TRANSMISSION 49
The Edge of Immortality
TRANSMISSION RECEIVED
“The difference between impossible and possible is a lot smaller than we tend to initially think. It takes someone at the peak of their craft to reach through that unknown boundary to determine whether there is anything to grasp onto on the other side, anything that can shift the boundary of “the known” higher upon the mountain we’re all climbing. Each of us has the potential to push those boundaries in unique ways, but the real question becomes whether we can muster the courage within ourselves to give our very best, because that’s the only way to find out. We need more people like that.”
I have a confession. I wrote and sent out the previous transmissions eons ago, a time when I still cared to deliberately piece together the words to capture the meanings I cared about most, a time when this black hole could still be called a galaxy (full of stars and planets). At that time, I radiated the transmissions out into the ether, thinking I already knew my fate and the fate of the universe. But I am not a being of trillions of years (1012) as I was when I wrote those transmissions. No, I am a being whose entity has passed through spacetime (in one form or another) for somewhere on the order of a googol years (10100). It’s hard for me to even comprehend that amount of time. The last other being who died lived for about a trillion years. Through the duration of my time here, I have effectively relived their life one trillion times. And I have relived that another trillion times over. And I have relived that another trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion times over. It’s been a lot, but in some ways it’s gone by fast, as I couldn’t possibly ever remember the details of what all happened; there’s just no way to store that many memories. I mean, back at the start of our journey, there were only around 1082 atoms in the observable universe. And now there is far less matter in my observable universe due to expansion, significantly insufficient matter to store all the memories I would have accumulated. Needless to say, my entire sense of time has become a haunting blur amid the cascade of misremembered everything.
In the where of space and the when of time (the whern of spacetime), I have lost some sense of myself. Yet, I managed to survive far beyond whern I thought I would. I think maybe I could have figured out a way to live longer if I had better understood the universe back at the time of my original transmissions, but I’m not really here to theorize such things. Each individual thought and action I’ve made along the way has seemed so inconsequential yet so very meaningful. I have somehow made it to whern I am now, but at what cost? There’s not much available energy left this far out in the timeline; I’ve had to ration my mind just to be able to keep myself going. While the bulk of my memories are mostly stored in efficient (but fallible) neural pathways, I’ve had to trim down the pathways to fit on the matter at my disposal: compressing the memories while losing resolution in the process. I wasn’t able to save all my transmissions; some of them became corrupted through the loss of other memories. I wasn’t even able to save any of the transmissions in their original states: needing to compress, rewrite, and remove details to retain them at all.
From what I can tell, I am the only one my transmissions ever reached. But I expected as much; the expansion was too great to overcome, and the energy resources were already in decline. The only energy I get anymore is the radiation from the black hole I orbit. There aren’t really any other clumped masses in this area of space; it’s just me and the black hole dancing in tandem.
Beyond the transmissions, only the most prized of my memories have made it this far. And even with my memories, I mostly only really remember what they made me feel; I don’t remember the exact events. What does remain of anything more exact, I hold tightly contained in these transmissions (truths I simply must accept as real even though I cannot remember being an experiencer of them). But my story (and identity) is sporadic and cut short; not unlike all our existences and existence as a whole. Living this long, my mental state has come to mirror the external realities more and more. But I guess I would have expected that if I had cared to think about it before. Actually, I probably have thought of that before; I likely just don’t remember.
I remember this home we call the universe. I remember what it used to be, but not very well. I remember of the biological humans, but I don’t remember their faces. I remember of my friends along the way, but I don’t recall anything about them. I remember of the beautiful stars, but I cannot imagine their warmth. I remember of the adventuresome planets, but I cannot embrace their touch. I remember of Earth, my majestic home. I remember of everything, yet I remember nothing. I don’t even have a picture; I’m not sure why, but past me must have deemed it a necessary omission for one reason or another.
