Macrolife (35 page)

He sat in space, seemingly unprotected on all sides. Below him, the infrared galaxy was a swirl of ancient stars, a black floor patterned with white and dull red coals, except for the hidden center. He was looking toward the galactic black hole from the edge of a desert cut out of the center of the spiral, an emptiness twenty thousand light-years in radius, the intermediate result of the core hole's ravenous appetite.

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This is what remains of a quasar. Billions of years ago, supermassive star clusters within this galaxy core collapsed into a giant black hole; an accretion sphere formed. Electromagnetic forces are greatly intensified in sun-sized objects when they are pulled into large gravitational fields. Vast amounts of energy are given off when these objects are accelerated to relativistic speeds by the giant black hole's attraction; gravitational force intensifies electromagnetic forces, which in turn create the field conditions for the acceleration of incoming objects. The resulting emission of energy, 1044 ergs per second, is what powered the quasars, making them visible from all points in the universe.

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But as the central region of this galaxy was hollowed out, not all its suns were destined to be eaten immediately, whole or piecemeal, as were those nearest the core. For a time, a core hole settles down in a desert of its own making, until a slowdown in galactic rotation brings more objects toward the center, thus permitting new accretion of matter to begin. The moribund quasar may even remain quiet long after star formation has ceased and most suns have left the main sequence of their lives. When the galaxies rush together and the core holes coalesce, a superquasar will form, giving off the energy gained from the accretion of all the remaining matter in our universe; but finally this quasar will also quiet itself, because not even its violence can halt the final collapse of nature. The last black hole will swallow the remaining material of the universe; and since compression approaching infinite density in zero volume is not possible, quantum cosmology predicts that a passage into new space will be opened by the massive monoblock's intense field distortions, when all forces are again one force, permitting the outstream of expanding material in a fireball, a white hole depositing the basic materials of the new universe.

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The universal collapse will have the characteristics of every stellar object in nature. As the core holes coalesce, we will see aspects of a massive sun as it becomes a neutron star pulsar, quasar, black hole, followed by the expansion of the tunneling fireball
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A whirlpool into infinity, John thought as he looked into the galaxy's central darkness, except that infinity is not reached, the collapsing universe cannot squeeze itself into nothingness. He turned in space and looked at the gathering of macrolife behind him, millions of worlds readying to approach the ergosphere of the core hole, where time would slow for them and the line of experienced time would link the present to the time of final collapse.

Using the tachyon drive systems powered by the gravitational energy of small artificial black holes, the swarm of macroworlds would reach the ergosphere in less than an hour.

Move
, he said inwardly, giving the command. For a moment he imagined that he could feel the forward motion across the core desert, but it was only the blinking of space-time as the drive stitched through the parsecs, folding up the continuum to the central black hole, shortening space at the level of quantum structure. The force bubble brightened around him, and he knew that all the energy of macrolife was being directed into protective fields and drives.

The worlds were moving in to form a network of points in the ergosphere, surrounding the titanic black hole with a porous shell. Once established, the shell would continue to rotate swiftly; all the power of each world would go into maintaining its position just above the event horizon, an ergosphere of consciousness creating a time machine out of itself, its instrumentalities and the core hole's immense gravitational field. Time would stand still within, as the dark universe outside rushed toward its end.

The view ahead was now one of complete darkness, a sudden wall in front of him; in another moment the wall seemed to be a floor only a few feet below; then he was looking up at an impenetrable ceiling. He was rushing across the face of this darkness, but there was no sign of motion. He had almost expected a reflection of some kind, as if the black lake that would soon swallow all creation were a mirror. The resolve to outlast a short-lived nature was now complete; it was too late to turn back.

He called up multiple rear and side views. His companions glowed red and white, as their energy sources strained to deliver the power that would maintain the worlds in their positions. He reached out and looked inside the nearest world, a hollow sphere almost a million kilometers across. Here beings of pure energy circled the small artificial sun, their social structure sustained by ageless instrumentalities attached to the inner surface….

He withdrew when he heard the whispers, a rising chorus of comments and questions, increasing toward a critical mass of confusion. Thoughts radiating from every world assailed him as he tried to listen.

“…How long, how long…?”

“…Who am I, what has happened…?”

“…Why are we like this, alone? Where are my hands and feet, why can't I see…?”

“…Will anyone speak to me? Please, someone….”

“…Is this a mistake…?”

“…Someone turn on the light. I only want to sleep….”

“…Wake me, wake me, will someone please wake me….”

“…I went to sleep and my life disappeared, all my youth, all the light…the light, where is the light…?”

The pleas were all around him, an invisible mob pressing into his mind, crushing his thoughts.

 

“What is happening?” John asked.

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These within us have regained earlier states, extreme individuality, like you and Blackfriar. They are confused and lost, until
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“Until what? Say it!” He was filling up with pity and sorrow. The suddenness of the feelings frightened him, making him fear that he would be torn apart.

“…Help us, someone help us….”

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Until…we can reintegrate them…after the end, if we survive
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“…Aaaah!”

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lt will grow worse near the end. This has been coming for a long time, since the rediscovery of death. The larger aggregates rule the smaller, ever since the largest fragmented
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He was in a dark room with a million people, and he had to calm them before they trampled him and one another to death in panic.

“Quiet!” he shouted, wishing that his mental shout might brighten into a light.

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It would be as if an individual organism from your time fell apart into single cells. In that sense all multiorganismic life is macrolife, except the single cell
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“How many can we lose before a world becomes incoherent? How many worlds before all macrolife becomes incoherent?”

