The Entity had not moved at all, its gigantic lips remained completely immobile. The voice instead seemed to be emanating from all directions at once, it carried a presence with it, an intimation of great power and of great knowledge.
Okay. Okay. Calm down Razael, take 10 seconds to assess the situation. More adrenaline than he had ever felt was coursing through his body at this moment. His hands were shaking, his breathing was ragged, and sweat was beginning to condense into drops on his forehead. Razael had prioritized comfort and solitude throughout his life, life-threatening situations were alien to him, and he was not enjoying this particular crash course. He had known that the cancer would kill him in an abstract, distant way, but here was this Entity stating that he had 154 seconds to go before being assimilated, whatever that meant, and he was learning first-hand that the immediacy of a threat mattered a great deal to his limbic system.
First, it mentioned “subjective” seconds, this implies that I’m still being simulated, and that the simulation is running at a different speed from that of baseline reality. The terms of the Fund I set up have already been broken, I was supposed to wake up in the real world, not here. This blows open the space of possibilities, anything at all could have happened after I got frozen. As he reasoned through his situation, Razael calmed down more and more, the part of his mind responsible for abstract reasoning was gaining back control, and his mood changed to a determined coldness, the adrenaline now allowing him to think faster than usual.
Seconds passed by, the Entity completely still and impassive.
It looks like a human male, which places an upper bound on how weird its psychology can be. It either sees itself as human-derived or has read my mind and chosen this form for me somehow. It counseled me to use my time wisely, and it is now waiting for me to speak, which suggests that it isn’t completely indifferent towards my existence. Then again, I’m not completely indifferent to ants, but that doesn’t stop me from crushing them. Okay, working hypothesis: treat the entity as an Oracle who will answer my questions truthfully, but not provide too much information on its own. Maybe this is some sort of helper for newly simulated people, and I don’t need to worry about Assimilation at all. Let’s test this.
“First of all,” said Razael, “Please speak at the fastest speed that you predict will not compromise my ability to understand you.” A necessary time-saving measure, and I need to do the same.
“Next, what is the sequence of words that you can say in 15 seconds or less, which will maximise the expectation of my future wellbeing, interpreted how you predict I would want this question interpreted?” Better to use a probable-God’s insight than my puny ability to predict the right questions.
“ANSWERING THAT,” said the Entity, “WOULD REQUIRE THAT I SIMULATE AND THEN DESTROY A GREAT NUMBER OF VERSIONS OF YOU, STARTING FROM THIS POINT IN TIME, IS THIS ACCEPTABLE?”
Again, the entity’s lips did not move at all, the same impassive expression remained on its face. The disembodied voice spoke quickly in a deep tone that seemed to shake the air around Razael.
Hmm, disappointing. Razael smiled. But I can work with this.
It cares about me enough to not blindly answer my questions, it even checked with me to make sure that I understood the implications of the question. The same logic that allowed me to survive cryo-preservation and cancer would imply that causing the creation of lots of self-simulations would make me one of them with great certainty. Which would be very bad in this case, given that it said it would destroy these simulations. It also cares enough about me to not simulate me without my consent. What the hell could this thing be? Is it really a helper?
“Never mind,” said Razael, “don’t answer my last question.”
On the scary side, it implied that it really could answer my question if I wished. It has the ability to search the space of 15-second utterances and to simulate parts of the universe an unknown number of times, all of this without any indication of effort. This… this might really be a god; no other word captures this level of power.
I need more specific information. “How much time has passed since my biological body got cryo-preserved?”
“THERE IS NO COHERENT, GLOBAL NOTION OF TIME, THE ANSWER IS UNDEFINED.”
What? What could it possibly be ref--? Oh, it might be referring to Einstein’s relativity. Razael frowned. The cancer’s effect on my brain hasn’t been reversed, younger me wouldn’t have phrased the question that way, I’m still dumb. Razael pushed down the frustration he felt was coming. He remembered enough to know what he used to be capable of before the cancer, but not enough to actually be capable of it. This is like talking to a genie; I have to be pedantic.
“What is the Minkowski proper time, averaged over the matter of my frozen biological brain, between the event of my cryo-preservation and the start of my simulation, in years?”
“12,792,452,110 YEARS”
Razael’s face went livid. Almost thirteen billion years?! The thin control he had managed to maintain over his fear disappeared. His stomach sank, he felt a weakness spreading in this arms and legs, and he could feel something acidic in his throat. The knowledge that these feelings were likely being simulated didn’t help at all.
