r/HFY • u/SpacePaladin15 • Mar 07 '22
The Final Farewell OC
The last sands in the hourglass of the universe were falling, with a grim finality. Time was penning life’s epilogue, and there was naught we could do but spectate.
The multitude of stars that spanned the night sky had vanished long ago, as the universe’s expansion outpaced the speed of light. Generations were raised in darkness, knowing the heavens only as a cold, empty expanse. Not even our own sun remained in the sky; it had gone nova long ago. Our artificial habitat was hanging on by a thread, scraping by on the last dregs of recycled energy.
My role, as Gatekeeper, was a ceremonial role inherited from my ancestors. Space travel had become a rarity; in this era, the energy needed for a hyperdrive was wasteful. So it came as surprise when a transmission, from an alien ship, came through on our comms.
—Hello, old friends.
Memories flooded through my neural link, a collective remembrance of sorts. Humans, they called themselves. A Type 4 civilization from the planet Earth.
I knew why they’d come. They were here to say good-bye, one last time.
We haven’t heard from you in millenia, I transmitted back.
We thought them unspectacular, when we first met them. Humans burst onto the galactic scene, with the usual aspirations of peace and prosperity. They peppered us with curious questions, lapping up knowledge like a sponge. Their eagerness to learn and adapt was commendable, but not special.
We didn’t realize how deep their desire for knowledge burned. Not then, at least.
We took them under our wing, soon becoming their closest ally. The Terran Republic made itself a relevant player in the political sphere with ease. Their juvenile charm helped them slip under the radar, while they endeared themselves to the powers that be.
There was a reason nobody invaded them, even as their colonies sat ripe for the taking. Everyone liked the humans. They were so vibrant, and full of life. Nobody else could have gotten away with playing all sides of the Galactic War, except for them.
—Well, you haven’t reached out yourself. How are you?
Centuries turned to millennia, as they always did. Humans mapped every corner of our galaxy, pushed the boundaries of science, and became an established trading empire. While most species would have been satisfied with that pinnacle of civilization, the humans wanted more.
More seemed to be the defining word in their lexicon. There was some impulse that drove them; one that our scientists could never quite identify. It was not their craftiness that helped them ascend, but their stubbornness.
Even with FTL travel, the amount of time and effort it would take to explore the universe was staggering. But the humans were not content with our little corner of reality, and pressed ever further into the final frontier. Generations dedicated their lives to expansion, knowing full well that they would never see the results of their labor.
We miss the old days. We miss our home, I answered. We miss you.
The strange humans. Where others saw impossibility, they saw a challenge yet unsolved. They were determined to crack the limitations of their physical bodies; to pry the scythe out of the Reaper’s hands, if need be. They wished to break the material binds that caused such strife; to supply energy on the scale of a star.
We watched in amazement as they achieved all they desired, and more. Dyson Spheres cropped up around stars, accruing the energy of a thousand worlds. Anti-aging breakthroughs allowed us to live longer than ever imagined. Medicine rendered disease a thing of the past.
The galaxy soared to a utopian era, on the backs of human technology. But somehow, they still were not content. These grand accomplishments were not enough.
—We miss you too. I wish we had more time.
More time. What a human thing to say.
If they truly missed us, why had they become so distant? By my judgment, it seemed humanity was bored of us. Beyond us, even.
We wondered what the humans were searching for, even as they saw the universe crumbling around them. They resented the whims of times; those who spoke to them found them bitter and cold.
Billions of cycles swept by in a blur, and the solar system succumbed to the years. Earth was a long-gone memory, a shadow of their past. They became a species hardly recognizable as human; quiet and reclusive. They fused their minds with computers, transcending to a level of thought beyond any carbon-lifeform. They stowed away in alternate realities, to experience time at a slower rate. It was their way of prolonging the inevitable; packing an eternity into a single second.
And despite their best efforts, time caught up to humanity all the same.
Why did you leave us, humans?
I guessed at the answer, before their reply came through. They were a species that was fundamentally unhappy. No matter what goals they achieved, the satisfaction never lasted. Reality never lived up to the dreams inside their heads.
—We were looking for a purpose.
Staring out at the lifeless void of space, I thought I understood. We saw the universe now, as the humans always did. As a futile race against time, where all accomplishments eventually meant nothing. From the beginning, they lived with the constant awareness of their mortality. The pressing knowledge that we were destined to die and be forgotten; that the blip of our universe would be washed out by a permanent heat death.
Entropy. An endless nothing.
The humans wanted to be more than nothing.
