Грегори Бенфорд - The Final Now

Vastly later, One approached He and She again. “We dedicate these young plasma civilizations to you.”

She said, “Excellent! Your works are wondrous. We are happy to witness them.”

One rippled with a bright frisson of pleased color. “We estimate that the young ones can persist for as long as the older life—born of silicon and even raw dust—can endure.”

She said, “True, at least until the protons decay.”

One beamed. “After that, there is no fundamental reason that information cannot be lodged in electron-positron plasmas, or even atoms made from them. So the plasma forms will go on eternally. Your laws demand that we change our physical basis. We the faithful shall now transform into those diffuse structures. For your eternity, as promised.”

She said, “No, not eternity. That is the Law.”

One rippled with puzzlement and gray despair. “But if even You cannot—”

“We wrote all this into the Beginning,” He said to One.

This had been clear even in the long, bright era when light flared everywhere. The accelerating expansion of space-time, which was essential in the planning of all this, none the less yielded a more constricted long-term future. For long ages now, galaxies had faded from view, ebbed, and shifted more and more into the deep red. They seemed to run slower and slower as well, due to the expansion. But now all that even He and She could witness had frozen. All about them lay galaxies still, dark and ever-colder, seizing up.

The One said with fizzing, fast energies, “But what of we!?”

Both She and He realized that One spoke now for all mortals, including the giddy plasma forms that fizzed and jostled in the darkening skies. One and his kind arose from the intricate wealth of biology, and had sensed the existence of He and She behind the lattice that was this universe. They had once lived their small lives in small worlds.

“You,” She said, “our faithful.”

“Yes! One said. “We believed that the universe had to have come from a Someone. You.”

He said, “We two made our Creation so it led to this encroaching night, also.”

“Ah…” Carefully, One went on, “So how can we persist? The energy stores of your universe are thinning out as the expansion accelerates.”

She said sympathetically, “Any conceivable form of life would have to keep ever-cooler, think slowly, and hibernate for ever-longer periods. So with you, as well.”

One did not seem to think this was an answer. “New, fresh life—yes. But what of we?”

She noticed One’s troubled flex of color and desire. “Those mortals who believed that this universe had purpose, and so gained a place within He or Me?”

One said eagerly, “Yes!”

The two regarded each other for a microsecond. So this question came at last. “All winds down,” He said in a long, slow way. “Energies mingle and collide. Those drive life in evolving systems. Such vexation is necessary—it builds structure, a fountain of bright wonder.”

One said slowly, “I… suppose.”

He went on explaining, for this was a large lesson—one He and She had been forced by logic to learn, back before the Beginning. To have such a vibrant universe, they had to dwell within it, not stand separate. “But you must see, there is a price. Creation ebbs. We cannot question the Law. We made it, because a finite yet unbounded system—this, our Creation—must have such Law to exist at all.”

She said, “Otherwise, Creation does not generate interesting structures.”

“And that was our aim,” He added. “The reason we did all this.”

One said quickly, as if fearing the fading amber tides in the vexed sky would cut it off, “You made this all for eternity—that we believed! You said so.”

She corrected, “We did not. Yourselves, all you mortals, you said so. Not us.”

One insisted, “The assembled Host, we who worshipped you—we thought that time would spool on for eternity.”

“Eternity depends upon the system of measuring it,” She said abruptly.

One paused. “This place with You—vast spaces beyond measure, time within grace—is the wonder we all hoped for…”

She said, “We designed for that, yes.”

One said softly, “…as our eternal resting place.”

He saw One’s problem. “You are finite beings. You do not know of the many ranks of infinity. Within those vast legions, the band of infinities, some entries are larger than other. It is the only way that Measure—which you would call mathematics—can be ruled by logic.”

This idea came buttressed with transfinite realms of suggestion. He let these spill out into the One, so that the finite being could perhaps understand. That small blessing might help in what was to come.

“Thank you—” the One said, then fell silent as it digested the realms of infinities. These cascaded around it in analytic rainbows. She and He watched them have their impact. Ramparts of theorems, clusters of corollaries. Axioms stacked in stretching libraries of rigid reason. In this rumbling cascade One struggled, juggling concepts beyond any finite being.

One fought up from this and finally said, “We all, the Host—we have dwelled here in your firmament. In wonder. Surely that is the promise all our faiths held forth.”

He and She said together, “We are constrained. For this universe we made to give forth such vast wonders, all had to run down.”

One said rapidly (for the clocks of eternity were racing now), “But you saved us!”

She said, “From your little deaths, yes. Not from the necessity of Law.”

One paused, as shadows drew longer around them, and hissing colors lashed up on wrecked horizons. Then One said in vexed tones, “We have lived on, far past our wretched small beginnings. Lived in ecstasy. Lived in our private deliriums of desire, sensation, comfort beyond measure—”

“We know. We designed it for you,” She said flatly.

He recalled. Long ago, One—and the multitude of mortals who had lived their self-aware lives since the Creation—had learned the durable crafts that logic taught. The secret of their survival amid cooling space-time lay in cooling down. Those spirits who had faith did dwell in their small ecstasies, yes. They learned as Creation itself ebbed, using up the Beginning’s store of energies. Being frugal meant that those who by faith dwelled with He and She could dole out ever-smaller drops of the precious, finite energy necessary to live, to think. The mortals called it Heaven.

The mortals thought in digital systems. They were like rachets that, once kicked forward, cannot go back. As the universe cools, they eventually could not kick the rachet far enough forward.

“But this betrays us!” One said as loudly as a finite thing can.

“No,” He said, “not betrayal. The final truths stretch beyond your understanding. That is all.”

Silence. One rested for a tick of time. Streamers arced through it, but brought little pleasure.

Shuddering with pale joy, One said, “I… I know that. We all do.”

The three of them enjoyed the play of space and time, a froth of events.

Then One said, uncertainly, “We… we were promised—admittedly, by texts we wrote ourselves, though they seemed inspired by You—eternal life.”

She understood, but said firmly, “To bring you forth at all demanded a universe that cannot last.”

“But—eternity—in heaven—that is what we thought—”

“Your thoughts are finite, as you are.” He knew that this last era was the moment to be completely clear, as fading redness grew around them. Stars now burst in their final finery, and galaxies shuddered in long, acoustic waves. Dark motes ate at the hearts of the last star swarms, frying in the sky.