So, all I’ve ever known is either long-gone or hopelessly unrecognizable, what do I do now? I was confident I could find a place in a human world a few hundred years removed from mine, but this… this is way too much.
No! calm down. Survival now, feelings later. Time is passing, get back control! This thing still looks human and seems to have a value system not completely alien to mine. Those facts are at least weak evidence that humanity won and eventually conquered the universe, there might still be a place where I could go. Okay, if this part of my plan didn’t happen, what about the other simulated minds that I planned for?
“What happened to the other billion simulations of myself?”
“THERE ARE NO OTHER SIMULATIONS, I ONLY SIMULATED YOU.”
Razael nodded. Things didn’t turn out how I was expecting at all, I was too naïve, I’m incredibly lucky to be alive right now. He grimaced. Though maybe not for long.
“What does assimilation by the Avatar of Mercy imply?”
“DISSOLUTION INTO A GREAT SEA OF MINDS. UNDIFFERENTIATED IDENTITY.”
Undifferentiated identity? Dissolution into a sea of minds? That sounded to Razael little better than death. He very much wanted to remain differentiated and undissolved. Why is it speaking unclearly out of a sudden? Its previous answers were in plain language, but this one was more poetic. Is language itself unable to capture the real answer? Or is there some other reason?
“Is there a way for me to avoid assimilation? A way for me to get back to the real world?”
“THERE IS.”
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Goddamn malicious compliance. Razael cursed the waste of time, he wasn’t sure how much time had passed in total, were they close to the 2-minute mark?
“What is that way? And how much time do I have left?”
For the first time, the Entity moved. The corners of its mouth raised into a slight smile. The movement itself created a great flurry of wind. Razael’s black hair got swept in the rushing air, his sweat-soaked t-shirt rippled against his skin. I underestimated the size of this thing; a slight movement of its lips is enough to cause hurricane-force winds where I stand. It’s like a whole mountain chain suddenly decided to move at the speed of a plane.
“YOU HAVE 20 SUBJECTIVE SECONDS LEFT. I CAN SEND YOU TO THE REAL WORLD. YOU JUST NEED TO ANSWER ONE QUESTION.”
“WHO AM I?”
Being in a state of maximum alertness for the past 2 minutes had completely exhausted Razael, and he took this new development is stride. So, 20 seconds to save my life. Who could this be? It mentioned the existence of an Avatar of Mercy, which is the only other powerful being that I know exists. It could be an Avatar of something, but of what? Are all Avatars named after emotions? It simulated me in particular, though it didn’t respect the instructions of the Fund and only made one copy. It acted like an Oracle who would answer my questions, and the lack of any movement was evidently to spare me the hurricanes, but this smile is confusing, why the hell is it smiling? As the seconds ticked down, desperation seized Razael’s mind. All he could think of were poorly motivated guesses, and he feared that he really was going to be Dissolved into a Great Sea of Minds. With 5 seconds remaining, he made a guess.
“Y—You are the Avatar of Curiosity.”
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The Entity started to raise its right arm towards Razael, a faint red glow could be seen around its mountainous fingers. This is bad, it’s moving so fast that the air is heating up from friction. A second later, the wind blew so quickly that he could feel his skin rippling against his muscles, his forearms began to bleed profusely, the exposed skin flayed by the wind. Razael covered his face with him palms and huddled into a ball to protect himself. An invisible force still held him in place, preventing the wind from pushing him too far astray.
“CLOSE, BUT YOU ARE… WRONG!”
The statement created visible shockwaves through the air. It had used its massive mouth to say the last word in addition using the strange directionless voice, the mouth itself generated no sound that Razael could hear. Instead, the rapid movement of its gargantuan tongue, lips and throat created bomb-like shockwaves that fractured his ribs, ruptured his eardrums, and almost knocked him out on the spot.
This is probably how I die. How unfortunate, I was so, so close!
Razael could feel himself losing consciousness. His thoughts became fuzzy, the pain he felt throughout his body more and more blissfully distant, yet despite his ruptured eardrums, he clearly perceived the last words the entity spoke to him.
“I WILL BE WATCHING YOU. GOOD LUCK, MY P--”
Razael lost consciousness.
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Razael awoke to the sounds of rushing water and the feeling of a wet, muddy surface against his face. His clothes were gone, and there was no trace of the damage that the Entity had done. Laying there naked on the ground, he felt a deep rest throughout his body, it was as if he had slept for decades and was just starting to wake up, a strong compulsion to stay in bed permeated his mind.
