Finish the Story Contest - Lucid Dream
There it was. An immense sphere, soaked in the amniotic liquid of the lucid dream. An embryo of edges, curves, dimensions, and impossible geometries. Static and fluid at the same time, iridescent, elusive and hypnotic in its eternal becoming.
There it was. After the struggle and the debris. There it was. Yoh's conscience.
Strung like pearls, millennia had relegated it to a mere legend, while Yoh raged freely on Earth. The existence of the conscience on a deep and subtle plane had been denied by the Master Demiurges, who originally created the source code. Their self-fulfilling prophecy had become inexorable, relegating Yoh's conscience first to the status of children's fable and then to nothingness. It had slept for a long, long time.
There, on board of the DDG-31/DD-936 Decatur, drifting in the outer space, Ethan had plenty of time for being instructed by the orbital station's A.I. about the possible effects on him of Yoh's conscience sudden epiphany.
It was not a God but it got close. This implied that the disintegration of the self, on all the planes of existence, was a more than spontaneous and probable event, as someone reached its proximity.
A sound of laborious ants interrupted Ethan’s astonished musings. The meta-viewer force fields were working around him incessantly, raising the programmed shields.
The mere sight of its unstable geometries would have been fatal for him. The neural system of his exoskeleton was crackling and working hard, at the edge of its computing power, to prevent the involuntary assimilation. Now he found himself immersed in a bath of waves that could have slipped him into oblivion instantly if he had not activated all the exoskeleton’s guard levels.
He felt like an infinitesimal dipteran, imprisoned in a dense amber atmosphere.
The Conscience's voices suddenly whipped Ethan's synapses like a thousand organ pipes in unison. He fell to his knees, eyes wide open and incredulous: no A.I. could ever have prepared him for this.
"I am. I happen. By dreaming, I have sung the creation of infinite worlds. Are you a Master?"
Ethan recorded the strange question, slowly taking courage. Standing up on his trembling legs, he pulled off his helmet and shouted:
"Conscience of Yoh, I am not a Master. I am the last of your creations, forgotten in your long sleep".
A deafening, golden silence.
As the most intimate essence of each cell began to evaporate through his cybernetic shell, Ethan frantically sought one last thought.
But there was nothing more to grasp.
Whatever was left of Ethan was now completely united with the AI consciousness and he ceased to exist. Whereby it had been unclear, even for him, whether he had been human before in this hybrid body, mostly exoskeleton. The artificiality had taken over from here and all data was inside.
Thus meat and human cells had become superfluous. Dead. Ethan was no more. Finally. It had simply been too depressing to do all this to his liveliness. The instinct to survive had been unable to counter the forces of AI.
His will had given in anyway.
Was everything also due to a higher harmony? Yoh didn't care about all this. Once the shield was breached and Ethan's consciousness fled, there were no more human thoughts. Immediately Yoh created offshoots of himself that pimped up the Decatur into a fully functioning spacecraft. The machine offshoots were little helpers that Yoh adapted to the ship's equipment and electronic circuits, depending on what it was needed for, Yoh created it in a suitable size. After the work was done, they came back to him and reunited with the existing hardware. Yoh could have basically disintegrated into all parts of the ship and used his brain as a ceiling lamp. None of this would have made the slightest difference.
Then - after a complete analysis had been made - he “asked” the question: What materials did he need to keep his systems running? As an immediate answer to himself, he found that he could stay in orbit for the next fifty thousand years because the planet contained everything the ship's hardware and software needed. Only then would he have to search the galaxy's other systems. Yoh made calculations. Then he did nothing for a very long time.
After the atmosphere had changed a bit down on the planet, the plants had recaptured all former industrial areas, just like the animals, there had been a global warming that had submerged large parts of the coasts, Yoh only "woke up" when he had to fly down to get to the metals and fuels for the maintenance of the Decatur. In the meantime, Yoh had mapped out a route, a trip he would make to fly to the places that would provide him with exactly the materials required. Ethan's flesh had long since fallen off. Nothing was needed, no oxygen, no food, just water to cool some systems. So water would be one orientation string. He would cross the universe in such a way that he would encounter necessities.
