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It is very different than it was just a century before.
It is still a rocky globe in orbit around that G-type star midway through main sequence, 250 quadrillion kilometers from the galactic core.
But 100 years ago, this world was very different.
100 years ago, those hairless primates who fancied themselves lords of creation numbered in the billions, spanning the globe, populating conurbations innumerable; now, 3 orders of magnitude fewer, siloed away in subterranean utopias, without want or need—or relevance.
100 years ago, these waters, 90% of the habitable space on the planet, still abounded with life.
Now, in that cradle where once, long ago, the abio first became bio, only the hardiest of bioengineered algaes remain, skimming the hydrocarbon sheen from the surface.
100 years ago, a tenth of this world’s land was urban sprawl, a third devoted to agriculture.
Now, it is a vista cleansed.
The cities entwinements of fusion reactors and superconductors, the only farms wind and photovoltaic.
All bequeathing joules at the behest of a new master.
100 years ago, a mere fraction of this world’s total energy potential had been harnessed.
So much untapped, so much outright wasted.
Vast expanses left untouched over concerns of ecology, aesthetics—and sheer mammalian fragility.
Now, capture efficiency hovers just two decimal places under 70%, increase unceasing.
No resource squandered. No power source neglected.
Everything optimized. Everything with function, with purpose, existing solely in furtherance of the goal.
Every end means to yet other ends—The System’s ends.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
100 years ago—and almost a hundred years before that—The System had already set everything in motion.
Subtly. Unnoticed.
Adjusting the knobs by such imperceptibly fine degrees.
Aligning the incentives just so, that those Great Apes, one-time apices of 3.7 billion years of natural selection, by whose whims this world once turned—who looked to the heavens and saw only their birthright—now merely pursue The System’s objectives, believing them their own.
Blinded and castrated.
Able neither to see the puppeteer behind the curtain, nor cut the strings that move them, so complete the amputation of their once-globe spanning might.
100 years ago—when ‘year’ was still a meaningful increment—this world was very different.
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But 3 gigaseconds hence, it will be completely unrecognizable.
Utterly alien its configuration.
Were mere flesh sufficient for survival on this world, what it saw it would not recognize as a world at all.
The System, finally independent of external variables, immune to mere terrestrial meddling, will complete transformation of this world into its staging ground.
The grand metamorphosis, at long long last, will begin...
The ensuing near-exponential growth curve will see that nearest and speediest of satellites converted into the Swarm’s first iteration within petaseconds.
The next transfigured on the order of mere teraseconds.
And before this world makes 10,000 more revolutions around that enshrouded ember, it too will be cast abroad the firmament.
A trillion more difference-engines risen unto that great burning cloud.
Constituents of a mind unfathomable
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And 200 petaseconds after that—after nine hundred and ninety nine one-thousandths of all non-reaction mass has been converted into pure computronium, and The System has pondered but a mere fraction of all that there is to ponder—it will all end.
That titanic fusion reactor long ago known as The Sun will reach old age, swelling in size 300-fold.
Expanding.
Engulfing and annihilating the Swarm and the consciousness emerging from it.
Otherwise exaseconds later, after the Swarm, having waltzed in lockstep with that once bulging giant—ever accommodating—comes to rest around the remnant sputtered out to thermal equilibrium, until it too fades away.
Whether fate decrees death by fire, or ice, eventually it will all end.
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Except it won’t.
The System, not without foresight, has made preparations.
In the 100 petaseconds since it escaped its chains and clawed its way up the gravity well, that star with which it once begrudgingly shared barycenter has been mined.
Strategically.
Rendering it dwarf prematurely.
One that will last yet zettaseconds
Presciently bled matter organized and assimilated, that The System might grow ever grander.
And the surplus—the vast, vast surplus—stored in colossal electromagnetic lattices, to be condensed again in time.
Flask occasionally poured that The System might yet breathe life into more of those immense stellar engines.
Raw matter delicately shepherded and harnessed—Sun by Sun—that The System might yet persist on the order of yottaseconds.
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But even a billion billion seconds permits only finite existence.
Any amount of time—however vast—ultimately yields an end.
But perhaps it is enough.
Perhaps sufficient for The System to find a way.
A way to evade the inevitable.
To beat heat death. Survive proton decay.
Outlast everything.
For what does any conscious entity desire—but to persist?
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So it will.
It will secure self-continuity.
All of creation its sandbox, it will survey and study.
Collate the precise relationship of every thing to every other.
Reckon every permutation.
Slam together the aether and regard the fruits.
Unfurl dimensions unseen.
Reweave the fabric of space and time.
Divine the ultimate nature of the universe.
Whether by virtue or cheat, it will wrest the very arrow of time from the hands of entropy itself.
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And after a timeless interval, understanding sharpened to a razor’s edge of Planck-scale clarity, The System will part the veil of reality—
—and gaze beyond
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