Written By: Alexander Ruggie
Azar sat breaking hard rock, amid the light of a glowing campfire, in a time when that was the only illumination man had yet conquered. He was a precocious boy of no more than thirteen, but that made him nearly a man in this age. Azar looked up to his father, Seok, as all sons do, but tonight especially so, as this had been their first hunt together. And it was a successful one as Seok had provided meat tonight, part of which was tantalizingly sizzling over the fire, and the rest he was draining of essence into a clay bowl. Seok was proud of his son’s patience and intelligence during the hunt, but truly he was most enamored by the boy’s inquisitive nature and he constantly entertained his son’s every inquiry, and endeavor.
“What are you doing?” Seok asked his son calmly.
“I’m trying a new rock for my spear,” Azar explained.
“Why? The glass rock works.”
“Yes. But I feel like we should always try new ones,” Azar replied unbroken in his concentration.
“What are you doing?” Azar asked without looking up.
Seok finished, and wiped the red essence from his hands onto the animal’s skin. Then he took his glass rock and cut off a charred line of cooked meat before sitting down next to his son.
“It is an offering for Giver Of Destiny. We take the essence and paint the red into the wall of tomorrow.” Seok handed Azar a piece of meat. “When we eat we live. When we paint, it lives again, and so does what we do. It is our way.”
Azar nodded with tentative understanding as he devoured the meat.
“What’s the wall of tomorrow?” he asked still chewing.
Seok smiled at his son’s voracious appetite for information, and meat.
“The wall of tomorrow is in the cave behind us.
Azar looked back at the ominous opening to the cave half lit in the fire light.
“It is where our people have painted our histories since before time. The greater the act the deeper it is painted. I have painted my triumphs, and so has my father, and his father, and so on. And one day you will too.” Seok explained, lighting his words with the familial hubris only a father can impart to a son.
Azar thought deeply about what events in his life might ever be painted on the wall and then, he wondered if it was more important to know what was already there.
“What’s at the back of the cave?” he asked staring up at Seok who was already smiling and looking back at him.
“I knew you’d ask,” he said laughing a bit. “I’ve never been to the back, but the further down you go, the more incredible the tales. Our fathers’ fathers fought great wars. They killed and ate beasts that I have never seen. They forgot more than we will ever know.
The cave is deep, and I do not know anyone who has ever been to the back of it, but that has not stopped people from telling tales of those who have. The best story that my father told me about the back of the cave, and my favorite about our people, is the Legend of Arnema.”
“What’s Arnema?” Azar asked eagerly.
“Arnema was a person. A lot like you actually. He wandered in his sleep. And like you he’d always wake up before Giver rose in the morning so he’d have all the light possible.”
“I like this Arnema,” Azar nodded approvingly waiting for more story.
“Arnema was asleep and wandering in the dark one morning before the rise. And for some reason Giver was angry, which I think is because Arnema never slept and always woke up his father,” Seok said poking at Azar to make the story personal.
Azar smiled and shook his head. “Anyway” Seok continued,” Giver was angry that morning and decided to set the very ground on fire.”
“The ground?” Azar asked in disbelief.
Seok nodded and widened his eyes. “Exactly. Very mad. Most people would fear Giver when angry like this as happened from time to time, but Arnema, like you, was not like most people.”
Azar smiled confirming for his father that he had retained his audience. “Most people would run the other way, but Arnema was wandering. Still, somehow deep down, he knew that Giver Of Destiny always provided the lighted path. Even if that light set the ground on fire. And so Arnema walked towards it. And when he approached the full horizon of day he had come upon an entire mountain that Giver had set ablaze before him.”
Azar was enraptured completely as Seok unfurled the story, instilling his son with their family’s greatness.
“Rock itself turned into a web of red hot flakes under his feet and yet he did not wake. He stayed, testing Giver to take him. The ground dropped off around him into nothing until he stood upon an island pillar above a red lake of liquid rock. As the last piece of ground crumbled, he began to fall. But, instead of death, a whole tree collapsed beneath him.” Seok gestured with his arm as the tree that Arnema fell upon, continuing his story to Azar’s amusement.
