They made one machine, a tiny vessel possessing all of one hundred grams of matter. It left the planet carrying the souls of billions in its tiny mechanical heart.
“The planet was dying, so they put themselves on machines?”
“Their emulations were uploaded into the machine, yes.”
“I don’t—”
“Emulations are programs running on a very powerful computer that recreate everything that a person was in the real world. When they were uploaded, their minds were translated into pattern that the machine could read and interpret into the emulation.”
West still frowned. “How can a person become a computer program?”
“Where does the electricity in your brain go when you die, West?”
“I—I don’t know. No one knows. It disappears.”
Zero-Four shook his head. “I know where it goes. I know where it is. We took it, and we put it on the machine. You’ll never die, West. You’ve been uploaded into Program Seven. You’ve been translated into code.”
West scoffed. “I’m not one of your emulations.”
“Do you think a goldfish realizes that there is a world beyond its own, that there are rivers and lakes and oceans? You’re not in your bowl anymore. You’re in the ocean. You haven’t been in your world since… Well, since you became what you call a ‘Styx’. Once you came out of the light, you were changed, right?”
West nodded.
“And no one could explain the change?”
“No one knew what the light was.”
“When you went into that light, you were uploaded into Judas Program Seven. That’s why you can do things that other people can’t. You’re not on the same level of phase space anymore. Close, but not close enough.”
“That vessel was one of yours?”
“Yes, but I don’t know how it got there any more than you do.”
“I’m a computer file.”
“Something like that. We’re all just lines of code in the Judas program. This is all a part of the emulation.”
“What about me?” Patra had a troubled look on her face. “Am I a part of your program?” She held out her silver hands. “Is this a part of your program?”
Movement without thought.
Alone, racing away from a dead world, a machine flies without emotion.
The mission was simple. Wait for the expansion and collapse, find a new place to live when the universe was once again stable enough to permit life. The universal heat death saw to the impossibility of organic life. The machine waited through the billions of billions of billions of years. Human calculation was a travesty marked by paradigm paralysis. Did the flicker of organic human life that lasted all of about five million years count for anything in this void beyond comprehension? The machine doubted its mission but persevered, making exact replicas of itself that populated the universe according to the mission.
Countless miniscule machines, each holding their precious cache of emulated humanities, waited in the black, procreated in the black. The heat death ended with the sudden and furious universal collapse that brought heat and the possibility of life once again to existence. A constant evolution: machines of liquid silver. Machines becoming smaller and faster and stronger and more powerful. The universe of silver became a chaos of movement as the infinite number of machines sped off to repopulate it. The network of thought that had formed between the machines in the aeons of silence resonated with the new hope of organic life.
“Network of thought? The machines became one organism?”
“In a way… The collapsing universe brought with it enough heat and energy to power the machines ad infinitum. Still they reproduced, generation after generation. There was an evolution of sorts; the machines were no longer self-sufficient solitary organisms. The vastness of the universe was rapidly decreasing, so more machines were filling up less and less space. They began to adapt, evolving into smaller, faster vehicles for the emulated universes. Microscopic, then subatomic. They merged into what we would consider a liquid metal. Universes of subatomic machines, flowing through the physical universe that we know. They began to coalesce.”
“Coalesce into what?”
“Omega.”
It crashed into the ocean of a tiny blue planet in a tiny solar system on the outer ridge of a nondescript galaxy on the outer ridge of the macroverse. It would of course never know that it was from this very speck of rock that it had emerged in the first place.
The machine took its time repopulating the planet. Although the universe was collapsing, it would be a long, long time before any of these biological creatures had to worry about it. Emulations of the microorganisms were the first to be downloaded, and as they populated the oceans and land and air, the machine set about the process of recreating the larger and more important species that it carried within its emulation cache.
Millions of years, generations of machines. The planet was teeming with life once again. The machine and its mechanical offspring judged that it was time to recreate its most precious emulated cargo.
Millions of years, generations of man. The machines were ever-present and revered as gods. The new human race knew little of the emulated histories that had unfolded in the billions of years in the blackness between the stars. Mankind and machine co-existed peacefully, and the night sky was a dazzling field of silver as other machines populated other worlds with humanity.
“The night sky was silver with machines.”
“It was as silver as your eyes, Patra. The machines were everywhere, an ocean of vessels in the void between the stars, an endless network of silverthought. The collapsing universe became one organism because of the offspring of one simple machine.”
“It was your machine, wasn’t it? The original probe?”
“How did you know that?”
Patra shrugged her shoulders. “There are echoes of that past in the Enemy within me.” Zero-Four shuddered to hear her mechanical voice utter such a prophetic statement.
“Yes, it was my machine.”
“And now it’s your mission to destroy it.”
“Yes.”
A sky blackened by war and disease and centuries of gaiacide. The only lights studded the rim of the launch tunnel, and even they were murky in the dead air of the dying world.
“Almost time, Michael.”
“Yes.”
“There’s still time to change your mind, you know.”
“I can’t go.”
The earth shuddered beneath them almost imperceptibly. Men in clean suits ran to the vehicles and sped away from the edge of the launch tunnel, forty miles away. Michael took the binoculars from his eyes and wiped away the stale sweat that had collected on his eyebrows and in the hollows of his eyes.
“Starting final countdown sequence. Any more to board?”
Expectant eyes regarded him with almost pity. He shook his head.
“Shut down the upload link. Initiate primary engine test sequence.”
The earth began to resonate with the power of the massive engines that lay hundreds of miles beneath the surface. There could be no turning back now.
“Test shows positive across the board. Waiting for coordinate lock.”
The binoculars went back to his eyes. The edge of the launch tunnel looked deceivingly calm, bereft of the hundreds of clean-suited workers that had toiled over every inch of its interior for decades.
“Coordinate lock achieved. Planetary position is a go. Launch window open. Launch on your order, sir.”
Michael nodded his understanding. All hope for the continuation of the human species lay in the precious golden machine bundled safely within the launch vehicle. Millions of emulated humans living emulated lives in emulated worlds where the emulated sun still shined and the emulated water was still pure. Someday they would come home. They were the ark. When the planet had finally healed, they could come home and live again.
“Engage Gauss cycle in launch tower.”
“Gauss engaged.”