Pod 319-37ju-178FT, around celestial body B-pL89, Rung 3.
Blips of harsh white light from a pitch-black background incessantly flickered from left to right across a massive array of screens, bearing down on a spherical vessel no larger than one terrestrial meter in diameter. A small gap in its smooth surface revealed a lens-like structure that never strayed from pointing directly at the screens.
Despite having the ability to view the data internally, after attempting once, she vowed to never forego her "senses" again. While she only spent 14 years in her biological body, which was the age when she passed the cognitive assessment for consciousness transfer (CACT), her reliance on sight integration in her work made her feel intensely human. Maybe it was the slight extra challenge visual intake provided, using up more of her processing power than an inner-consciousness connection. Anything that kept extraneous thoughts at bay was a relief to her.
Inside her head, she made an entry into a file, marking the 613,507th time she'd pondered her use of sight since beginning this job. Then she internally sighed and focused that extra processing power back on her work. As the clock flipped to 0:00, she made a new file. "Maybe I'll break the record today," she thought while widening her lens.
She was responsible for monitoring roughly 100 million individuals in rungs 1 and 2. In these populations, she observed shifts. Although intra-rung population shifts, like deaths and births, were irrelevant, she still found the time to record them, giving her one more distraction from her daily drudgery. Meanwhile, the inter-rung shifts enthralled her. Her desire to travel to rung 2 only grew as she continued her job. At one point, over 300 hundred individuals from her infinitesimally small population of 100 million traveled to rung 1 all at once. That was the busiest day of her life so far, for each time she recorded an inter-rung shift, she had to report to the organizers, giving her a small amount of the human contact that she craved.
Although information could be passed freely between rungs, consciousness could only be transferred from a higher rung to a lower one. While rung 3 had member individuals observing and recording data in both lower rungs, they were stuck in their respective rungs and thus never divulged information about the nature of rungs to each rung's separate civilization.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
If she could guess, this "hands-off" approach promoted by the organizers was likely due to their civilization superiority complex. Although every rung's civilization had the same biology, rung 3's was established eons before those of the other two, creating a vast technological difference. This was a given. When work was light, she would ponder what an inter-communicating network of universes would look like.
While the rung 2 civilization was constantly transferring members to rung 1, they had yet to contact rung 1 inhabitants. Universes aren't small, especially when you don't know what you're looking for.
Eventually, a new rung would form inside of rung 1. The reason for the formation of rungs was unknown, and the origin of her job as an observer. When this new rung formed, rung 1 would become rung 2, rung 2 would become rung 3, and rung 3… well, rung 3 would cease to exist. Although she knew rung 3 had less than 10% of its estimated lifespan remaining, she wasn't scared, at least not of death. She simply wished she had a chance to explore the lower rungs as an active observer rather than a passive one.
Of course, transferring rungs was not a way to avoid fate. Rung 3 natives would fade away no matter where they were, treated like some insignificant derivative of their rung.
"That could be me one day!" She thought for the 4,087,241st time as she watched another white blip grey out on her rung 2 screen and gradually appear on her rung 1 screen. Rejuvenated, she quickly prepared to contact the organizers as she finally moved her spherical body around the pod in a sort of ritual dance she had developed. As she began to initiate a connection with the hub, she froze.
A blip on the rung 1 screen was red.
At that moment, despite her vast processing system and millenniums of experience, her mind went blank.
*Buzz* "Huh?" She subconsciously used her audible system for the first time in a few decades. According to everything she had ever learned, it wasn't even possible for the displays to emit wavelengths of light on the colored spectrum.
As she pondered this, the red blip faded in rung 1. Overwhelmed, she flipped the cover over her lens multiple times to no avail. Then she rebooted her visual system.
When her sight came back online, there was a green blip in rung two.