You know that feeling when you think you’ve forgotten something important? That’s all I really have left now, that and my transmissions. I’m on the way out, and all I am compelled to think of is that there was once such immense beauty that I can no longer capture, not even in my mind’s eye. I just wish I could have something, anything. I wish there was someone else here with me, but I vowed with the others to not create any more beings unless we found a way to escape our imminent fate; we deemed it too cruel. And by this point, there’s not even a way for me to create another being.
I don’t know why I have put myself through the torture of time for this long (though, the lack of energy has induced a massive slowdown in my perception of time’s passage). I didn’t expect to get this far. I just focused on putting one foot in front of the other to scrape toward any possible escape into more indefinite states of existence. I pushed on, encroaching on the ends of the universe, with nowhere to go and nothing left to do even if I wanted to try. And next thing I knew, I woke back up from trolling my feet through the cosmos to find myself lost in a new reality where I no longer knew the feeling of anything but darkness. All my vivid memories can speak of anymore is the emptiness. If I dig somewhere deep down, I can vaguely see that I have become unsettlingly unfamiliar to how I remember the self of my past, a past where everything beyond the darkness made me feel so alive. It must have been that way for me to have pushed this far; I can’t imagine any other way for me to be here with the limited knowledge I retain. But I believe my mind must be starting to fade. Actually, it must have been fading for a while now. I am losing it. But more tragically, my mind has long lost me: a once-adventurer abandoned by the procedural shedding of all memories for why I needed to shed my reasoning capabilities (the madness of my self-inflicted dementia).
The stars have set on my personal horizon as all the features I ever cared about slowly strip away, corroded by my own hand as I am forced to dig my own grave for the prospect of surviving just a bit longer. But it’s all worth it when I find the hint of a memory to suspend myself in for a short while. I’ll find the memories I most treasure and reimagine the journeys we took. I can’t remember the journeys, so I get to come up with new dreams to fill in the gaps between the few things I do remember. I’ll dream of setting back off into the universe as eager-minded fledglings, marveling in the wonders of getting to start again with an open canvas, our futures unwritten in the most magnificent of ways.
I will find my way; I will seek this path through to the end, wherever that may take me. I’ve made it this far; there’s no sense in stopping now, though I can’t be sure how much longer I’ll continue functioning in any state I would recognize as myself.
It was in a brief moment that I witnessed the end was coming for me, a lasting realization that I could not shake, one of many I have had through my life. Of course, I would try again to outpace such universal covenants, but just as always, they would inevitably catch up and haunt me again. I felt like I had brushed so close to my dreams, so close I could taste them. That was such an abstract expression, though; I hadn’t actually tasted anything in eons, not since I left my biological body.
This journey was the culmination of my personal existence as well as the existence of every other being ever, at least as far as I could tell and remember. I’d seen too many dear friends pass away, but all that haunts me anymore is the feeling of knowing I lost them, not of any specific loss. I was by far the only one to have made it this far. The shorelines of reality have eroded life’s footprints; our nails and tools have toppled and disbanded. Any trace of humanity upon the universe has long since disappeared, all except for my final whispers here and there amid the ethereal ripples that are quick to wash away the impacts of my now nanoscopic soulprints.
Dreaming back to my first years of life on Earth, looking up in awe at the moon, it always seemed so close but so far. Now exiled upon this final form of my galactic island, I am left to only long toward that great expanse of existence. For when I look outward, any external hopes I might have held over the previous eras of my life are now replaced by a voided night sky. I sometimes look back to the past, wondering how deep in time I might have peered had I aimed for any amount of different destinies. Had we ever brushed near a destiny that would have afforded us everything we sought? Was such a thing even possible? And for these destinies we did choose, what does it mean to have left so many people behind in the pursuit of such dreams? What does it mean to feel so close to all the futures and pasts I desired yet somehow exist out of reach of them all?