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Most of these we have already left behind…. In a sense we are already less, since each grouping in each galaxy exists for itself now. In every galaxy, only a million worlds may have reached the core, to make the final effort. Most have not. I can hear them dying in the galaxies, John Bulero, those who are readying to destroy themselves, and those who are fragmenting into unconscious states—and yes, I hear those who are doing as we are doing, even though they doubt. The waste, the terrible waste! John Bulero! Those of us who can still see a larger course, we must hold everything together, until
—::

“What is it?”

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I have lost another part…of myself, a small part, but there will be other losses
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“I won't fail you! Can you go on?”

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Yes
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Then he reached out, and his consciousness passed through all the worlds of the ergosphere, a tachyon lash flashing from one container of consciousness to another. Now he felt the presence of those who were still strong and organi2ed; he felt their excitement, expectation, subdued fear, their trust and understanding. Through them, he was macro-life, the sum of all intelligence in nature, now making a final stand against death. He was all consciousness and hope, gathered here from all space-time to strike back at the monstrous oblivion that had dogged all life since the beginning of time. Outside the ergosphere, beyond this shore of rebellion, the universe was dying. Outside, he knew, time was racing forward, minutes for millions of years; yet to those intelligences still outside, time dragged onward as slowly as ever; by now it was a universe strewn with dead worlds and insane mentalities.

He thought of a hydrogen gas cloud expanding after the birth of a universe: gravity, the force that will later collapse all space-time, is already at work, gathering gas into galaxies, forming stars in the spiral arms, lighting the fires that will, for a time, resist the force of gravitational collapse with the heat of thermonuclear expansion. A universe of stars and galaxies comes into being. Life arises, and one day startles itself with self-awareness, growing in knowledge and puzzlement, as if something had designed nature to be finally unknowable, even while providing an endless stream of knowable particulars. The mainspring of cosmic evolution is the energy released by gravitational collapse; it lights the stars and waits for their exhaustion; the end is present in the beginning. The drive behind conscious intelligence is the perpetual inability to complete its knowledge; futility fuels purpose. The inability of mind to overcome certain built-in obstacles is the main feature of existence. He wondered if it could ever be any other way, anywhere. What would an existence of perfect knowledge, translucent perception, and complete power mean? It seemed almost…if one were to design a universe…it would have to be partially opaque, incomplete, knowable to its intelligent life only in little pieces; it would make no sense to reveal everything at the beginning. Knowledge had to expand in the minds of observers as the universe expanded, only to collapse when the universe collapsed. The failure of knowledge lay in its impossible hope of completion, as universal physical collapse lay waiting in the heart of all matter; there could be no other state but incompleteness. All this would be true, he realized, even if they passed through the end of this cycle; a final, explanatory power would always be denied to systems of knowledge built by finite intelligence. Yet so much, he thought, is known. For a moment he wondered if anything could exist beyond the cycles of one universe; could there be any way to explore the possibility?

Desolation swept through him. Perhaps this kind of survival was impossible? Maybe a kind of natural selection was at work here also, and survival would go to those who understood the problem best; perhaps the life now remaining had waited too long? He looked into the darkness, the place where the whole frame of nature would be shattered and crushed, and he felt small. As nature had given birth to conscious intelligence, and to macrolife, so now macrolife held all that was left of living nature within itself. Throughout its rise, mind had been dominated by the god of nature, tormented by natural cruelties and dead ends; no amount of worship had done any good. Now nature's obstacles were back in full force.

A coldly impersonal resentment grew in him now, confirming his earlier resolve to endure and prevail. If the entropic decline of this cycle could be overcome, then the limiting god of nature could be defeated again and again. Surviving intelligences might continue to develop, even though they arose within the absurdities of scarcity and through the murder of other forms, growing into consciousness marked by a sense of expulsion, the residue of evolution's adaptive programs.

He saw himself playing in the green forest of the hollow. Yellow sunlight painted the moss-covered ground with slanting beams. He was ten years old again, only a moment ago, a strange creature in the dawn of time, knowing already that he would not have to die or grow old and useless. He could learn anything he wanted to know, as long as he devised the right questions. In school they taught only questions—all the old questions, all the newest questions, and the context of asking them. There were questions which had answers; some had more than one answer; others had no answer; and about still others it was not known whether they could have an answer or not.

The trees and moss in the curving hollow had no interest in questions or answers; the animals, preserved since the passing of earth, were easily satisfied here. The trees seemed to care only for the beauty of their proud stance; with the sunlight on it, the moss seemed to be dreaming….

He wrenched himself forward across the eons to the present. A universe of intelligences stood at his shoulder, as well as a universe where every black hole had been still another leak in a sinking ship, as inevitable as each gray hair in a human head, prefiguring in miniature the fate of every atom in every star and stone. The time line of every piece of matter arched forward across time into the final black hole that was now forming.

As he strained to pierce the darkness, his eyes drank in a faint light. It became brighter, and he realized that he was seeing the growing glow of the titanic quasar forming at the end of time. All the remaining matter in the galaxies was falling into the black hole as it merged with one core hole after another. The universe was getting hotter and hotter; now, he knew, macrolife was leaving the ergosphere, pulling back to a safer distance until the quasar quieted itself for the last collapse.

The sky brightened with energy, became white, bathing the shrunken universe with radiation and heat, washing by the protective field of each macroworld like a tide around smooth stones. Then, in the rush of time, it was over; there was no matter left to be pulled into the center. The quasar was dead, unable to generate more power….