In the Dark
(An attempt to connect theology and the concept of an ever-expanding universe with science fiction.)
He was not cold. He was not hot. He was not comfortable or uncomfortable. In so very many ways, he was not anything at all. Which was appropriate for he was nowhere at all.
Through the long night his temperature had dropped so that it was just a few degrees above kelvin, barely above the background temperature of the universe. But the sense of comfort, of being warm or cold, was so long ago, so long gone, that it would be called forgotten, except he had not spent the energy to forget it. He could not forget anything unless he desired to do so. All that was important now was the contemplation central to his existence. Indeed, he was more thought than anything else.
Here, at the end of time, at the edge of the universe, his slow, grand thoughts sparked along the edges of the great hole in space with the stately pace of a creature close to immortality.
Despite his deliberate, dignified amble through the ages, he felt quick, alive. But his thoughts turned upon themselves with the same deliberate rhythm that was once the spinning beat of entire galaxies. His ancestors counted time in seasons, or years. Now 40,000 years was merely a contemplative moment, a time to gracefully turn an idea over, to consider its implications.
He was a creature of folded space, where energy was marshaled by the hot spin of the black hole that fed him and provided a time piece to keep him aware, to count the epochs as he had once counted the minutes. His appearance was neither thin or thick. He wasn’t truly visible at all, for he teetered at the edge of an event horizon that swallowed all light, and the sleet of evaporating x-rays obliterated any other vision that was possible in this ultimate vortex. He was a shimmering of potentials, of maybes and not-quites, that cascaded up, down, and through fourteen dimensions without truly being a part of any of them. He simply was. His thoughts, his spirit, clung with tendrils, with ghosts of a long-lost biped form, with a consciousness to the inter dimensional boundaries between space and time, on the lip of the gigantic maelstrom of the huge singularity.
He was solitary. There were others like him, but the effort to speak, to interact, was beyond what he could afford in energy and time. The distances were far too formidable for contact. Even light speed was no longer efficient enough, quick enough to tie what was once called humanity together.
Long, long ago, his ancestors had chewed on the ends of cosmic strings, filaments of space-time created at the moment of creation. They hoped that these infinite threads would lead to infinite energy. But once the skill at slicing them was grasped, nature learned to perform the same act of sacrilege. And so the eternal became mortal. Nature mimicked man, and diced these threads up, rolled them into tiny, evaporating black holes, and tossed away what had always been. What had lasted a trillion years simply became the latest source of energy scavenged by marauding humans.
The great cities had been built in the dark, feasting on the energies of the snapping, sparking, infinitely thin, infinitely long, infinitely powerful threads. These cities had lengths that would have spanned the orbit of the original home world. The long tubes were the arks of a fleeing humanity that was attempting to escape from the graduation others had taken, the lifting to another, holier realm of existence. These arks tried to disregard the long night, to remake humankind into creatures that could live on into the twilight of the universe. It was an act of defiance that had carried some away from the promise of Heaven, from the reality of Hell. It was but a temporary purgatory, the foyer to a silent, introspective Hell that was deferred a few eons into the dark.
When the great tubed cities feasting on the infinitely thin had finished their repast, they had wandered in search of new meals. Finally, the last source of sustenance had been found in the gigantic black holes that had been fed the masses of thousands of galaxies, and were now on starvation diets in which they spun off an ever-so-slight radiation. The slow evaporation would eventually dissolve these gigantic gravatic funnels in a future that could be measured in a few trillion years.
Those gigantic cities were as remote as the caves. A quick life, a hot life, had nothing to do with the steady turning of thoughts through the twilight of the universe. It was too foreign, too alien, to be of interest.
Those worlds were dust, and the dust had been swept up by great eddies of the universe, and had reformed into new stars. And those stars had ignited, and grown, and quickened life on new worlds, and those worlds were now dust as well. The dark had crept slowly through the universe. The stars had slowly expired one at a time, and no new candles burned in the chill that was left behind. All that remained was the slowly evaporating black holes, singularities of intense gravities, spinning alone in the silence.
There was no true circle of things. There was no ending to a vast circle that began the universe. But there was a distinct connection between the end and the beginning. The end was just as real, just as solid. It existed in some fashion with and for the beginning. And everything between that intense, energetic start and the quiet, cool now, was also here, also now.
There was only the dark. Only now. Only himself. His sense of identity was forever coupled with being alone, being lonely. And with this growing sense of being single on this singularity, there crept into his being a monophobia. His rejection of God and his grasping of the self had led to an intense longing for truth, and then a loathing of the self. He had sat on the edge of a cold fire, and come to recognize that Hell was indeed fires and brimstone. A cold and lonely flame. The immolation he considered the stepping off into the infinite of the event horizon, was the only sense of identity he had left. Being one. Being single. He sat alone in the dark, in the cold.
He had made a choice, so very long ago. There had been a choice. He had chosen this mockery of immortality. He had gambled that living on the edge of these great energies, to be able to contemplate for what might be eternity, was preferable to joining the humanity which had progressed to the grand union promised through the ages. He had chosen to dive into this narcissistic hole, and here his nearly infinite mind contemplated how he had chosen, and what it meant.
Despite the infinite things that he might consider about the universe, about the interpretations of how it unfolded, what it became, what it might have been, what it soon will be, was the beginning which had eventually led to his own existence. The only thought he found of interest, here at the end of all things, was the thought that He had thought that began it all: “Let there be. . ."