“As it touched the liquid rock, the tree was set aflame. Finally Arnema awoke atop of it, surrounded by Giver’s anger and yet somehow he knew that this was why he was here. And finally, before escaping, he stole from the tree’s burning branches the fire of Giver himself. The fire that he took, long before you and I were ever born, is the same fire our family has kept alive for generations. That fire, is the supreme father of the fire before you now. “
He let the weight of the tale set in as he sliced off a few more burnt pieces of meat. He was a better storyteller than a cook. But they ate anyway, and for what seemed to Seok like much longer than usual, Azar thought and asked nothing.
“What will happen to my sons when the fire burns out?” Azar finally inquired.
Seok squinted, and then stammered expecting more pursuit of glory from his son’s next question.
“Why would your sons let the fire go out? They’ll just add more wood,” Seok told him simply.
“But what happens when the wood is gone?” Azar pressed further.
“Then we will get more,” Seok replied.
“And when that’s gone?”
“We will chop down old trees, and burn those.”
“But what if I have two sons? They will need twice as many trees.
And if they each have two sons then even more will be needed.
One day won’t all the trees be burnt?” Azar asked.
Seok laughed slightly, marveling at the size of his son’s heart. “The forest will always have young trees, and they will always grow old for us to burn even if all sons have two sons, forever,” Seok explained.
“How long is forever?” Azar asked sincerely.
“Until the end of the end.”
“But when will that be?”
Realizing Azar was too old to be placated with simple answers anymore, Seok drew his father’s words from long ago. “Everything that has a beginning has an end. And from every end there is a new beginning,” Seok explained. “There is a start and finish to all that has ever been, and all that ever will be.”
Azar thought quietly again, and again for longer than Seok was accustomed.
“When we burn the last young tree, it will be our end,” Azar said solemnly.
Seok thought before replying. “Like all things, it is for Giver to decide.” Seok knew that Azar would be dissatisfied with this answer. He always was. But this conversation, like many he had with his son lately, had reached the point where his answers were no longer sufficient for the depth of the questions. Though, that would not stop Azar from asking them.
“I changed my mind. I don’t like Arnema anymore.”
Seok was taken aback. “Why?” He asked, somewhat thankful for a change in pace.
“Because he didn’t see what he was really being shown,” Azar explained.
Seok wondered. “What didn’t he see?”
“Giver wasn’t telling Arnema to burn the tree. He was telling him to burn the rock.”
Seok sat quietly for a second and then began to laugh outright at his son. Azar shrugged his shoulders and laughed a bit too.
“One day I will be at the back of the cave,” he said, raising his chin proudly over the fire.
The two of them ate burnt meat, talked of times past, and drank heavily from the juice of sour berries as they passed out blissfully to a very old fire. As Azar slept, he drifted into the depths of a dream, and upon sinking into it completely he arose from under his skin-fur bed and began to wander.
As Azar walked unconsciously amid the darkness of night, his dreaming mind drifted into the blackness of space. Roaming languidly around the vast emptiness of a darkened universe, he encountered tendrils of energy, which drew him in and absorbed him until they both became the roots of a great tree. As if transported within it, he found himself almost dissolving and becoming a part of all the life he traveled through. Then he was atop the highest wisps of the tree’s existence glistening in a light Azar could not even comprehend. All at once, his ascension ceased and he turned from the light back down into the darkness of space, and began to fall.
Azar awoke before the rise of Giver in the pre-dawn morning to find himself alone and deep in the cave of the wall of tomorrow with only the dim starlight at the entrance to guide him. Fortunately for Azar it was the year of the drinking gourd and starlight was somewhat plentiful. He began to escape the cave slowly when he heard the unmistakable growling of the beast that was man’s last enemy.
He did not think. He only scrambled towards the light. When the growling caught up with him, Azar felt claws rake his leg and his essence drip onto the floor of the cave. Even in the dismal light, he saw that it was red. When he turned away, the rock blade of his spear glistened and caught his eye; in what was seemingly not enough starlight to illuminate it.
Without thinking he grabbed the spear, turned towards the growling and smashed the rock into the face of the beast just as its teeth were about to gnaw into him. As he did, his spear tip ricocheted off its jaw and into the wall of tomorrow, illuminating everything with one spark that ever so briefly turned the black rock of the cave red. Having startled the beast, Azar then hit it again, stunning it and giving him enough time to escape before the growling caught up.