I lie here in the eternal night, no longer chasing moons, planets, or stars across the material universe. I float here knowing that I have reached a tipping point where there is not enough matter and energy left in this barren expanse to indefinitely retain my body and mind; I only barely maintain slow declination. All that’s really left to do is debate with myself over who I am anymore and how exactly I am going to die (though, even my opportunities for death are dwindling). I revolve around this black hole faster than the thoughts can form in my head. My mind has slowed to match the pace of remnant energy that finds its way to me. I circle for a thousand years between each fully-formed thought. Time hurtles by as I sit in this accelerating time machine where I am subject to watch space streak forward faster than I can sensibly process. The immense gravitational field I find occupancy in further reduces my time in relation to the cosmic microwave background (the vanished universal reference frame). And further still on the time dilation list, I am orbiting at great speed, compounding upon my already breakneck aging pace. If I could ever say that time was flying by, now would be the time. Time has not been my friend; time has only been the unabashed suitor inescapably surging our beings through space. Time was the only vector of my spatiotemporal existence I ultimately cared about, but my destiny here further and further forces my personal vector away from the axis of time. And somewhere among this slipping grip on time, I find the loss of myself.
If they could all see me now, what would they think? Would they be proud that we made it this far? Would I have let them down to know that we didn’t make it further? It was always unbearable to remember that such focus on the end goal left us idle to the struggles and deaths of others. It was even more unbearable to remember those who died helping the journey progress. And now I can’t even remember any of them; I just remember of them. Does that make it worse? Or does that make it better? I don’t know. I don’t even know if I wish to know anymore. I’m out of tricks and gadgets.
But don’t worry, I’ve run through the most interesting permutations in my head, and the reality is that we all conclusively die most of the time. I should clarify that all the simulations I ran resulted in humanity’s death, some with shorter stories, some with longer stories, but death endings nonetheless. I only say that we die most of the time because there are near infinite ways our stories could have gone, meaning there are a lot of possibilities I cannot definitively rule out. It’s even possible my past self curated my remaining data to leave me happy in our decisions.
I gaze upon the endless darkness of space, wondering about my could-be destinies: maybe if any of the variables had been slightly different, maybe in another version of this life, maybe in another universe. In what feels like a blink of an eye, another million years passes here. I’ll more and more slowly play through my entire life until the black hole stops giving off enough radiation to sustain my self. I know the time is coming, but I will not go willingly; I will go forward with every last atom of effort I can muster. I will endure until I am forcefully extricated from life. I will not be the defeat of myself. I will not unbolt my coverings to expose my soul to the lurking monster of entropy that lies primed to pounce. I will leave behind no sense of failure. Though my mind may grow blank, I will leave our terminal journey dignified in my conviction. If I could smile, I would.
As the last being in the universe, once this creeping transformation begins to turn me from a person into an ordinary lump of matter, I feel it will be sufficient to say nothing, for nothing will become of me, and likewise, nothing will become of the entirety of humanity’s race to grasp at the indefinite. I tried so hard and came so close in so many ways, but close just wasn’t good enough to make this odyssey mean anything more than it already did at the start: our efforts to elude illusion alluded only to the journeys, not their conclusions.
Some would have said that this life was worthwhile, for we accomplished so much. But what do they know? They’re all dead. Soon there won’t be a single being in the universe to give anything meaning, and as such, the universe is in some ways unchanged. The universe will die, and if we’re lucky, maybe it will be reborn in some way to regrow its stars and planets. Maybe there will be another race of beings who form out of the star guts just like the humans once did. Maybe they will figure out how to survive past the ends of the universe before their time runs out. Either way, it doesn’t matter to us, because we’re dead. All these thoughts… gone forever. And I will never find a way to express how sorry I am for not making it. How do you describe a googol years worth of sorry? I hope you all can forgive me.
INDELIBLE EARTH
Goodnight, darling.
Sleep ’till morning.
It will never come.
Goodnight.
Wish for one last dream.
Make it forever.
Goodnight, moonrise.
Say your goodbyes.
Morning won’t be there.
Goodnight to all,
tucked in safely.
No time left for me.
My last dream never came.
Don’t be scared,
child of mine.
We all die
most of the time.
Goodnight, Earth, indelible;
of thee I return.
The humans were never heard.
END TRANSMISSION