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Snapshots of Different Realities

In a multiverse all alternatives are real.

By Kim WilliamPublished 7 years ago 6 min read
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Snapshot 00110001 — The Old Friends

The Lorn and the Human sat on Isoclectic Beach on Isidorian (the seventh planet of the large star cluster, not the lesser moon). The sun was setting, and the pair had been drinking for most of the afternoon.

Old friends, they were, and old friends they would remain.The Lorn snored gently as his friend opened another bottle of Ikaniea (the local fermented drink). Tomorrow they would continue their journey. But that was tomorrow.

In the meantime, the Milky Way rose in all its splendor in the night sky.

Snapshot 00001010 — The Close Call

Savren sat within the debris of the escape shuttle. It had performed well, flashing through its onion like protective shell layer by layer to safely deposit its precious cargo onto the soft earth. Nothing remained of the small craft other than the last protecting shell of the human pod. It had been very close to a disastrous emergency landing. Now, how to get home?

Snapshot 00110010 — Our Times End

He looked sad for a moment as if catching a fleeting, poignant memory. After a long pause he said, "Since you asked, I was born on Earth." A longer, sadder, pause.

Then, "There are not many of us left."

Snapshot 00001010 — The Ship

The ship was vast. Large community centers dotted it's interior along with green spaces and wild areas. Indeed the ship boasted more living space than many moon colonies. It was designed for billions of living souls.

The ship tumbled slowly, ever so slowly though the dark space between the stars. The ship was dead. The inhabitants were gone, vanished into an unknown fate. The heartbeat of the AI, however, continued deep within the structure. Sadness engulfed the mind. A ship without its passengers was not really a ship. It was merely a chunk of matter. And matter so needs life to live.

Snapshot 00110011 — Dreams of Ancient Earth

The seed ship is fast approaching landfall.

It is time to wake the crew from their collective dream of ancient earth.

The AI looked in at their vision — they were all dreaming they were on Earth in the early 21st century. The crew would be quite pleased to leave this dream and wake to this reality.

The 21st century was such a dark and primitive time and so far in the past.

Postscript

Once we are traveling amongst the stars, we will quickly lose our human earth bound roots. The farther we wander, the less human we become. Unless, perhaps, we imbed in humans a virtual memory of what it was like to live and walk on Planet Earth. Perhaps that is what we are "living" through now. A constructed memory. Any moment now, the AI will wake us up to our new home.

Snapshot 00001010 — The Humachine

And 1.3.45.17a (think of it more of a network/geographic address than a name) sat back with a sudden collective realization. The human in front of it was all alone. It was not part of the connected machine/human consciousness. An enormity of sadness washed through the collective. This poor primitive human could never know the comfort and intellectual thrill of the collective consciousness. A harmony of human and machine minds.

The collective took a nanosecond to achieve consensus, then concluded the lone human, rescued from the deep earth cold pod, would live freely within the world. It would never know the beauty of the universe in which it was embedded, forever outside of what humanity and machines had become: one entity. It would be pitied and treated with compassion for the sad abnormality it was, for the short life it could expect to live.

In the meantime, the collective celebrated connection with the Orion hive sent on its journey a thousand years prior. Humachine achieved yet another advance!

Snapshot 00110100 — The Return

In known space:

The ship wasn’t just graceful, it was simply elegant.

Moving softly, it defied the vastness of it’s bulk.

Through space, through time it moved.

It had been lost for a very long time, but no longer.

No longer. For the ship was coming home.

Elsewhere

The last little human ship was all but lost. The Ek!529 (the closet human language could translate the hateful insect/machine creatures name) destruction ship hovered in for the final kill. It had systematically destroyed the last of the human fleet. And now the last of humanity. Slowly, with glee, the Ek!529 moved in, and the humans could merely await their inevitable end.

Time ticked. The Ek!259 wrapped its collapsion field around the small human vessel and began to squeeze.

Charolette Hilly, Comm Director, knew her ship's moments were numbered. The Ek!259 alien ship was in for the kill. More than likely, this was the last human ship, the last human outpost, and for all she knew, the last humans in existence. And now, it was time to die.

All humans to die.

Extinction.

Click.

Click.

Telemetry.

Click.

Hilly noted the signal and duly informed the captain.

“Captain.”

“Communication Director?”

“I have a signal.”

“The death signal?”

“No sir, it’s, well, it’s an odd code. A very old code, ancient code really.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s one of ours. I think. At least it seems to be one of ours. Or appears to be one of ours."

"How? What? How can that be?"

"It’s hard to say this, I had to look them up, but the codes seem to be from the Philip K. Dick.”

The Philip K. Dick.

Humanities first interstellar ship. It disappeared upon leap over a century in the past. Never heard from again.

And here was a ship, the size of a planet, claiming to be that ship. Thousands and thousands of times larger than the original Philip K. Dick launched into FTL so long ago.

And yet, here she was. Or seemed to be.

The Ek!259 began to squeeze.

Click. Click.

Telemetry.

Suddenly the squeeze was gone. Simply gone. So was the Ek!259’s massive ship. So were the hundreds of thousands of Ek!259 minor attack ships.

Gone.

Vanished.

There was another ship in their place instead. That ship the size of a planet, an impossible ship claiming an impossible claim to be the Philip K. Dick.

A human ship.

A hopeful ship against all hope.

She had been lost, but now she had come home.

And the reunion was tearful.

Snapshot 00001010

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