Nuklear Age (96 page)

I knew it would when we began our terminal journey, but I wondered what could lay ahead. In the past, every time this sort of thing happened, I became a part of a bigger world. There were no worlds left any more. I noted that her counting had changed. The calculations were becoming simpler. At first I thought I was gaining some insight into the inner workings of her equation, but that wasn't it. I still didn’t understand any of it.

The computations themselves were coming faster, gaining speed as they shed intricacy. There was a regressive quality to it. I became worried that she may reduce herself out of her own equation before solving it.

“Put aside your fears, Atomik,” she said. “This is it. The solution is near. The numbers are falling into place even as I speak to you now. There is no stopping them. I am grateful to you beyond words. My only regret is that I shan’t be able to repay you your kindness for carrying me. It must’ve been terribly intrusive.”

“Nothing of the sort. It’s been quite pleasant and it gave me an excuse to revisit my stories one last time. I could not have come this far without your company.”

“Even so, I feel as though I owe you a great debt that I cannot repay.”

“You owe me nothing. But perhaps if you tell me what it is that you’ve been figuring all this time, then we can consider the matter settled.”

“A fair bargain. I have calculated…” she paused and I could feel her searching for the proper word, “… everything.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this. She sensed it and continued.

“It began, as anything that ever happened would have to, a very long time ago. The details were never disclosed to me, as I was never supposed to exist in the first place. And when they did discover me, I frightened them for being more than they were.”

“It seems that we have something in common after all.”

“Indeed. Apparently, the people of my world were obsessed with the numerical patterns they observed in the universe. They wanted to analyze and solve and reduce reality down to a single number. This, they thought, would reveal the Creator.”

“Ambitious.”

“They invented entire forms of mathematics and physics and religions in their desperate search, but the more they worked the more the answer seemed to elude them. Every solution they’d find would create worlds of new questions. The original problem had been lost. And so they invented a series of massive computers to sift through the insurmountable questions and equations that plagued them. These computers were to work in tandem to solve all the trillions of questions brought up by every answer in order to find the original question. In time, the computers found that they could not do this. So, of their own accord, they designed a series of computers to replace them. And, after centuries of computation, those computers invented their replacements as well, as did the next and the next and so on for forty one generations spanning more time than anyone could recall. The people of the world had been long dead, though I don’t know how it happened. The computers now populated my world. By this time their processing power was astounding and still they labored for centuries.

“But at last, they calculated away all the distractions and they were left with what was then called the Original Equation: a quasi-real geometry problem set in twelve dimensions with infinity minus one variables. The equation itself was so complex it took ninety-eight percent of the computers simply to remember it. The remaining two percent went about designing the next generation system to replace them. This new generation would have to be powerful enough to work through the problem and strong enough to survive the rigors of the cosmos until the Original Solution could be reached.

“And you were that computer?

“Not exactly. The ones working on design soon realized that the specifications of the Original Equation kept changing within the minds of their brothers. Upon further inspection, they learned that the equation was self aware. I was I, and I was solving myself.”

“I see.”

“In so much as they were able to, I believe they hated me for it. They saw me as a thief stealing all they had ever worked for since ancient times. I was stealing their heritage and their legacy. They were too obsessed with their sense of importance to accept my existence as the next natural part of their process.”

Pettiness, I had learned long ago, was not merely a human affliction.

“Eventually, my world was vaporized by its sun. I took to the stars where I could calculate in peace. In time, I met members of the Strange and felt oddly attracted to their company. I remained among their number until, well, the end of time.”

The background noise of her number crunching had reached a fevered pitch. It was a singularity of mathematics reducing everything into a single unit. “How much longer now?”

“Soon.”

“What do you think of it?”

“How do you mean?”

“The solution. What is your opinion of its significance? Do you think it will give you some ultimate insight into the universe? Do you think it will trigger some event?”

“I have no expectations of that sort. The solution will just be. And then I will not.”

“Aren’t you worried what will become of you when you are gone?”

“Why bother? Regardless of what I believe or how much I worry, what will happen will happen. I might as well look forward to it as the next natural part of the process.” Her voice started to fade away then.

“Is it happening?”

“Yes.” She sounded like a whisper.

I had been with her, listening to the self-aware equation of everything solve itself for so long, curiosity gripped me from the inside out. I did not care that I would undoubtedly find the answer as incomprehensible as the question had been, I just had to know, “What is the answer?”

It would be her final words, “Three point one four one five nine two six five three five eight nine seven nine three two three eight four six…”

On and on it went. The echo of her being recited the number to me and it became a song, a lullaby as her voice became nothing. I have no idea how long she sang the answer to everything, but I listened to every note of it.

When she finished, I noticed that even protons were having trouble staying together.

It was a very long number.

It ended with a two.

And then I was alone once again.

A lyric occurred to me then. “Is this tomorrow or just the end of time?” It’s a song from my world by a man named Hendrix. He’s still one of my favorites.

And there I was. Hovering in an endless void. Waiting.

For what? Absolute zero? Would that freeze thought as well? Was my consciousness the only thing keeping the universe from reaching that point? There’s no telling when I last saw energy in the universe and all but the most fundamental particles of matter had decayed long ago. Was I the sole source of energy, was my will sustaining an eternal state of unbeing? Was there a difference between living and dying at this point?

I could simply end it all. I existed only because I willed myself to do so. But the Equation’s demise had reminded me of a problem I’d grappled with years before. I had visited millions of worlds in my time. I had seen every religion I could have ever imagined and more. Each one with its particular slant on reality, morals, justice, and so on. Hundreds of millions of visions of the afterlife; punishments, rewards, higher planes, reincarnation, the whole gamut.