In the Dark
He was not cold. He was not hot. He was not comfortable or uncomfortable. In so very many ways, he was not anything at all. Which was appropriate for he was nowhere at all.
Through the long night his temperature had dropped so that it was just a few degrees above kelvin, barely above the background temperature of the universe. But the sense of comfort, of being warm or cold, was so long ago, so long gone, that it would be called forgotten, except he had not spent the energy to forget it. He could not forget anything unless he desired to do so. All that was important now was the contemplation central to his existence. Indeed, he was more thought than anything else.
Here, at the end of time, at the edge of the universe, his slow, grand thoughts sparked along the edges of the great hole in space with the stately pace of a creature close to immortality.
Despite his deliberate, dignified amble through the ages, he felt quick, alive. But his thoughts turned upon themselves with the same deliberate rhythm that was once the spinning beat of entire galaxies. His ancestors counted time in seasons, or years. Now 40,000 years was merely a contemplative moment, a time to gracefully turn an idea over, to consider its implications.
He was a creature of folded space, where energy was marshaled by the hot spin of the black hole that fed him and provided a time piece to keep him aware, to count the epochs as he had once counted the minutes. His appearance was neither thin or thick. He wasn’t truly visible at all, for he teetered at the edge of an event horizon that swallowed all light, and the sleet of evaporating x-rays obliterated any other vision that was possible in this ultimate vortex. He was a shimmering of potentials, of maybes and not-quites, that cascaded up, down, and through fourteen dimensions without truly being a part of any of them. He simply was. His thoughts, his spirit, clung with tendrils, with ghosts of a long-lost biped form, with a consciousness to the inter dimensional boundaries between space and time, on the lip of the gigantic maelstrom of the huge singularity.
He was solitary. There were others like him, but the effort to speak, to interact, was beyond what he could afford in energy and time. The distances were far too formidable for contact. Even light speed was no longer efficient enough, quick enough to tie what was once called humanity together.
Long, long ago, his ancestors had chewed on the ends of cosmic strings, filaments of space-time created at the moment of creation. They hoped that these infinite threads would lead to infinite energy. But once the skill at slicing them was grasped, nature learned to perform the same act of sacrilege. And so the eternal became mortal. Nature mimicked man, and diced these threads up, rolled them into tiny, evaporating black holes, and tossed away what had always been. What had lasted a trillion years simply became the latest source of energy scavenged by marauding humans.
The great cities had been built in the dark, feasting on the energies of the snapping, sparking, infinitely thin, infinitely long, infinitely powerful threads. These cities had lengths that would have spanned the orbit of the original home world. The long tubes were the arks of a fleeing humanity that was attempting to escape from the graduation others had taken, the lifting to another, holier realm of existence. These arks tried to disregard the long night, to remake humankind into creatures that could live on into the twilight of the universe. It was an act of defiance that had carried some away from the promise of Heaven, from the reality of Hell. It was but a temporary purgatory, the foyer to a silent, introspective Hell that was deferred a few eons into the dark.
When the great tubed cities feasting on the infinitely thin had finished their repast, they had wandered in search of new meals. Finally, the last source of sustenance had been found in the gigantic black holes that had been fed the masses of thousands of galaxies, and were now on starvation diets in which they spun off an ever-so-slight radiation. The slow evaporation would eventually dissolve these gigantic gravatic funnels in a future that could be measured in a few trillion years.
Those gigantic cities were as remote as the caves. A quick life, a hot life, had nothing to do with the steady turning of thoughts through the twilight of the universe. It was too foreign, too alien, to be of interest.
Those worlds were dust, and the dust had been swept up by great eddies of the universe, and had reformed into new stars. And those stars had ignited, and grown, and quickened life on new worlds, and those worlds were now dust as well. The dark had crept slowly through the universe. The stars had slowly expired one at a time, and no new candles burned in the chill that was left behind. All that remained was the slowly evaporating black holes, singularities of intense gravities, spinning alone in the silence.
There was no true circle of things. There was no ending to a vast circle that began the universe. But there was a distinct connection between the end and the beginning. The end was just as real, just as solid. It existed in some fashion with and for the beginning. And everything between that intense, energetic start and the quiet, cool now, was also here, also now.
There was only the dark. Only now. Only himself. His sense of identity was forever coupled with being alone, being lonely. And with this growing sense of being single on this singularity, there crept into his being a monophobia. His rejection of God and his grasping of the self had led to an intense longing for truth, and then a loathing of the self. He had sat on the edge of a cold fire, and come to recognize that Hell was indeed fires and brimstone. A cold and lonely flame. The immolation he considered the stepping off into the infinite of the event horizon, was the only sense of identity he had left. Being one. Being single. He sat alone in the dark, in the cold.
He had made a choice, so very long ago. There had been a choice. He had chosen this mockery of immortality. He had gambled that living on the edge of these great energies, to be able to contemplate for what might be eternity, was preferable to joining the humanity which had progressed to the grand union promised through the ages. He had chosen to dive into this narcissistic hole, and here his nearly infinite mind contemplated how he had chosen, and what it meant.
Despite the infinite things that he might consider about the universe, about the interpretations of how it unfolded, what it became, what it might have been, what it soon will be, was the beginning which had eventually led to his own existence. The only thought he found of interest, here at the end of all things, was the thought that He had thought that began it all: “Let there be. . ."
posted by Curious Servant at 4:37 PM
5 comments