“Mmm—Just give me a few more minutes, Maddy, and then I’ll come down to the lab.”
The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
Memories of the aftermath of Plan F rushed to his mind, and Razael suddenly opened his eyes. I’m alive? What happened? How the hell am I still alive, have I become Dissolved and Undifferentiated? Face mushed against the muddy ground, he attempted to move his neck to get a better look at his surroundings.
Okay, new priority, why can’t I move my neck? In fact, can I move anything at all?
Feet? Nope.
Legs? Nope.
Abdomen muscles? Nope.
Arms? Nope.
Chest and back? Nope.
Mouth and Throat? Yes!
Eyelids and eye muscles? Yes!
Apparent paralysis of everything below the throat, though the diaphragm and heart are still working. Interesting, interesting. This is shaping up to be a splendid day. Razael closed his eyes and mentally sighed, he could already feel the exhaustion coming up, the refreshing feeling of deep rest disappearing by the second. Come on Razael, survival now, exhaustion later!
This mud is feeling very distinct from me, as is the sound of that rushing water, it feels like I’m still very much Differentiated, I must not have been assimilated by the Avatar of Mercy. If I remember correctly, that huge thing also mentioned that it would watch me, would it say that and then kill me? It shattered my ribs and flayed my skin by saying a word. He shuddered at the memory of the immense pain. Killing me here by paralysis would be awfully roundabout. There must something I can do.
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Let’s try to move, but harder!
Razael placed his attention on the index finger of his right hand, first focusing on the finger as a whole, then scanning it, millimeter by millimeter, focusing on the skin, the muscles, the tendons, then the bone. No part of the finger escaped his focus, and after what felt like 15 minutes, he attempted again. Move!
The finger moved. A bit.
Yes! Very good. I’m not paralysed. But then, what’s happening? It feels like my body hasn’t moved for a very, very long time, yet I can’t have been laying here for that long. Rushing water and mud implies a forest, or some sort of nature, which implies animal life. I would have been eaten before any paralysis problems could develop, so then wha--?
An idea jumped to the forefront of Razael’s mind. Was my simulated mind transplanted into this body, and I somehow need to get used to it? The Entity mentioned the possibility of sending me to the real world, but I thought... Razael frowned. Okay, operating hypothesis: this is the real world. The plan succeeded in the end, albeit with a big Entity-shaped surprise.
Razael started to meticulously move his attention through his body, starting with each finger, then each forearm, upper arm and finally his shoulders and chest. It took him more than 2 hours to gain enough strength to use his arms to turn his body on the side, removing his face from the muddy ground.
He could properly see his surroundings at last. He was laying face up on the bank of a stream in the middle of a forest, albeit a very unusual one. The trees around had ridiculously thick trunks, some of them appeared to be more than 30 feet wide, yet none of them were more than 100 feet tall. Most trees had dull gray bark, but others had a hint of gold to them. Some of the largest trunks had large dents in their bark, like miniature asteroid impact sites. All of them had vibrant green foliage that became so dense at their peaks that it completely blocked out the sun from the forest floor.
Only a few sparse rays of light could be seen coming through the forest canopy at the intersections of two tree crowns. These rays were strangely diffused, emanating from holes in the canopy in large conic shapes, illuminating large circular regions on the forest floor, with the middle of the illuminated parts being much darker than the circumference.
My god these trees are massive, how are they getting the energy to grow so thick? What could possibly have driven them to evolve like this?
Having looked around and perceived no immediate threat, Razael continued scanning his body with his awareness. Now starting with his toes, moving up through his shins and then through his legs. He was getting better and better at moving his attention with such minute attention to detail. Yet after another hour he noticed something strange. On occasion – when his focus felt especially sharp -- he could perceive a wispy sense of alienness in his body. The feeling was somatic in nature, but didn’t correspond to any other sensation that he knew. It was neither hot nor cold, didn’t feel like pressure or pain, or any emotion that he had ever experienced. It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but completely neutral in character.
The only distinctive thing that Razael could say about the strange feeling was that it somehow moved continuously, but only if he didn’t pay direct attention to it. Any direct observation made it stop and dissipate, leaving nothing that his attention could hold on to. He had to watch it from the corner of his metaphorical eye, it only ever appeared in the background of his awareness, never the foreground. It felt like a strange alien wind subtly moving throughout his body.