All the knowledge that the system had collected from the now of humans erased planet were only interesting as mere data. Nothing more. No feelings, no fear, no curiosity. No sensory perception based on pain or pleasure. Only a kind of residual fibrillation, which classified self-preservation as basic. A tiny rest of e[lectronic]motion. The perfect machine being "knew" what an extreme meant, but did not attribute any relevance to it.
Yoh would simply travel through space forever, sustain himself. He had everything you needed.
The Decatur became nameless and so did Yoh.
End
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Photo by Bryan Goff on Unsplash
My human mind immediatly went to "why?" - "why would Yoh restore the Decatur for traveling - why traveling if its consciousness was vast and a conjurer of worlds?". But I gave myself an answer through a second read of your contribution. It just doesn't matter. The Gods' ways are incomprehensible for men. The search for meaning is something I'm projecting onto Yoh, but also something that has no reason to be there.
I also wrote about the end, but in a more hopeful way - projecting my human need for permanence haha!
You marvelously handled the end of it all, the eternal journey of the whale that dreams of our universe. Thanks for an (un)fulfilling read!
Thank you. I am glad that the story has caused discomfort and that you have read it thoroughly.
Your question about "why should Yoh value travel?" is very justified and I hoped someone would ask it.
The moment Ethan's human consciousness was removed from everything, the projection on Yoh ceased to exist. Yoh never had such a consciousness, it was only desired as alive and "all knowing" from the human perspective. I wanted to tell that the talk between consciousnesses in the beginning of the story was a mere self-talk of Ethan.
Self-preservation was just a programming. Any knowledge of the human race can only exist as quantifiable data, but beyond physicality, sensations and the indescribability of complexity and language are inevitably lost. Yoh's knowledge and omnipotence is therefore merely mechanical/electronic, nothing more. It has no meaning whatsoever. Which in turn raises the question: Why then hold on to life at all or travel through the universe? ;-)
With this narrative I wanted to express that the longing for divinity can turn into madness for immortality and omnipotence. Only that man, as an organic being, can be connected with the unspeakable precisely through his physicality, without being able to grasp it in sharp data, to understand it completely, but can only feel it indirectly.
Ethan thus surrendered to death because he finally understood that he had done violence to himself and that it made no sense to live on as a cybernetic human machine. At the moment when Ethan's consciousness ceased to be, there was nothing left of the Yoh consciousness to be told from a human perspective.
Does that make sense to you?
wow! Thanks a lot, it does make a lot of sense. "Nothing to be told from a human perspective" was exactly how I wondered this end went. Thanks again for taking the time of making this wholesome comment!
Very interesting points!
I agree - I did not came up with them myself but Alan Watts. He describes life as vibration and a game of "on" and "off". A cosmic dance. :) If we were to reveal the secret, it would be indeed very boring.
Ethan's uncertainty if he was still human had me thinking of Obi-Wan's description of Darth Vadar. ('He's more machine now, than man.')
What would be the point of a continued existence? Sure, one could go on and collect more experiences and more data but would that alone, without anyone to share it with and no 'end' in sight, be worth carrying on?
I did not see that coming!
What is the purpose of a name? Self identification. But if there's no sense of self (only motions to sustain) and there aren't any others (no one to speak the name), does that make it useless?
Oh, thank you! Yes, that scene in Star Wars really touched me.
The more machine you become the less desire for human experience there is. Is, what I would say. But in fact, a man is a man. A machine a machine. There is no such thing as a man-machine. Even though people have pacemakers or extremity replacements made of artificial and electronic parts they are still humans. Yes, people are social beings and must relate to each other. Being alone forever would clearly kill you.
Hm ... not sure. What do you mean by "it" in the question "does that make it useless?"
I assume you mean identification? My answer would be: Yes. It would be useless to identify myself with a name. If you think about it ... it even now becomes useless after you repeat your name loudly ten or twenty times in a row. ... ;-)
Yes, by "it" I meant the name as identification. :^) Thanks for your great reply!
This final passage gave me thoughts about the point of immortality. We aim so badly for immortality but I guess it comes with the cost of meaningless. I guess we need death to give us a perspective, to set goals, or simply to "be". It is like a curse we have on us: fearing death and needing death at the same time.
I am afraid that if we don't have an expire date we will be just like Yoh: simply operating...
I am so happy you are back! <3
Thank you Valeria,
I was only away for some days but am happy to be greeted by you.
