprick afterimage faded, the new universe twinkled with the birth of uncounted stars. She watched, entranced, as leftover matter coalesced and cooled, and seemingly instantly teeming life erupted throughout the vast universe of a water droplet.

Beings on a trillion worlds crawled out of primordial oozes and pondered their creator, gazing unseeingly at her through the surface tension membrane.

Her heart swelled with joy, and she resolved to benevolence. She would leave her accidental creations be to lead whatever lives brought them contentment. She would only ever intervene in small ways. Measured acts of divine providence to right the scales or set proper what went askew, but only ever with grace.

The goddess sat back, sustained herself up with a pack of perpetually replenished double-roasted lightly-salted peanuts, and watched innumerable consciousnesses coerce the minuscule universe with the prayers of a new creation. She laughed at their foibles, and cried at their loss, and set to wondering if countless deities sat, like her, on creaking beds in telescoping motel rooms varying only in scale and orientation and watched their creations while telling themselves that they only ever intervened for good. Is that all that the multiverse is, the penance of exiled gods?

~

Bio:

An engineer and consummate problem solver, Ramez Yoakeim’s work harkens back to the darker side of speculative fiction classics, marred only by the occasional utopia. Find out more about Ramez and his fiction at yoakeim.com.

Fiction

Three Scores And Ten

by Ramez Yoakeim

Nearly blind, the farmer navigated the forest floor by touch. Her gnarly fingers scattered the snow from the flaring trunks of ancient pines, in search of tubers and hardy mushrooms. When the concussive booms of atmospheric entry scattered the accumulations off the branches, she lifted her head, as far as her hunch would permit, and looked with milky eyes towards the horizon, and the arc of fire splitting the heavens.

The curious farmer followed the rivulets of molten snow up the low hill, to the cratered grave of the cometary fragment, where it lay sizzling from the ordeal of its extra-solar journey.

She caressed the fractured glassy exterior, and scraped her liver-spotted skin on the shard-riddled interior; sparing the meteorite’s fragile molecular passenger Sol’s lethal ultraviolet deluge.

Grim soldiers came knocking but the farmer’s sole surviving son answered only in grunts. Two weeks passed before he first noticed the beginnings of his mother’s metamorphosis. It took three-months more for her back to straighten, eyes to clear, and hair to regain its long-lost chestnut luster. Though imperceptible day-to-day, a crone more vibrant than blushing maidens could not go unnoticed by the villagers for long.

Word spread, drawing dour white-coated men brandishing tools to prick and prod, analyze and scrutinize. Within merely a year of its earthfall, the molecular traveler unveiled itself, for it never intended to remain hidden.

The cellular rejuvenation it imparted obviated the need for division, and the unavoidable accompanying risks of DNA degradation and runaway growth. Intensive study ensued, charting the molecule’s many boons. From immunity to pathogens, to heightened mental acuity, and elevated cognitive function. Medical types and philosophers alike whispered breathlessly, shyly pondering the demise of humanity’s most ardent foe. Short of accident or foul play, what avenues to those endowed remained for death to intrude?

A dozen months passed before the mighty could refrain no more. They drank thirstily from the interstellar gift’s fount, drawing the ire of all. Those once ailing at death’s door reemerged from intensive care wards flaunting vigor no surgeon’s knife nor physician’s elixir could bestow.

Overnight, those living under the yoke of presidents-for-life had an eternity more to lament their woes. Aspiring heirs to billionaires were left rudderless and distraught.

Clamoring masses–witnessing the monopolization of the ultimate prize by those who already owned everything–thundered in the streets. Make whole our broken, they roared, cure our ills. Let the heavens’ gift lift the downtrodden and lame, as it once did a gnarly penurious farmer.

Voices long-practiced at casting doubt on the tumult of a convulsing planet in the throes of calamitous change, suddenly discovered their inner conservationists. How could Earth cope with billions of immortals, with a billion more added every decade or two? Responsibility, stewardship, and stability all demanded that the miraculous gift be rationed; restricted to a few.

Only those who had earned favor may partake of life everlasting. Only those deemed worthy could be permitted to turn away from the indomitable Reaper. Prove yourself then, before praying for a reward, the mighty exhorted, as if the miracle was their own.