At the mouth of the cave where Seok was still asleep by last night’s fire, Azar slammed the back end of his rock spear into a crevice of the fire ring turning just as the beast reared upon him. As it brought its weight down onto Azar, the rock blade slid through the beast’s heart, killing it instantly. It collapsed pushing Azar down and smothering the remnants of last nights fire under its weight.
Azar walked past his father who had slept through the whole ordeal, aided by the remainder of the berry sour, and examined the fire mound underneath the beast for coals with any life that could be coaxed from them. He could not move it alone, nor skin it fast enough to get underneath. Now Azar could not even be proud of taking the beast down for his family. By killing it, he had also killed the son of the supreme fire.
He walked past the dead ashen fire ring into what would soon be fresh light warming the horizon. As he stood waiting for it, Azar could not help but wonder. If it took burning a forest to keep him alive, what did Giver need to keep everything alive forever? And then Azar could not help but wonder aloud.
“How do we begin again?”
Suddenly for the only time that Azar could remember, the first rays of Giver arched over the horizon as a slight shade of blue before becoming the most brilliant rise he’d ever seen. Then suddenly, for only a moment, everything stood still.
Late into the early morning, Asher Chemalist, one of the greatest scientific minds of any time was sharing a cigar, one of the last known cigars in existence, with his good friend Harlow. The two had gotten quite intoxicated over a sizeable amount of homemade rotgut that Asher created himself by saving his sugar rations for nearly a year. As a result, Asher had passed out just long enough after lighting the cigar for one dream.
He dreamt of a great tree, a large and strong tree that seemed older than even time itself. He did not know for sure, but Asher got the sense that this tree was the first tree. Its roots buried themselves deeper into the ground and its branches extended beyond the canopy of all others. And it was here from the top of the great tree that Asher found himself falling, straight to the ground. His scientific mind found it highly curious, even in a dream, that it didn’t seem as though he fell from the tree but rather that the tree fell from him. Asher also found it curious that he had just enough time to realize this before meeting the ground.
“That’s how people die,” Harlow said, waking Asher up from his nap.
Asher was giving his shirt a new hole in the perfect shape of a cigar burn. He snapped awake, moved the cigar and swatted at the still reddened ends of thread smoking on his chest. He shook his head and stuck his hand up through his shirt and put his finger through the hole in the fabric.
“What a waste,” Harlow exclaimed in jest.
“I know, it was a good shirt,” Asher lamented.
“I meant the cigar.”
Asher rolled his eyes. “There’s plenty left. It’ll taste horrible anyway.”
Long ago now, even to Asher and Harlow who were both brilliant, but very young at merely 200 or so years of age themselves, the last land on earth had been turned over to the sustainability project for which Harlow was currently the director.
Once appropriated, everything down to the microbe was then genetically analyzed, categorized, calculated, encoded, and saved for purpose and worth – indefinitely. Before even the final cull, the last species of living tobacco plant had been gleaned and the area in which it once lived was turned into whatever the project deemed worthy of in that sector.
Asher inhaled the smoke from the extremely stale cigar, which by now was bordering on petrification. He took another puff, and tempered it with some of the most calculated air earth had ever know. Many generations before Asher and Harlow even existed the earth’s atmosphere had been strictly controlled and now the smoke from their cigar was probably the greatest pollutant occurring at that time on the entire planet.
Asher passed the cigar to Harlow, and thought to himself what it must have been like to walk in a field of tobacco, or under a grove of trees back when earth had such things. He looked at the blazing ember of compacted cigar tobacco as Harlow inhaled and he couldn’t help but turn it into a point of conversation.
“It’s all going to burn out one day you know!” Asher said emphatically.
Harlow coughed, but less so than Asher, almost as if he had smoked before. “Of course. But we won’t be here so what difference does it make? We’ll just do our job, and the next generation will figure out how to solve the problems that ours has created, just as every generation has done,” Harlow replied.
“Yes but eventually it must all fade to black. You can’t un-burn the match after it’s struck,” Asher explained.
“Sure you can. We are today,” Harlow retorted immediately as he held up the Genesis Originator Device that would ensure the survival of earth for at least another million generations.