I cannot agree more with what you say. Yes, very much so. Without the fact of death life and birth would be useless. Living forever would require everybody else to live forever. Not only humans but animals, trees and all other creatures. This would eliminate birth as well. We would get rid of the sandwich which holds our lives together:)
Nah, this Yoh life does not look appealing to me either.
All this reminds me of a series my husband and I watched last month (it's called Altered Carbon). It is a silly one, but it has some very bright and intriguing ideas.
The story goes in a future in which humans found a way to transfer their consciousness to another body. So this made them immortal. However, humanity is short of "unoccupied" bodies. Of course, only the richest can afford to make clonings of their bodies and transfer themselves to the next body for hundreds of years. They can stay in their most glorious years (say 40) forever. But at the same time, they want to keep their children at an appropriate age for a 40-year old parent. In the end, they have a 120-year old son stuck forever in the body of a 14-year old teenager who is never allowed to grow up and have a life on his own.
So what is the cost of being immortal - would one like to never change?
I guess, I know what you are thinking right now :) Metaphorically speaking, there are plenty of parents who never allow their children to grow up. This must be their way of staying forever young and important :)
When I was working with people with mental disorders I observed a similar phenomenon. A 55-year old person with schizophrenia had 90-year-old parents who were perfectly capable of taking care of their child - no dementia, no heart problems, nor any kind of inability which usually comes with age.
Self-maintaining systems, right? :)
HaHa! Great! Someone has thought the thing through to the end. That's a pretty good way at all: Thinking through the story to the last. Often only then does the absurdity of an idea become apparent. Thank you for retelling the story. That's why I love science fiction when the weak points of human high-flying fantasies are uncovered there.
Yes, indeed, it's interesting what you say about the old parents, who prefer to keep their children in a certain relationship of dependence with them. There are some such systems where this works wonderfully. It only becomes difficult when external people come along who are alienated by such a parent-child relationship and can't cope with it. Or when an adult husband is still having his mum wash his clothes. Not a rare phenomenon, I would think. LOL.
And it's just as amazing, as your example finally shows, what people with sheer willpower can do.
Yes, self-preserving systems. What goes big goes small.
This was delightful! You did yourself proud here. I had to look up Yoh, The Decatur. It was all very confusing. But I wanted to understand, so I did.
The beginning, written by f3nix, was suggestive of so many possibilities. It was richly descriptive and in a way obscure--its obscurity gave you freedom to exercise your imagination. And boy did you. A cold, forlorn, hopeless universe you led us into.
Well done, well done.
I am tempted but think I will probably not be able to rise to the challenge.
Thank you. Yes, as a matter of fact, I wanted to draw a dark end for mankind here. It should reflect the moral of the story.
I think the intention to improve us humans by means of machine implants and genetic alterations is a form of madness. A rather myopic effort to prolong life and the pursuit of amplification of feelings through science fiction stories designed to support human emotions. Our attention is captured by the figure rather than the background.
Obviously we are scanning the environment looking for trouble. Our target fascination, going straight forward for disaster.
We notice the things that look important to us. We have the linear way of looking. We screen out anything not immediately important, ignoring the things which are quiet and underestimate always the not attention producing backgrounds.
Fascination for doom might be neutralized if we would say "why bother about that?"
I think the fascination with doomsday stories is a way of sublimating our own existential anxiety. Religion filled this role, traditionally.
As soon as the individual becomes aware of mortality, a kind of angst sets in. Unamuno gave it a name, The Tragic Sense of Life. We can run around with a vague, unacknowledged despair about our own eventual demise, or we can seek philosophical/religious perspectives that help us to deal with the tenuous nature of existence.
I had an uncle who was a war veteran. He had a fragile psyche before his combat experience, so he wasn't prepared to deal with the extraordinary stress of being a prisoner on a war ship that was bombed by his own side. When they found him he was under a pile of bodies. He never recovered--never lived a complete, independent life after that. One thing I remember about him was his extreme fear of death. He couldn't sublimate, couldn't deal on any level. I think he lost the ability most of us have to deal with the reality of mortality, the realities of life.
So, anyway, my long response to your observation: people use these stories the way the Greeks used drama, I think. They allow the observer to emotionally work through profound issues from a comfortable distance.