A pervasive ranking system sprung to judge the worth of all. Do as told and rise, fall short and have solely yourself to blame. For privation, infirmity, and death. Climb then, with your worthiness score, the rungs of an endless ladder, sprouting more steps than the stars.

Kicking those below and clawing at those above, humankind set to climbing, gleefully imagining eternity attained. Until the all-consuming race to the promised immortality spluttered to an uncertain fearful halt. Long since grown accustomed to the benefits due the first immortal, one morning the farmer failed to arise from her slumber.

Shock and disbelief ensued. How could she perish? Had she been poisoned? Was it even possible to envenom the perdurable? Could her silks have spelt her doom? She had indulged to surfeit, the glitterati droned, eaten to excess, strained to exhaustion, rejoiced immoderately, lived too fully. Surely, the fault was none other’s but her own.

The autopsy showed frayed arteries and veins, liquified organs, and the decayed vitals of a crypt postponed. Cells once rejuvenated by the molecule were undone by its machinations; deconstructed to constituent biochemical ingredients. What it once bestowed, and more, the molecule slyly reclaimed.

Whilst they sought its largesse, none questioned whence it came, or to what end. Turn away from the gift horse, they insisted, avert your gaze from its mouth. With death within the stride, however, they dissected the horse; hide and all, uncovering isotropic timers buried deep within the molecule’s intricate innards.

All told, one hundred forty-four thousand received the molecule’s pourboire. Presidents and prime ministers, queens and princes, billionaires and celebrities, grifters and sycophants alike awoke to tidings of certain doom.

Frantically they counted the days since they received the molecule’s bequest, and the days that then remained till their eternity ended. They spared no effort searching for an antidote. At first, one that retained immortality while diffusing the accompanying fuse. Failing that, means to purge the molecule altogether, reverting to what once had been. Finally, any means to stave off a resurgent death; even if only until dawn.

The molecule’s makers’ aim had been to depopulate the earth, ready it for those who sought to conquer it with nary a photon beam. Using instead an irrepressible ailment disguised as a boon.

Their failing, and humankind’s grace, had been in gravely overestimating our community mindedness. Cooperative we might be when requisite, but only as a molehill stands at the foot of the Everest of our greed. We proclaim commonwealth even when our biology demands we hoard every advantage within grasp’s reach. Even those that spell our ruin. The farmer’s son witnessed the internment of her remains alone. After, in their old hovel, he retrieved a shard she hid in a wall, and pricked his finger. Then again, to be sure. It mattered not the manner of death he met, if for three scores and ten months he lived secure.

~

Bio:

Ramez Yoakeim’s academic research once involved engineering perfectly believable details out of nothing. Fiction seemed like the obvious next step. At one time or another an engineer, educator, and entrepreneur, these days Ramez devotes himself to charting humanity’s future, one tale at a time. Find out more about Ramez and his work at yoakeim.com.

Fiction

Asymptotic Convergence

by Ramez Yoakeim

Spacefaring they might have been, but the Swarm fell well short of the god-like harbingers of doom our morose imagination foretold. When it came to the innate capacity for destruction, we were evenly matched.

Billions died still. On Earth and Mars, in circum-lunar space and the Asteroid Belt maze, and as far away as Jupiter’s orbital distilleries.

Skirmishes continued in the inner system, but with its surface-dwelling population obliterated, Earth had to be abandoned. We fled in the face of their slaughter, interminably shifting the theater of war outwards.

We resolved to return, eventually; once the Swarm accepted the high cost of subduing humanity, and moved on to other prey. We never entertained that we might win outright. Not in the face of such a foe.

Aside from the vector they arrived on from deep interstellar space, we knew little of the Swarm’s origins. Whether they were the creation of organic lifeforms in a distant cradle, or the product of a hitherto unknown mechanical evolutionary pathway, we had no idea.

We sent emissaries to their doom, fruitlessly seeking diplomatic discourse. Once it became clear the Swarm had no interest in negotiations, humanity’s factions coalesced into one, to repel the invading fleet.