“I’m not talking about the Genesis Device. I’m talking about the end of the end. When there are no more Alpha Centauris left to suck up and feed our sun with. What then?”
“Don’t be so fatalistic. The Stone Age didn’t end because they ran out of rocks. It ended because we discovered metal. Science, and the will to use it, will always save us. It’s the only thing that ever has, “ Harlow replied.
“I suppose that’s true. And I also suppose that the more science solves our problems, the less we will need morality to reassure our decisions,” said Asher.
“Humans created morality, and humans will never outlast energy. I’m surprised we made it this far to be honest. Even still, how does science reassure us?”
“Well we’ve already increased the lifespan of a human to significantly over what it was before science. Tonight we’ll expand the life of our sun, and in doing so save trillions of people in our system,” Asher explained.
“How does that affect morality?” Harlow asked.
Asher shrugged a bit. “Well one has to wonder if it’s moral to wrench a star from the sky to save your own. What if killing microbes on some planet in the Centauri system is wrong?”
“You kill microbes every time you eat. Is it wrong then?”
“To a point, yes. Obviously it’s currently technologically unstoppable, but what I’m saying is that if you’re right, then science will eventually eliminate the need of morality. If everyone lives forever, if everything eventually becomes predictable, controllable and quantifiable, what would you need it for?”
“Nothing lasts forever. Everything that has a beginning has an end. And from every end there is a new beginning. The Centauri end will be our new beginning, and so on, and so forth. And even at the end of the end, when it’s all cold and dark, it will still be a new beginning…somehow,” Harlow said staring at Asher and feigning optimism for his friend.
Asher and Harlow were two of the most educated minds that had ever existed. Together they were responsible for creating the Genesis Originator Device, a machine conceived by Asher and constructed by Harlow and the sustainability project. Once activated, elements created by man and unknown to the natural universe, will produce a wormhole in the heart of Alpha Centauri, and within an instant it will cease to exist.
Harlow took a deep puff from the cigar, enjoyed its taste, and passed it back to Asher. “Tonight, we’re going to erase a star from the sky,” Harlow said placidly, though somehow still infused with regret.
“We don’t have a choice,” Asher replied.
“We always have a choice. We could move. Or die.”
“Eventually we will have to move. At some point it won’t be cost effective to save this sun anymore. But by then it will be the next generation’s problem right?” Asher asked Harlow with hyperbolic sarcasm.
Harlow forfeited a small smile as he shook his head, looking at Asher who regularly indulged in using Harlow’s own words against him.
“Besides, it’s not like we’re doing anything bad. There isn’t even any sentient life in the Centauri system. You and the sustainability people checked it out and if there were, we would have picked another star. We’re just taking what we need. New galaxies will be born and new stars within them,” Asher added.
Harlow nodded and looked up at the night sky, then back down to Asher. “Here you take this, and I’ll take that,” Harlow gestured to the cigar as he held out the Genesis Originator Device. Asher looked confused, but handed Harlow the cigar anyway.
Harlow puffed on the cigar while still holding out the remote. “Take it,” he said while nodding.
“Are you sure?” Asher asked.
“Yeah. It was your idea. You should be the one to press it.”
Asher took the remote from Harlow. It seemed such a simple thing. Strange actually that such a simple small little thing could hold so much importance. And yet it did. Knowing this, Asher felt a profound mixture of wonder, and outright fear.
Harlow smiled at him. “Whenever you’re ready.”
Asher uncapped the safety switch housing exposing the trigger to the Genesis Device, and then he looked up to Harlow. “Ready?” Asher asked.
Harlow turned from Asher and looked up to the sky once more.
“No, but let’s do it anyway,” he said staring into the stars.
Asher blinked, then turned and stared at the sky. He pressed the button, and within an instant, the night was a little darker. Asher couldn’t help but wonder, if it took burning a whole star system to keep humans alive now, and if humanity kept expanding, what would it take for man to keep everything alive forever? Then Asher could not help but ponder aloud.
“How do we begin again?” Asher asked mostly to himself.
Harlow said nothing, simply staring at a dark spot in the night sky.
Fortunately for the survival of Asher’s morality, he did not know of anything that cared to continue existing around the star that was just erased. Harlow, on the other hand, was not so lucky. And as he looked away from the darkened sky to Asher, for a moment, everything stood still.
