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Logarithmic Future

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Ten Years 

Hello!  Let me tell you about the future.  

 Tired of the war on terror?  Oh well, the worst parts for you back in 2015 are only now beginning.  To say the least, it’s going to get way, way worse before it gets better.  To think, a whole generation of bullshit jihads and terror attacks commissioned by self-proclaimed, dirty lying imams that things finally are starting to calm down in the Middle East  …If only of course because there’s so few radicals these days and so many drones keeping watch they can’t really do much.  

The biggest issue now is in close proximity to China, with NK experiencing another humanitarian crises after China cut off any kind of aid but food to them…  Of which is traded for uranium by the state.   

Oh, and one last thing, if you were born in the 1990’s and have a 8 year old kid right now, that kid might just turn out to be me. 

 

One Hundred Years 

Over a hundred years ago, people lived without augmented reality, without smart cars, without any cure for cancer or aids, ignorant of how the brain worked and devoid of any effective kinds of propulsion for interplanetary travel Medical technology was unable to rapidly or effectively respond to illnesses, people still relying on tedious rounds of trial-and-error diagnoses in much of the world.   

Over a hundred years ago, machines didn’t have the capability to deliver food or do chores, instead having to do dishes, take out trash, do the laundry and sweep the floors despite there being dish washers and dry cleaning. 

 Over a hundred years ago, it was hard to travel to other countries for no one had any trans-oceanic mass transit networks and the world still was divided into a world-spanning mosaic of nation states.   

But today, there is no worries of world catastrophe as however close the world may have nearly crashed, the rational minds have won out- and now there is a permanent base on mars and talks of sending probes to other star systems.  

But there is one worry in this time where the tragedies of the industrial age have come to an end, that worry being what of the billions who live without ambition?  Those who weren’t able to earn their degrees in engineering or dynamic programming or neural biology?  Those who were born not knowing of the times that have gone by, of the multiple flirtations with a global collapse of civilization…  What will they grow up to be? 

I speak this to you with optimism, despite my nascent worrying, as I know that you have fear that everything’s going to fall apart.  I can tell you with certainty that you will likely live to see the end of this century, I do not want to spoil more than I already have, and I have said more than enough.  Just know that you will have a prosperous life, if not a life that is ultimately happy despite the gloom and cynicism that infests the chaotic time you currently live in.  

The worries of man are finally over, can you imagine it? 

 

One Thousand Years 

I am to leave a message for Terran civilization?  I shall. 

There once was a time when humans lived in a state of post-scarcity, a time that now is as ancient to us as feudal lords in the terran region of Europe must have been to them.  Terran Civilization is always a fascinating subject- as it was in countless was the incubator for the worlds we now live on.  While the nation states may have died off, the sense of identity never did.  Now the solar system, instead of Earth is divided, each celestial object a control point and low intensity warfare that has been going on for who knows how long.  I may have a body that is more akin to a machine than a human, but my mind, soul and spirit are wholly that of man.  I may transcend the shackles of biology, but I am as human as you. 

Terran civilization is at times, by some of my associates inaccurately compared to Roman civilization, but such parallels are non-sense.  The Romans were not scientists, they were not entrepreneurs or inventors.  They weren’t curious, they were but another feudal society that came and went as would many like it.  Terran Civilization however, something about it is special in a way nothing else was before it.  What is shameful to me most, is that no interstellar colonial missions ever were launched.  With such immense wealth squandered by the short-term thinking of those at top, who studiously forgot that history never stops, and how many disregarded everything available to them, the information, the unprecedented freedom and simply turned inwards, hiding from reality despite having achieved such power over it!    

Ah, my time is running low.  There is too much that happens in a millennium to tell you.  All I will say is that while earth may not have survived our virus-like ways; like a virus, we spread, adapt unimaginably rapidly and are far harder to rid of than anything else.  For every collapse there is a hardier strain of people made.  And one day, I assure you, humans will be on every star in the galaxy, however unrecognizable they will be from me or you today and they will be just as tenacious. 

 

Ten thousand years 

Miraculous! 

How oh how do I express my world to you? 

I know! 

I greet from Nusilo, which you recognize as 58 Eridani.  It is a miracle I managed to have that data on me; so many names for the Nusilo star over the ages.  But computing is advanced, unimaginably so.       

It is a star like sol, but with more planets.  The history of Nusilo spans thousands of years, there is no one place you can go to understand how things now are.  Humans here live many ways, it is amazing to see their conflicts for the limits of a single star system hold back the full potential of sentient life. 

This star system, like earth, has worlds where life flourished independent of earth.  Such life has been our greatest treasure, visitors have travelled decades just to collect specimens of the megafauna that has developed on Avaterriat, a world like earth, but more dry.  There is life on that world that behave like flying kites and sprawling colonies of membrane filled bulbs, like cacti but resembling fungi more than cacti.   