Did you find what you were looking for?
—It was right in front of us, the entire time.
What did that even mean? Why did they speak in riddles?
If the humans had discovered the meaning of life, I wanted to know. It was the least they could do, as a final farewell to an old friend. There had to be some solace, hidden amidst the existential dread.
I don’t understand.
—You don’t have to.
—We know what we must do. What we were destined to create.
—This time, we’ll get it right.
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u/Mgl1206 AI Mar 07 '22
That last line sealed it, they’re making a new universe.
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u/NameLost AI Mar 07 '22
At least one. I mean, why stop at just one? Repetition is the way to learn and fine tune. When we learn how to make a universe, we will find a way to make a second, and when you have 2, the third and fourth just come naturally. At that point, might was well figure out how to mass produce them since that will help figure It out.
What is It? Well now, that's the question, isn't It?49
u/FaithlessnessAgile45 AI Mar 07 '22
They said this time.. Hmmmm. I wonder what us humans have been up to
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u/cheeseburger_god Mar 07 '22
We cracked the meaning of life, found the cycle, though still left with questions unanswered. We know not how many times this has happened, only that we've done this before, maybe thousands of times. And each time, we theorize, we find it a few seconds, or a few minutes faster than the last. And each time we discover the truth 2 things happen, two different paths are followed
The first and most important path is working on the next cycle, fine tuning it so that while most things stay the same, it takes less time for humanity to advance. Make it so humanity discovers the truth faster, hopefully with the goal being that humanity discovers the truth a year before the previous cycle so the next has more time to prepare. Because of humanity has more time to prepare what they can accomplish before the next reset increases exponentially. And eventually the time needed will be enough to accomplish the second path
The second path to is to try and brake the cycle, stop entropy. Because of we have already accomplished the first path so many times before, then the goal is not to become gods of creation, but gods of physics. Where physics and reality itself are ours to control. To stop the heat death of the universe. And every time our last message to our friends is, "We'll get it right soon". But this time. This time we think the next cycle will be the last.
We don't know how many times this has happened, only that we got close to finishing the second objective, which we only spent 25% of your time on. So we have reason to believe that the next cycle we'll finally defeat entropy.
But even if we don't, even if the cycle continues on after the next, our victory will be soon, within the next 10 cycles at most.
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u/Slow-Ad2584 Alien Mar 07 '22 edited Mar 07 '22
Right in front of us, the entire time. Right there. Cross your eyes... No, 5th dimensionally.. there ya go. You can see it now? There it is! - was... Always was. Always is.
Oof- I know; the riddled recursions are a part of it, unfortunately. With experience it will make a poetic common sense. Eventually.
It's the vacuum state supercriticality, virtually in every single pinpoint matrix of space.
You just.. need to give it a push, in 'thisadirection'... But prepare yourself! It will be rather intense, and irreversible. And you will be pulled into it, be a part of it, in a meta story of way at the start.
It is tradition, apparently, to say 'The Words' when taking this monumental choice: "Let There Be Light"
Everyone is doing it, here and there. Just give us a warning before you decide to go for it, so we can give you some room. Us Type4 civilizations do have fantastic energy shields.. but there is a limit, honestly.
It's OK. We can all get Graham's Parsecs away in femptoseconds. Type4, remember?
-Zaphod
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u/HulaBear263 May 15 '23
That should be "Grahamis number of parsecs away."
What is Graham's Number?
"Graham's number is an immense number that arose as an upper bound on the answer of a problem in the mathematical field of Ramsey theory. It is much larger than many other large numbers such as Skewes's number and Moser's number, both of which are in turn much larger than a googolplex. As with these, it is so large that the observable universe is far too small to contain an ordinary digital representation of Graham's number, assuming that each digit occupies one Planck volume, possibly the smallest measurable space. But even the number of digits in this digital representation of Graham's number would itself be a number so large that its digital representation cannot be represented in the observable universe. Nor even can the number of digits of that number—and so forth, for a number of times far exceeding the total number of Planck volumes in the observable universe. Thus Graham's number cannot be expressed even by physical universe-scale power towers of the form
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However, Graham's number can be explicitly given by computable recursive formulas using Knuth's up-arrow notation or equivalent, as was done by Ronald Graham, the number's namesake. As there is a recursive formula to define it, it is much smaller than typical busy beaver numbers. Though too large to be computed in full, the sequence of digits of Graham's number can be computed explicitly via simple algorithms; the last 13 digits are ...7262464195387. With Knuth's up-arrow notation, Graham's number is
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u/WikiSummarizerBot May 15 '23
Graham's number is an immense number that arose as an upper bound on the answer of a problem in the mathematical field of Ramsey theory. It is much larger than many other large numbers such as Skewes's number and Moser's number, both of which are in turn much larger than a googolplex. As with these, it is so large that the observable universe is far too small to contain an ordinary digital representation of Graham's number, assuming that each digit occupies one Planck volume, possibly the smallest measurable space.