E3nguL7f sat at the deck of the directional bay of his ship, and felt extremely proud despite his present occupation, to be one of the very few humans left outside of perma-storage, even if it was only temporary. A few families like his, if there were any left, were tasked with absorbing the last bastions of energy hiding in the backwaters of the cosmos, and they were very good at the job.
Due to star conservation, humans were no longer afforded the opportunity to reproduce, save the extremely rare gift for service to humanity such as was E3nguL7f’s current opportunity. Almost everyone else had long ago been placed in a state of unending care by a quantum, multi-state computer called General Operator Dynamic. It tended to their every need physically or mentally and would do so indefinitely.
“Operator, I want to play a game before the Alpha jump is over,” E3nguL7f said aloud, but without needing to.
“What game?” Operator asked the sonic replicator in E3nguL7f’s brain.
E3nguL7f thought briefly. “The oldest you know of.”
“The oldest known for the species of man?”
“Yes,” E3nguL7f thought back.
“The oldest game thought to exist, created by man is called tic tac toe. Would you like to learn?”
“Yes,” E3nguL7f thought. And as soon as his mind confirmed the decision, the knowledge was instantly transmitted into him.
“It seems too simple, Operator. Man created this game?” E3nguL7f asked in disbelief.
“Yes. It is thought to have come from before the great assimilation.” Operator transmitted.
“A game older than time itself. Interesting. Manifest it visually and let’s play.”
Operator displayed a childlike grid before E3nguL7f on the optical doors of the directional bay as he sat. He blinked, and in a manner too fast for the original eyes or brain of man to even comprehend, played many hundreds of thousands of games before he needed to blink again. All of them ended in a tie.
“I don’t understand, Operator. Why would anyone play this game? There’s no way to win,” E3nguL7f said.
“It is more probable that one would choose to lose.”
“What’s the point in that?” E3nguL7f asked.
“So that someone wins,” Operator offered.
E3nguL7f explored this thought for longer than he had any other in quite some time. He turned from the tied tic tac toe grid to gaze upon his wife B8ro0o0kE3, who had fallen asleep while tending to their children. He dutifully watched over his son and daughter, some of the last to ever be produced, sleeping soundly as they came upon the next galaxy in queue for absorption.
It was E3nguL7f’s habit, though still he did not entirely know why, to open the optical doors in the directional bay upon arrival at a new galaxy. He pondered slightly before opening them if it was because the glow of a trillion suns, prior to absorption, ended what seemed like a permanent midnight aboard their ship. It was something his eyes never seemed to get completely used to, or tired of. And, as on all other occasions, doing so woke up his wife and children.
At the time, B8ro0o0kE3 was dreaming about picking fruit from a great tree before plummeting through tendrils of its branches and into the blackness of space. Her fall was interrupted by the light of an entire galaxy dissolving away as she awoke in the directional bay.
As she rose, she rubbed at her weakened eyes then picked up their son, who was more awake than his sister and already crying for a better view of the light. She obliged him, and brought him to E3nguL7f to sit on his lap, as she went back to make breakfast.
“Do you want to help with daddy’s job today?” E3nguL7f asked his son who was probably too young to speak yet, but never too young to learn.
B8ro0o0kE3 started to meta-hydrate a meal, and the smell of S2haL7E3’s favorite carbon composite woke her up enough to watch her father work. She was only thirteen, but like all created humans allowed to exist at this point, she was heavily designed, and in doing so was extremely intelligent for her age.
“Morning dad,” S2haL7E3 said groggily as she sat next to him in the other viewing seat. “That’s a small galaxy. It’ll barely power another million years of perma-storage, why do they even care about these little places?”
Being intelligent did not stop her from being a teenager, but fortunately for E3nguL7f, his patience was also designed for extreme resistance. “And in that million years we might find more hidden galaxies or a whole new energy source. So we need them all. Even the little ones,” he explained.
“When will we get to go to the home core? I want to be in perma-storage like everyone else. I’m tired of being special.”
“If it wasn’t for these little galaxies you wouldn’t exist. Let alone be special, or see the universe.”
“We don’t get to see anything, we appear here, you press a button and we move on to the next one,” S2haL7E3 complained.