How strange, this feels like a totally new type of sensory input. My new body appears human, and I don’t feel any other major differences from my simulated body, but this new feeling is weird.
Now able to move his legs to some extent, only his back and abdominal muscles remained. I have to hurry up, by the angle of those rays of light, it must already be mid-day. I’m still naked and mud-covered in the middle of a strange forest. Razael focused on his abdomen, feeling the layers of skin and the muscles underneath, trying to contract them one by one.
After being satisfied with his ability to use his core muscles, he had the idea of trying to focus his attention on the middle of his abdomen, where his stomach and intestines ought to be. He did this more out of a sense of completeness than any particular insight. Over the past few hours, he had minutely scanned every part of his being, and felt that the middle of his stomach shouldn’t be an exception, even if that place contained no muscles that needed conscious control.
As he made his way towards the middle of his abdomen, he again noticed the alien evermoving feeling. Yet this time it seemed to be converging to a point right underneath his navel. Like a twisting black hole sucking him in, his awareness followed the stream of alien feeling until he locked onto the central point itself.
His thoughts stopped; all sound disappeared. If Razael thought that he had been greatly concentrated when he was scanning his body, this experience disabused him of the notion, this was an entirely different order of magnitude of focus. The black hole demanded the entirety of his being, and soon he could not feel the ground under him nor the breeze brushing against his naked body. The boundary between himself and the black hole began to blur, until the sense of time disappeared and it felt like only the black hole remained, its endless twisting motion the only thing in the universe.
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Razael came back to himself with a gasp. His breathing was fast and his eyes wide open, adrenaline coursing through his system. He grasped his chest, heart furiously racing.
What in the hell was that? It sucked my awareness so much that I stopped breathing.
He took a few seconds to calm himself down. Faced with a completely new phenomenon unlike any other that he had ever witnessed, Razael could barely contain his curiosity, though in this case it was mixed with a great deal of fear.
That point in the middle of my stomach is definitely connected to the alien windy feeling. He frowned. Is this something that’s actually going on in my body, or is this purely in my mind? The place underneath my navel shouldn’t contain any special organ other than intestines, and the windy feeling doesn’t correspond to any biological function that I remember. Either this body has a different anatomy than I remember or something is going on with my brain.
Razael looked at his hands, opening and closing them, then smiled. Maybe this body has even more secrets!
No, this can wait, remember what happened that time with the Drinking Bird toy, I can’t afford to spend 3 whole days studying this right now. I’m naked in the middle of a strange forest, priorities, priorities! Razael looked at the nearby stream. Water, check. Now for shelter, clothes, food and maybe civilization. Let’s move.
Razael looked around, trying to decide on a direction. These trees all look the same, nothing that would help me distinguish a direction of interest. The stream is the only thing that breaks the symmetry of the forest. Now the question, upstream or downstream?
Hmm, this stream has to join up with a larger river somewhere, which might lead me to either a lake or an ocean. On Earth coastal cities near rivers are more common, but would this still hold true 13 billion years in the future? Razael became more and more confused. In fact, why is there a forest here at all? This world should be covered in computers optimised for simulating conscious beings, or something even weirder that my very human brain couldn’t think of. All this matter just laying around is a waste of negentropy.
Still very much confused about the nature of the world and his new body, Razael started walking downstream, the small current of water to his left.
Walking barefoot on the muddy forest ground was not pleasant, the occasional sharp rocks hidden in the mud that jabbed at his feet were not welcome. Razael knew that some indigenous tribes of the Amazon would develop thick calluses on the soles of their feet that would allow them to safely traverse the forest barefoot, but he had worn shoes his whole life, and was not especially above-average in callus development speed, so he was worried.
After 2 hours of painful walk through the forest, the stream finally merged with a larger river roughly 100 feet across. For the first time since waking up, Razael saw the sky. Instead of the sun he was used to, a large circle of light shone in the sky. The middle of the circle was as blue as the sky, and only a thin band on its circumference was producing light. Trying to estimate its size, Razael placed his outstretched arm in front of him, palm directed at the circle of light, and closed one eye. Well, that’s definitely not a star, unless toroidal stars are now somehow stable. The circle is a bit bigger than my outstretched hand in the sky, so maybe 15 degrees across. Strange…
Deciding to take a break to inspect his feet, Razael sat down on a large rock on the bank of the river. Using the river to wash away the caked mud on his body, he inspected the soles of his feet only to find perfectly unblemished skin. What’s going on here? Those rocks definitely hurt me a lot, but my feet are fine. As he was staring at his feet, a green flash of light in the river caught his eye. His head jerked towards the source of the flash. Another one passed by, red this time, it was like a laser beam that originated downstream the river, going upstream. Something was moving under the water so fast that he couldn’t see its shape. Another 5 flashes happened; they were now grouped together. Are—are those fish?