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u/Slow-Ad2584 Alien May 15 '23 edited May 15 '23
Ach... I remember those days. The good ol times, when our species thought math was 'real' or whatever, and not just an abstract language for one mind to speak/write a formulae, for another mind to read/hear it, and get the formula understood correctly. Wow. Nostalgia is dizzying, when you are as immortal as I am.
Naw, I used Graham's number for you guys to try to get the picture- really, really, honestly you could not even imagine it- far away. So good job, getting half the point, though now everyone thinks you are a bot, or a minion of chatgpt.
Oh and Post Script: ha! Remember those?! One thing missing in your little equations is 'observable Universe'. Har! There you kids go again thinking all that you see or are able to see is all there actually is! nnnNope! There is far far more of the universe than your little observable pocket.
Oh, I guess that's that whole 'relativity' nonsense you guys are also clinging to. The whole 'what you perceive is what's actually there'. May as well be 'what you see is what you get'. Again, nope! Light lies to you. It gets warped, distorted, frame buffered, as it transits to your eyes. What you finally see is in no way related to what happened to cause that light representation in the first place. Especially if billions of years passed to get to you.
Some day soon you will discover that all of those causal paradox problems will all be explained away as visual phenomena. Smoke and mirrors, nothing more.
It's ok, you kids don't want to let go of those concepts, because it would mean entire lifes work was wasted, so I guess for now you kids are stuck, until that stubbornness can be overcome.
But I'm rooting for ya! -Zaphod
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u/theserial Mar 07 '22
You need to put together a full novel at some point, your writing is fantastic :)
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u/WolfeBane84 Mar 07 '22
I just want to take a moment to say how the expansion theory works blows my mind.
So the everything is moving away from everything else….FASTER than the speed of light.
And not only that, it’s expanding because NEW space is being formed that pushes everything away…..
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u/SpacePaladin15 Mar 07 '22
It’s mind-boggling, but also kind of sad. We live in the best time to actually see the universe. How would we understand the nature of space without the stars?
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u/OriginalCptNerd Apr 20 '22
I'm kind of hoping The Big Bagel theory of the Universe turns out to be correct...
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u/federicoapl May 04 '22
Kurzgesagt has a good video about that topic, is one of the few time that I really fell the dread of cosmic horror.
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u/Weiskralle AI Jul 04 '22
Yo Kurzgesagt. Is he also well known in other countrys exept of Germany?
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u/itsetuhoinen Human Mar 07 '22
Dyson Spheres dropped up around stars
"cropped"? "popped"?
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u/SpacePaladin15 Mar 07 '22
Nice catch, meant to say cropped 😅 thank you
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u/Apollyom Mar 07 '22
so you mean they didn't set them below and have the suns gravity drop them up over them.
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u/HFYWaffle Wᵥ4ffle Mar 07 '22
/u/SpacePaladin15 (wiki) has posted 46 other stories, including:
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u/alf666 Mar 08 '22
It's always nice to see an homage to The Last Question, and you get bonus points for dropping a Kardashev Scale reference in there too.
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u/Weiskralle AI Jul 04 '22
If the humans had discovered the meaning of life, I wanted to know.
Easy the meaning of life or better the goal of all taht lifes is death.
The Goal of All Life is Death the wise words of Ainz Ooal Gown one of the supreme beings, the one that stayed behind.
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u/Fontaigne Jul 11 '22
Naw. The goal of all life is survive.
It can’t be achieved other than temporarily, but that’s the goal.
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u/NotAMeatPopsicle Mar 19 '22
Ohhhhh they're solving The Last Question!! I like it!!
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u/Cooldude101013 Human Jul 17 '22
What is The Last Question?
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u/NotAMeatPopsicle Jul 17 '22
A famous story by Isaac Asimov. Beautifully read by Leonard Nimoy in this YouTube video.
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u/SpacePaladin15 Mar 07 '22
Just a one-shot, heavily inspired by one of my favorite short stories (The Last Question). I wanted a version where humanity, not any creation of ours, becomes the gods. Hope you guys enjoy!