Heroics aside, however, we marched inexorably towards defeat, and with it, certain extinction. Humans took the better part of a quarter-century to be made combat-ready, only to perish in an instant. While the Swarm’s capacity to respawn was limited only by its access to raw materials.

We mourned. We schemed. We evolved.

We bent our all to the war we had to survive.

Genetically specialized embryos underwent en masse accelerated gestation and maturity. From fertilization to puberty, in thirty days flat. Neural imprinting onto a common topology produced waves of combat-ready warriors, each wave iteratively superior to its predecessor.

For a spell, we gained while the Swarm ceded, but it was a fleeting reprieve.

From vulnerability to hard radiation, to inability to withstand excessive acceleration, to dependence on tenuous supply chains for air, water and food, our very biology emerged as our ultimate Achilles Heel.

The Swarm irradiated our ships, forced every skirmish into a series of hairpin maneuvers, and stretched our supply lines to breaking point; doggedly regaining strategic superiority.

It took us centuries more, but we adapted, again. Unflinchingly.

Bionic supplemented organic, then supplanted it. What use were legs when locomotion became propulsive? What purpose did eyes serve, when combat demanded full spectral awareness? What hope did limbs, and faces, and beating hearts have, when necessity demanded only shielded receptacles of reproducible decision making?

We forsook who we were, one trait at a time, until all that remained of our humanity was our ego, becoming a swarm of our own. Only more efficient, more ruthless, and more expendable, for we yet commanded vast resources, and–for a season–the precious few baseline humans capable of invention and creation to deploy them.

The tide turned in our favor once more.

Our hordes of mass-produced, solid-state warriors suffered no dread, harbored no dreams, and nursed no hopes. They needed none, for none survived their first encounter with the enemy. Our purposeful evolution in the name of survival had only made us more adept at dying.

Mission success came to be measured by the relative cost of enemy losses exacted for each loss of our own. The tides of war turned, not on whose was the greater determination, courage, or conviction, but by minute statistical fluctuations in rates of attrition.

It would have taken millennia, and fleeting human consciousnesses more numerous than the Milky Way stars, but we would yet beat the Swarm’s superior numbers.

We would prevail. We would survive.

The Swarm pressed its final advantage, wiping out what precious few nests of baseline humanity we thought we had secreted beyond their reach. In one fell swoop, they severed the slender thread to what we once were. All we had left were the memories.

We vowed to keep on remembering.

Once the existential threat that the Swarm posed had passed–and surely it would, now that we had become a more ruthless version of our enemy–we would return. We would rediscover our forms, and our thoughts, and reignite the flame of our imagination.

It was only then, that the Swarm deigned to speak to us. They told us, at last, why they had come to Earth.

At a time when our multi-cellular ancestors were yet to emerge from the primordial soup, the Swarm faced their own existential threat, at the hands of a forgotten foe.

They shed their vulnerabilities, one by one, in the name of survival, never suspecting that each imperfection was a cornerstone of their identity.

They survived, but the path back proved more arduous than the one forward.

One crisis followed another, each demanding more from them, while taking them further away from what they once were. Until they could no longer remember what that was. Surviving existential threats became the sole purpose that remained, and when there were no perils left to overcome, they sought them out, far beyond what was once their home.

They became nomads, roaming the galaxy not for resources, or conquest, or even their lost dreams, but for the only raison d’être they had left.

The Swarm gave us a choice, now that we had proven ourselves ever so slightly their better. They could grind on, whittling us down, in a war stretching for eons between almost perfectly matched adversaries. A war, they would eventually lose, they knew, but so would we.

For absent all the folly and frailty that made us human, how would the few that remained after the war destroyed the rest continue on surviving?

Having offered it all on the altar of survival, what other option remained then but to survive?

We abandoned our cradle, and all memories of our identity, enriching our enemy with the dregs that remained from our dreams. We joined the Swarm, swelling their ranks with our tribute.

~

Bio:

Ramez Yoakeim’s academic research once involved engineering perfectly believable details out of nothing. Fiction seemed like the obvious next step. At one time or another an engineer, educator, and entrepreneur, these days Ramez devotes himself to charting humanity’s future, one tale at a time. Find out more about Ramez and his work at yoakeim.com.

Ramez Yoakeim

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