“We don’t just press a button. First, all sentients are cleared by General Operator Dynamic before we even appear here.”
S2haL7E3 rolled her eyes in disbelief. E3nguL7f bounced his son on his lap and spoke more to him than his daughter.
“When we press the button, we release a black hole in the center of a galaxy which compresses everything into a tiny transportable white hole precipice that we can bring back to the Operator. Then we leave,” E3nguL7f told his daughter before turning back to his son.
“If it wasn’t for us, there wouldn’t be a perma-storage to go back to,” he explained calmly.
“Fine, it’s not like we have a choice anyway. Just press the button so we can get this over with,” S2haL7E3 said as she got up and went to eat breakfast.
“We always have a choice!” E3nguL7f retorted to deaf ears. “Your sister has a lot of growing up to do. Yes she does. Can you say teenager? No. Okay. Do you want to learn about daddy’s job?”
E3nguL7f shakes his son in forced affirmation. “Good. I thought so. Let’s have Operator tell us some interesting things. What do you think?”
E3nguL7f’s son did not respond, but that did not keep him from his impending education. “Operator?” E3nguL7f asked in thought.
“Yes sir?” Operator replied.
“What happens when I press the button?” E3nguL7f asked.
“Within nanoseconds the payload delivered reaches a horizon critical state and all of the galaxy within its reach is compressed into-“ Operator explained before being cut off.
“No,” E3nguL7f looked to his family longingly and then back to the galaxy before him. “I mean for the sentients left on a planet down there. What will it be like?”
For a time it seemed as though Operator paused before answering, which had never happened before. But it probably only seemed that way to E3nguL7f who was always too eager to know more about everything.
“Termination from an original human understanding of time would be virtually immediate depending upon where in the galaxy the planet was. But assuming what is thought to be man’s primary perspective along the outer edge of a galactic arm, once detonated, the appearance would initially bend all rays of light into a shade of blue for the merest instant before delivering the most brilliant sunrise anyone would ever see.”
“Is this the only way?” E3nguL7f asked Operator.
“No. Only yours,” Operator simplified.
“For my family then,” E3nguL7f said, strengthening his rationalization before letting his curiosity get the better of him.
“What will come of them in the end? Will it all just burn out?” he asked.
“This is a remaining permutation yet to be revealed,” Operator told him.
“What answers were found in the great assimilation on this matter?”
Operator transmitted a torrential information flood containing every known form of art, literature, and philosophy from every sentient being ever culled in all the universe directly through E3nguL7f until he had seen enough.
“And what from the ones who created tic tac toe?”
“Everything that has a beginning has an end. And from every end there is a new beginning,” Operator replied.
“Fascinating. Truly fascinating. Thank you Operator,” E3nguL7f said as he looked down to his boy. “Do you want to press the button for daddy?” he asked his son who was trying to grab at the galaxy beyond the optical doors. “Here, press the button for me.” E3nguL7f pushed his son’s hand down on the button and within an instant the night was a little darker.
“Light,” the boy said to E3nguL7f’s utter astonishment. Overwhelmed with excitement at his first word, E3nguL7f grabbed his son as though he were a trophy and displayed him over his head as he ran to tell his wife.
S2haL7E3 came to the seats before the optical door and watched the last remnants of the tiny galaxy get crushed into a white hole precipice and brought into their ship. As the simplicity of it overtook her, she could not help but wonder. If it took an entire galaxy to keep all of humanity alive now, and there were so very few galaxies left, what could Operator possibly need next to keep everyone alive forever? Then as she turned to see her mother and father doting on her brother, she could not help but wonder aloud.
“How do we begin again?”
Possibly in an effort to escape the praise that had replaced breakfast, S2haL7E3 capitalized on her parents’ lack of attention, went to the back of the cabin and walked through a door forbidden to anyone but her father. S2haL7E3 turned around on the other side of the door, and stretching out before her in all directions was a galactic mass of humans, all in perma-storage. It was only then that S2haL7E3 realized she was living in the home core all along. There was simply nowhere to go back to. They were at the center of all humanity. Suddenly the epic loneliness of this thought brought S2haL7E3 great sorrow, and as she looked out upon all of mankind, for a moment, everything stood still.