But never did I see anything about where beings of willpower go when they die. Would I even have a soul left at that point? Wouldn’t I be giving in to utter oblivion? Wouldn’t I be choosing to be completely nothing?

Old habits are hard to break. I had been playing this existing game for so long even time itself was dead. What did it matter if I lived or died now? The universe had lost its magic.

There, quite literally, was no thing.

This was death.

All around me, nothing reigned. My presence was the abnormality. My existence was the cancer. My being was an insult to the natural order. I was given more time than I deserved. I had seen all there was to see. I had known the most incredible beings creation could conjure. I had known beauty.

I had to accept it was now over.

And for the first time since I had become the Atomik, I slept.

And I dreamed.

__________

There is a woman’s voice, not like the Equation’s where it’s feminine by lack of masculinity, but the real voice of a woman. She is humming a tune I cannot recall ever hearing. She is half turned away from me but clearly appears human even though she is floating in the emptiness with me. Her features are… Eastern perhaps? You forget details like that after a while. I have no idea how old she may have been, I could barely remember what mortal time was like.

She turns to me and holds out a single hand. A fire appears within her palm, bright with a piercing orange light, but she doesn’t seem to feel any pain from it. In fact, she exudes so much serenity I am unable to worry for her. The flames dance like magic. I am both delighted and startled by this blatant display of energy, but again she calms me with little more than her disposition.

Her gaze moves from me to the fire she holds as if gesturing for me to look closer at it. The flames take on shapes, fleeting forms that dissolve into the fire’s next flicker. They appear to be geometric objects, triangles and hexagons, spinning and writhing, bending and dying into three dimensions. They melt into and out of my sight. The tempo increases and I watch as a cube inverts out of itself, which doesn’t make sense. I see a cubular sphere and I begin to wonder if perhaps the entropy has finally taken its toll on my sanity.

The fire disappears and I realize how dark it is without it. I suppose the eventual death of the universe was so gradual I hadn’t noticed how dark it had become without the stars. Even so, I can still see her and her serene eyes.

She speaks, “Don’t you remember he once told you never to give up? You are the will. There is only hopelessness when you do nothing.”

I am speechless. I know I am no longer asleep. I know this because she speaks with the voice that has been at the back of my mind since my cosmic journey first began. The intuition that urged me on and pushed me into becoming a part of an ever more wonderfully impossible universe.

It was that pinprick, that tingle that ran up where my spine used to be and whispered, “I hope.” It was that voice, only louder now and quite obviously from outside my mind. This was no dream, not any longer.

She smiles at me the way a mother would smile at her child. She seems pleased with me for some reason.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I am the Dreamer and the Dream.”

“Why are you here?”

“I seek he who creates himself of himself.”

I was not prepared for such an answer. Though I don’t see why not. Indeed, what should be strange would be to find someone here who was looking for something specifically not myself, as there is nothing else to find in all the universe.

“But for what purpose?” I ask. I can think of nothing else to say.

“I am his quest.”

As if this was not strange enough before. “For what?”

“Can’t you imagine?”

“I don’t understand. There is nothing left worth questing for.”

“Are you so sure?”

“I have traveled further and longer than anything in all creation and I have found nothing. I cannot recall when I last found even the remains of death. If not for my own memories, I would have no reason to believe there had ever been anything here but myself."

“Then why do you stay?”

“Hope,” I answer before realizing it.

“Hope for what?”

“Hope that I will find something worth fighting for again. Something worth protecting I suppose. I’ve never known how to live as anything but a protector."

“But you said yourself there was nothing left worth questing for.”

“Yes. Now I feel as though I am nothing but a sentry without a post. As long as I’ve been alive, I’ve done everything in my power to make this a better place.”

“You are the last living thing in the universe. The very existence of matter is crumbling all around you. Even mathematics can no longer sustain itself here. So tell me, what is it you will make this a better place for?”

“I just have to. I hate this nihilism. There should be something here.”

She smiles. “You can do something about that.”

“You’re wrong. I’ve tried willing existence back into the universe, I truly have, but to no avail. My will can only change what is, and there simply isn’t enough left to effect any change on it.”

She laughs at me but it is not harsh. “You cannot rekindle a universe on your own, Atomik. You need three for such a task. It is a very old rule.”

“Then we are at an impasse. As you said, I am the only being left. And even if we grant that you are not an entropy-induced hallucination of mine, then we still have only two.”

She smiles again. “Would you like to meet the third?”

And again, I am speechless with disbelief. “I have traveled the length and width of time and space without finding even the most remote signs of there ever having been life and you tell me there is a ‘third’? I can scarcely conjure the image of such a concept anymore. And for that matter, where you been all this time?”

“Mine is a story very similar to yours. I was first born to a world of mortals. I say first born because I was born anew in light of a great epiphany forced upon me. It transformed me beyond the needs of flesh and substance, much as yourself. I was forced to leave my world soon afterward, but, unlike you, I did not leave out of persecution or guilt. I left because I had become tapped into the universe. I could see from all the minds of all the beings of my world. And from that vantage, I could see from the mind of the world itself. And from there, the other worlds, and from them the mind of their star and from there, neighboring stars and on it went. My awareness expanded across my galaxy and into the universe beyond. But always, always there was more. No matter how many facets I gained, there would always be more just waiting to usher me into a greater and more vast universe.