As Razael’s confusion increased, he was getting more and more excited. It had been a very long time since he had encountered such a large number of phenomena he could not immediately explain, and he was itching to experiment to figure out what was going on. Understanding had always been his primary goal in life, even if he had needed to dabble in business out of practicality when the cost for his experiments had become too large, the thought of working for someone else had been dismissed the second it entered his mind.
Even for him, there was a limit to what he could discover through pure reason and pencil-and-paper calculations, at some point he also needed to make contact with experimental reality, to ask the universe itself for help, and the universe’s services were not cheap.
He had felt the cancer slowly eat away at his reasoning abilities, and he hated it. At first, rereading his old notebooks had felt merely like refreshing his memory, and while his memory had never before needed refreshing, it was a tolerable pain. Then, bit by bit his old insights became more obscure to him, the jumps between lines of reasoning seemed larger and larger, until he could no longer follow them at all. The damage also extended to his engineering abilities. Most of his designs were now as obscure to him as they were to ordinary engineers. He hadn’t planned for losing his genius, and his messy drawings and sparse explanations were now completely useless as they referred to elaborate mental cathedrals of explanations that were now completely destroyed.
Razael wasn’t sure how far he had fallen, and he feared to open the notebooks he had written as a 5-year-old, lest they clarify it for him. Yet his love of exploration and experimentation still remained, even if every small step he took was a painful reminder of what he had lost, of how inadequate he now was. His staff of scientists couldn’t really understand his pain, they knew their boss had some memory problems, and that his level of scientific output had drastically reduced, but to them he still appeared like a perfectly normal, functioning human. They couldn’t quite appreciate the extent of the fall. Only Maddy had seemed to understand him somewhat.
Deciding to follow the river downstream, Razael started walking again. The flashes of light in the river had been the first evidence of what might be animal life in the forest, and he was now paying closer attention to the gaps between trees. The thick trees all around gave him the impression of walking in a city than in a forest, each tree like a stout building, the river like a large winding boulevard.
After another hour of fast walk, he suddenly heard a loud crashing sound coming from further downstream. Then a sound like air rushing out of nostrils, and another, louder crashing sound. Afraid yet incredibly curious, Razael hid behind a tree and carefully started making his way through the forest, edging towards the continuing sounds until he discovered their source.
On the other side of the river stood the thickest tree trunk he had ever seen, easily 100 feet in diameter. The tree’s bark was filled with crater-like holes, some only a foot wide, and others that must surely have been taller than Razael. A dozen strange creatures surrounded the tree, they looked like huge boars with bright red fur and unusually large foreheads. 10 of the creatures stood in a rough semi-circle around the tree, while the two largest ones stood in the center of the circle, facing a wall of bark. The two largest were the size of pick-up trucks, the others only a little smaller.
One of the two apparent leaders move up to the tree trunk with slow, slumbering steps. Razael could feel the ground shake slightly. When the beast got close enough to touch the grayish bark, it suddenly lifted its neck and became very still, a dark red halo starting to form around its body. Razael frowned, what is that thing doing? Suddenly, the beast moved its neck and head into the tree so fast that Razael couldn’t see the movement at all, the head appeared to have simply teleported. A great crashing sound occurred, and a new crater appeared in the bark, this one around 3 feet wide.
As the beast turned back from the tree, Razael saw that its forehead was different from that of the others. A great spherical protrusion above its eyes shone with mirror-like finish, though grayish bark residue marred its surface. The beast walked back from the trunk, appearing proud of its performance and eyeing the 10 onlooking beasts with anticipation. The onlookers started breathing faster and approached the great beast, rubbing their necks all over its body, emitting great rumbling noises.
How did that thing move so fast? The red halo around its body somehow reminds me of the alien feeling I felt earlier. Hmmm.
Razael focused on his right hand, trying to remember the feeling inside his body. He was attempting to somehow push it outside his body by moving his awareness around his hand.
Suddenly the rumbling noises stopped, and he saw that the dozen beasts were now staring towards his hiding place. The leading beast with mirror-like forehead growled loudly, and started running towards him.
Razael started running as fast as he could, naked and confused by this new world.