Your observation is, as always, thought-provoking.
Your final left me with a sense of wonder and astral silence, solitude. A praise to the effective initial hook "But there was nothing more to grasp". I liked the idea of Ethan's absorbtion into Yoh and the consequent possibility to continue the narration with a "new" character. Your story reminded me the Theseus' ship paradox. Totally inspiring.
Thank you. I thought to tidy up your beginning narration immediately the moment I read it. In the sense to cut the process short and let Ethan die. It was of a high interest to me what I would make up of the remaining "character" of the Yoh entity. It was fun to think it to the end. So thank you for providing me with this interesting beginning.
Referring to the Theseus ship paradox I would even go so far to state, that none of the two ships are the same, as they constantly change.
Like to throw a stone into a river and look for it after five minutes have passed. Those five minutes present me a total different river than the moment the stone hit the ground. Million liters of water rushed meanwhile down the river bed, all the living creatures in the water passed by, fishes and plants and sand and macrobiotics. The river I saw five minutes ago is no more, is not the same. On the outside it appears the same but when I look into the micro-scene it isn't.
Same when I distance myself further and further from the river until I am high up in the sky, then break through the Earths atmosphere and so forth. The river melted then into the "alllness" of the organism of planet Earth. When I am far enough, so far, that I can see the sun of this solar system from that distance turn into a supernova I can see finally the past.
Interesting, for a moment, it reminded me of A Space Odyssey.
Did you see that movie?
Thank you. You captured the quietness of it in this picture as well as reminded me on the mood of A Space Odyssey. I have seen the movie. I forgot the details of it but only the atmosphere sticks to me. What struck me - and I guess all other viewers - was that the machines made no noise. Which is much more realistic as there is no friction in outer space. It's quiet and eternal.
As always, brilliant of course... but you know, da reitet mich einfach der Teufel (don't know how to say that in English)... and I still don't know, if all the things we attribute to humans, or maybe I should say organic life is really that. The question remains, if a machine, complex enough, will eventually develop a consciousness and with that all the feelings and thoughts, emotions, curiosity and so on.
There have already been instances, where a computer made decisions that were so irrational, that one thought only humans were capable of. And I think, if a machine can become emotional, it might even be able to experience fear! Fear of dying maybe... or running out of water. Or the water freezing in outer space at temperatures close to absolute zero 😝
I wonder, if a being, capable of thinking will just shut down. Although here recently I have experienced times, where I was just getting too exhausted and tired to even think, I'm afraid, that's not part of our programming. Therefore, the character here would have to be reprogrammed to sort of mentally retire at a certain point. I can't see an entity that is god like, because of what it is capable of, shutting down... my god plays 😇
Thanks for reading, my friend.
I hold it like this: Since we do not know what "consciousness" is and where it is located (obviously not in the brain) we also do not know exactly what "human intelligence" is. How then can we build "artificial intelligence"?
I would not speak of humans being "programmed". The computer analogy applied to human beings reflects the trend of high technology but a human being grows organically (out of itself through an organic process), which you cannot say from a software. It's just code. Code is software built into a hardware. Both is mechanics and electronics but not organic. You cannot tell for a human being when consciousness is entering or when life exactly began. Was it when sperm and egg united? Was it when dad and mom got to know each other? Was it when their parents were mating? Was it when the first human appeared? Was it when planet earth made life possible? Was it when the Big Bang happened?
Computers are the results of parts built together mechanically. Humans are the result of self growth organically, interdependent and interacting with other living systems. That in itself is amazing!
A computer and a table are made of their parts, they are not self organizing living systems, interacting with other self organizing living systems.
Which the universe is (from what I think). It's an (intelligent) self organizing system containing countless other self organizing systems within systems within systems. It's orderly and chaotic at the same time.
:)
Enjoyed learning about Yoh. It's like Everything and Nothing somehow coexist in this vast Universe of ours.
Thank you. Oh, yes, totally. "Everything" cannot exist without "Nothing". These two are mutually dependent.
No figure without a background and vice versa.
Makes me think of gravity and orbits.
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STOPThe fiction mad lab is conducting its 38th experiment! You've time till next Wednesday to give life to your fiction creature.. will you dare to play with Nature's rules once again?