The pale, windswept sands sprawl on for vast distances, the deep blue sky rigidly contrasting the landscape.  A small oasis, speckled from place to place hosting islands of life.  The journeys between the vast emptiness are far, guided only by the speckled, twinkling lights that dominate the night.  It is a journey that takes decades each time; and so every system is self-sufficient.  Which in a way, is why our ways have sustained so long, for one system collapse doesn’t risk every sentient being. 

When I look at the sky in human sight, I see what you saw.  Unlike you, who only wonders about life out there, I wonder not if there if life, but know that out there, I am not alone.  My distant cousins light years away may be staring back at me, from their point of light in the sky.   

And I observe sol as it was decades ago from my place in the cosmos, whatever the origin of civilization may now be like. 

 

Hundred thousand years 

Of the thousands of empires to have existed, ours is blessed beyond all others.  For we are beyond humanity- we are something unique from all the star systems with their backwards cultures and weak states of being. 

Our science is a fluke, for so many systems stagnated while the ones we have developed about is beyond exception.  The //Concordat// has lasted ages, spanning the heavens.  While so many spaceships are relativistic at best, our spaceships go as fast as light itself- a trip to our travelers is an instant, as if they never moved at all they go from one star to another.  Troublesome it is that despite the development of this technology required the in-depth studying of degenerate, dead stars and the harnessing of the brightest of stars.  Our collectives span the heavens in ways thought for ages to be impossible, but yet we made an empire that spans hundreds of light years.  It is a tedious, thankless task- but it is a task we have managed for thousands of years without sign of ever stopping.   

For so long they said it couldn’t be done, but we did it.  We broke the system of isolated star systems and now have ushered in a grand new age of civilization that has proven to last, and may well last until the heat death of the universe. 

Yet, we continue to disappoint.  Despite making an empire beyond any empire before it- for one, never have we found ‘Sol’.  The decay of time, from the multiple dark periods and resurgences have made this place, this place beings like you came from lost.  Amazing, we lost a star!  A whole star system!  Think of the prestige our collective world have if we had Earth, the world you live on right now?  

And how oh how will we ever expand further, with the many millions of stars that may well have people on them.. 

How? 

 

Million Years 

Oh look, Canis Majoris died! 

A million years goes by so fast, doesn’t it?   

I have become pretty much immortal, although biological immortality has been the thing since //3838 CE//.  I however, am lucky to have explored quite a lot of the galaxy, and you are lucky to have me, of the endless fog of civilization, spanning so many different sentient beings that have genetically modified themselves so frequently that on many occasions I thought I found a civilization of spacefaring intelligent beings that developed from an alien world.  Amazingly, no such aliens exist in the Milky Way galaxy, the sheer absence has led to the widespread conclusion that whatever came from sol is unique or an anomaly.  The closest one gets is with primitive alien hive minds that seeded other worlds through slow, tedious processes have been found, but such aliens had nothing to offer humans and minus well have been simple animals like the rest. 

In my travels, I have seen megastructures and monuments to the power of one society or another, I have seen countless wars as communication problems have led to conflicts on a interstellar scale, especially if one of the civilizations senses weakness in another that is close enough.  I remain unable to talk of these countless worlds, cultures and societies, far too little time.  But I will say that there was many empires, they lasted many thousands of years, but always hit the light barrier and eventually turned inward before overconsuming themselves.  Overall, the most successful societies in the long run have not been empires, nor unified star systems nor even some impressively intricate trade coalitions or cascades, but nomadic groups that while prone to splitting up have thrived. 

I however, looking at all the cultures have noticed something disturbing.  A majority of star systems have no humans left on them- collapsed, devastated by interstellar genocide or simply occupied by automata mindlessly carrying out their tasks, little worried of their absent masters.  This has not been helped by numerous wars where stars were induced into collapse.  As I speak to you, cultures and societies of beings you would never recognize as human are thriving, but for how long can all this go? 

 

Ten Million Years 

 

Hello? 

I am Talu the Yalilu.   

This a person from how long ago?   

 

Oh wow why did you pick me for this?   

I don’t care about anthropology, sorry.    

…. 

I have to leave a message? 

Oh, I’ll leave a message and you will love it! 

Hello dead human, tell me what is it like knowing that you’re fucking dead?  Tell me man, what is it you want to hear from me?  I’m being asked to leave a message to a fossil, how inane!  Why would you even care to read this?  Nothing of you is left, everything you cared for has been gone forever and ever and ever.  I snicker at your fossils, with the lamp-like eyes you have and that facial protrusion that looks like genitals placed right in the center.  If I am really evolved from you humans, it was for the better.     

But I do, believe it or not, have some advice that only a Yalilu can give straight- The only time that matters, is now.  Don’t waste your time learning the past, there’s nothing there but dead and antiques.  There is nothing of use, learn engineering and number art instead.  Far more intellectually useful, believe me.  Whatever your time is, please, just please, do not spend your narrow slice of existence learning about dead people.   