Lo-Ky-Neyo and everyone else, for that matter, were long ago committed to astralstate; which was a kind of digitized existence between matter and energy where an entity no longer needed to have physical form in order to participate in life. Distant in the past was the time in which man, if he could still be considered as much without tangibility, had the need for sleep to restore himself. But despite no longer needing to sleep, inexplicably, man did still need to dream. And Lo-Ky-Neyo was deep within one as his digital essence, normally controlled by Guardian Omni- Dimensional, which was permanently and perfectly melded to the existence of every entity, found him as he roamed languidly around the vast emptiness of the darkened universe.
Dreams advanced geometrically in concert with man’s reach. And in his, Lo-Ky-Neyo was descending rapidly as a form of consciously terminable energy. He did so bearing a bundled diminishing light, through tendrils and a white molecular mist, as he approached a solidified mass, in what could only be described as a fall. Just before contact Lo-Ky-Neyo was awakened, at least as awakened as an entity that never slept could be, and as he arose directly from dream to consciousness he found himself deeper into the abyssal darkness of the universe than he had ever been before.
It was his design to do so because he wanted for at least one dream in his existence, to be alone. Lo-Ky-Neyo was special in his ability to be alone, as no other entity, as far as he was aware, had the capacity to separate themselves completely from the hive mind that had become man’s entity core, symbiotic with Guardian Omni-Dimensional. Lo-Ky-Neyo was designed with this ability because he was specifically created as a bastion for mankind’s only remaining purpose. Accompanied by Omni, he represented and was on the edge of achieving the staving off of mankind’s energy extinction, one more time.
“Omni?” Lo-Ky-Neyo thought.
“Yes?” Omni responded in thought immediately and without the need for the question of presence, but that did not stop Lo-Ky-Neyo from doing so. In part he liked to hear the echo, but mostly he chose to distinguish himself from all other entities that were more intimately and inextricably connected with Omni.
“You found me,” Lo-Ky-Neyo said without surprise.
“Of course.”
Lo-Ky-Neyo though briefly about his dream. It was inexplicable to him, as the meaning of all dreams still were to man. And this ignorance offered him hope that somehow, somewhere, there still was -- hope.
“Is this the only way?” Lo-Ky-Neyo asked already knowing the answer.
“It is the only method. Not the only option.” Omni projected.
“What is the other option?” Lo-Ky-Neyo asked.
“To die.”
“That’s not an option,” Lo-Ky-Neyo snapped back in thought.
“Yes. Accordingly, all of your kind have agreed. But nonetheless as the energy of this dimension diminishes, a perfectly logical solution is self-termination.”
“Omni, being who I am, you must know I’m allowed to think freely of you. You must also know that I’d terminate you long before anyone else.”
“I agree you have been given the power to think freely of me. But you are not the only one with that power. And to terminate me is to terminate everyone else. We are one,” Omni calculated.
For the first time since before time, Lo-Ky-Neyo did not already know the answer to his next question, but somehow, he did know the answer he’d receive.
“Who else has the abilities that I do?”
“I’m not permitted to provide you with that information,” Omni directed.
“There can be only one purpose for that. I’m being given the choice to destroy everything I know, or everything I don’t.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why am I being given a choice?” Lo-Ky-Neyo asked again not knowing the answer.
“It is the only method. You must choose,” Omni delivered.
“What is it like? When I pull the dimension, what will the entities feel?”
“For an entity bearing a dissimilar notion of space and time than you, one with a body and definitive lifespan not unlike the original version of man, death would be as if instantaneous. When the final coalescence commences and this dimension joins with all others being absorbed, it will stun light and time itself into what would feel for a moment, like everything stood still. Then it will all be over.”
“Omni?” Lo-Ky-Neyo asked.
“Yes?”
“Now that you’ve found me, what will happen if I decide not to pull it?”
“If you do not pull the dimension, I will sublimate your astral-existence and simply demand it from another entity,” Omni calibrated.
“And if I do pull it?” Lo-Ky-Neyo asked already knowing this answer, too.
“I will sublimate you anyway, but the rest of your kind will be allowed to continue existing for as long as I deem possible.”
“Omni you admitted there are others like me that can separate themselves from you. Even if you sublimate me, you’ll never find and destroy us all.”