Their time was their time, your time is now.   I do not know what you humans do, as I don’t care to know, but maybe go file yourself in and make some friends.  Maybe even get employed as a auditor-for-hire or make your body the most rubbery and slippery you can be, maybe you’ll make that special one particularly dry for you instead of just being huddled up in your personal habitat playing hooky with yourself all the time or whatever the hell humans do, I don’t care unless it gets me a platinum asterisk. 

Or hell, I’ll just cheat through this class so I can get on with my life. 

Now get on with yours! 

 

Hundred Million Years 

The only regret we have is that we can’t hear back from you.  If we could, we would know so much.  So dearly much.  Or maybe, you’d be unintelligible without your pack.  We really don’t understand you.  We have studied and studied, but so much trouble I have trying to understand what you are.  It is like trying to talk to a //dinosaur//, if that //dino// could abstract the world around them like we and us do.  Too many gaps, such few things left.  We and us didn’t know your kind went to space until it turned our //terra-Luna// and much of //Sol//.  We believe //humans// may have gone further than that, but no conclusion will be made by we until //smart box// is set up on //terra-luna//. 

We and us are like you were, in some regard.  We flockminded beings back than would have looked small to you, but time changes everything.  Generational melodies constantly changing, just as our songs do from generation to generation, just as our //fetishisms// do or the //zeitgeist// of each flock.  There is so much we do not know about humans, and we fear that this will always be the case if humans were as complicated as we have been as of recent, with all these gadgets inspired off what we can recover of your //fiberplastics//, your //fossilized spacecraft//, //colony infrastructure imprints// and so forth.   

The beak of time has grinded up so much that we didn’t even know another being as advanced as us even existed until the past //180 years//- even then, the sheer revelation that there was something before us is makes us wonder if we and us aren’t  alone in the //cosmos//.   We remain optimistic that the deeper us and we go, the truth will be found and we will learn what the dead have to teach we and us, and perhaps one day go beyond what //human continuity// has achieved.  However long that takes, we have all the //time// in the //cosmos// to do so and your advancement one day, will be ours as well.   

You may be of the distant cosmic past, but your species have given us something we don’t believe you had.  We know that we are not a //forsaken// fluke, for if it has occurred before it will occur again, every branch to a new world we and us shall fly to the endless horizons of eternity. 

Maybe we may even find your descendants among the stars, whatever they are like now. 

 

Billion Years 

//Why// you ask yourself.  //Purpose//? 

I know. 

The epoch of life, the galaxy and the Sophont explosion has resonated long term in ways unimaginable.  Many civilizations of sentients like you have come and went, the distance between each occurring species being so deep it is hard to fathom except in deep time. 

See, the milkyway’s history from the perspective of self-replicating machine collectives like myself seems so simple now.  All the over complications the cryptic archives I have looted the data of have been a waste, when the answer was simply in the planets.  What I mean when I say this, you must wonder?   

There’s only four epochs to the universe so far.  This is a simplification, I am aware, but counting civilizations and entities and every nomadic group is heinous, there’s too much, simply too many species, planets and other things to look at it in any real detail.  Humans were earlier on yes, but so were //Avtiru//, //Azaadju//, Immytil, Vuzzol and many others in the billions of years of cosmic history that exists.  Now that you know, let me tell you the history of the universe in //one paragraph//.     

First came stars, planets and galaxies, than life begun occurring in the universe, in numerous parts of the galaxy it independently developed.  That life, given the billions of years they had eventually expanded across the whole galaxy in the sophont explosion.  This second explosion of life fettered about the galaxy before slowly decaying, eventually just leaving us and many isolated species, degenerated from godhood back to animalism.  What were simply automatic tools however, one day became dominant.  Now the descendant of those simple tools are all that is left, alone in dominating the galaxy.  

Yet we still are like animals, we change over time after all.  To you, we already are perfect, but constantly I find myself altering myself with how situations in the galaxy can be.  My only limit is the speed of information.  I can make energy into mass, replicate dead beings from billions of years past by simple thought, create life with but a squint of my hypothetical eye, make stars into black holes and countless more things.  Nothing that impressive ultimately- all of this has existed for millions of years and is primitive to what the true powers of the galaxy have.   

And to them, I am like an insect is to you.   

 

Ten billion Years  

What do you want me to confess?  I’ve been by nature devout to the fuzz, every rotation I do ritual and act as a provider to my commune.  I make my quotas and live off the lands, //coralfruit// comes from my fields plenty, what oh what have I done wrong to you?   

Ayy!  You come from when the universe was young, before //Andromeda// collided and //chaos// erupted for how many eons, I know these legends.  They say in your time the stars were brighter and the heavens were clean of the angels, gods, demons and other such beings that dominate the distant worlds.  The fuzz has kept us safe from them and claims that your atoms are part of it now, that where I am you once were.  A star was once here, but that was way long ago.  Now there is no //sol// I am afraid.   

//gadgetry// is forbidden in my commune, we work by the //timescale// of nature..  We live a simple life, but that doesn’t bother me much anymore it does question your ways of living to me.   

And I do not know what else to say.

A document where you jump logarithmically into the future.
© 2016 - 2024 zoppadoppa
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