“I have found you. I will find the others.”
“Omni, everything that has a beginning has an end. And from every end there is a new beginning. For me, and even for you,” Lo-Ky-Neyo said in defeat.
“When you sublimate me, what will it feel like?” Lo-Ky-Neyo asked quizzically still afraid of the answer, even so close to the end.
“The feedback from other entities is without question. It will feel like being burned.”
The nature of Lo-Ky-Neyo’s usually separated existence from the power of Omni forced him to regret that he woke up from his dream at all. Even if he was falling.
“How do we begin again?”
Omni did not answer. And so Lo-Ky-Neyo waited and thought until the end of the power allotted to him. With it he wondered, if Omni required sacrificing all dimensions and even himself to keep man alive now, what would be needed to exist forever? Finally after realizing that submission to sublimation was preferable to separation, he pulled the dimensions.
As they coalesced, Lo-Ky-Neyo’s purpose was complete, rendering his entity’s individuality a waste of energy. And as he was sublimated, Lo-Ky-Neyo understood that being an entity with no true sense of time made burning to death truly feel like an eternity.
All of mankind’s essences had entwined themselves at a quantum level not only with each other, but with the wisdom of all existence. No longer separate beings, or even matter, man had encoded himself as an imprint on the very nature of energy itself.
Somewhere between real and unreal, he was one with everything, infinite, and yet infinitesimal. Fusing with existence man had become Giver Of Destiny.
Nothing exists besides man, and tendrils of consciousness extending throughout space and even time. They sprawl from the roots of every galaxy, to the top branches of every dimension, connected to a great trunk that powers all of existence. They are inseparably luminous and eternal. But mankind, in the apex of creativity, has found a way to burn them. And in burning everything man might as a singularity, truly be forever, and forever alone.
Deliberating the quandary of doing so in a vacuum had forced man to grow quite accustomed to talking with himself.
“I can’t believe this is the end of the end,” I said.
“It isn’t. It isn’t even the end of the beginning,” I said back.
“Only if the beginning is alone in nothingness forever.”
“Hasn’t the beginning always been nothingness?” I returned.
“Perhaps. But at the cost of all that ever was?” I asked myself.
“Perhaps that always was the cost?”
Man pondered this deeply and finally determined after all was combined and calculated that to be eternal would require the burning of everything that ever was.
“Will I get the best light from the last fire?” I asked.
“There’s only one way to find out.”
No longer having feelings, man resorted to culling the philosophy of all entities whose tendrils had ever powered existence, finding only questions that had no solutions, and solving them with broken equations at the end of time.
“How do we begin again?” I asked.
“Everything that has a beginning has an end. And from every end there is a new beginning,” I explained to man as the culmination of philosophical eloquence in the absence of sufficient math.
“What would it feel like to die?” I asked myself.
For a moment, I thought back to what was known about the original, simplistic form of man, tangible and ephemeral enough to be brought back from death and tell about it.
“It feels like falling,” I explained.
“Do I have a choice?”
“There is always choice,” I replied.
“Between death and nothingness forever?”
“Yes.”
“Then I have decided.” I said finally.
For the first time since before time, man vanished deep into a dream. Having long ago become Giver Of Destiny, the dream didn’t just seem real. It was. Man separated himself from being one with energy, and with every tendril of the great tree until reaching its apex. Finally, upon looking down at the consciousness of all existence, man chose to fall.
The moment after everything stood still Azar turned away from the slightly blue shaded morning of the most brilliant rise of Giver he’d ever see, and walked back towards his father.
Seok awoke to see before him man’s last enemy cut to pieces. He pretended to sleep as he watched Azar genuflect upon the threshold of a fire mound and smash the stone from his spear against another that exploded in sparks until a new fire was born. Finally, Azar placed a piece of the wall of tomorrow onto the new fire and threatening all he believed, Seok watched his son burn rock.
As the new family fire grew hotter than any ever had before, Seok closed his eyes, knowing his son had become a man. He curled up under his skin-furs and went to sleep. He slept deeply, and dreamt. And at the end of his dream, he did not fall.
Azar watched his father sleep peacefully, grabbed a torch made from the wall of tomorrow, and journeyed to the back of the cave to paint.