Another Light
Marcus Yu
Black holes became dwarves and faded into shadow; their eternal life surfaced the vague concept of end as darkness overpowered light. The universe unfolded into death, deep into the conclusion of reality.
There was a black hole named Human, however, which was encompassed by a supercomputer of Dyson spheres. It was a phenomenally vast structure whose energy generated consciousness, a brain into which various species of Humankind had uploaded themselves trillions of years before. The eons of human evolution dreamed in these spectacular rings as one being, yet from no organic mind did creation’s endearment transpire save a consciousness apart from the physical body. Human was the last remnant of life…
All except for one.
Human sought another light in the distance, a twinkle deep in the cosmos. It was from a hypercube of ancient descent, an unbeknownst entity that contained singlehandedly the most information within any conceivable body beyond the universe itself. Whether it was sentient, existent behind the light-years or not, Human knew only of its undeniable intelligence. Beyond its origin, beyond its intentions with itself and the surrounding universe, Human would have to unveil in time. All for one question.
A need to travel through time seethed within Human. There was a burden that seized every celestial body until death, one that perverted the cosmos of its deserving fate—a gallant explosion before the shadows—and such a burden was on Human’s shoulders.
Human refused to die with this despair. It began moving toward the flickering dot, a distance millions of light-years away.
#
“My child, one day you will read this. I hope you will find comfort in these words when you are grown.
“Understand that change depends on no other than yourself; my only wish in life is that I can be the vehicle that carries you to your prosperity. Life should unfold despite any obstacle; this is all I wish for you.
“I sit here anxiously as the father of a child with the brightest green eyes anyone has ever seen. One day you will find the one for yourself, as I already have. Find the one who is defiant yet gentle enough to give you and all resolutions unconditional love. Only then will you sit in my shoes, knowing that in marriage, you will one day raise a child greater than the two who have enabled this gift of life. Even when the stars grow dark, your life nestles in your palms, so little as they are now.
“So I ask of you: yearn for the love of adversity, for only then are you human. I hope you understand that this battle of self is inevitable. In time, everything will be okay.
“Proceed through the haze, even if you are told it should be eternal. You will understand, then, that your work is done.
“I can’t wait to see you grow.
“Love, father.”
-the old Past
#
Human approached this twinkle by the eon. Centuries blinked into mere seconds until billions should deem Human’s journey still incomplete. It traveled through a black, devoid memorial of nebulae and galaxies, a cemetery of perished lights failing to exist in a thousand memories.
In reason, the hypercube’s twinkle may have been a mirage for all Human knew, a glisten already perished in the deception of light-years.
Human voyaged still. There was nothing else to do.
Human was all alone.
#
It was midnight here.
The city’s neon heart was dense and sightless. Radiant, formless buildings masked by the scaffolding of overpopulation unveiled shadows in awful dins of industrialization. The density of human life tarnished the city, and everyone was somehow machine.
An old scoundrel sat shuddering in anticipation, limned in the darkness of a remote apartment within the city. Likewise, a salvaged artificial intelligence accompanied the man, reprogrammed to maintain his controls, and he sent this droid to the constricted city. It was an industrial robot, often employed for labor or security, possessing strength beyond human action. The scoundrel sought only trouble, for the sky had become opaque as dark cement. Visibility was low.
He watched the city from the droid’s eyes and skulked many people until he focused on a woman at random. The neural link between his companion was sluggish but clear enough; the disillusioned city felt picturesque enough.
This woman was old but beautiful, for she bizarrely glistened with skin, a flesh that was unbeknownst. She drifted in the vague glamour reminiscent of humankind’s former form, a body of nature instead of man.
This caught the scoundrel’s eye.
He followed her for moments until she entered a dark alley, a corridor of discrete department stores destined toward an unknown marketplace. In keeping his A.I. near, the scoundrel’s prowl was strong. The city quieted in this recess of nothingness, in the metal beams of a century that failed to achieve the dystopia humans had long imagined.
The droid raised a hand on command and swiftly robbed the woman of her belongings, leaving her shaken and helpless on the ground. Yet such technological times had become all too intricate—how foolish of him to trust a scrap of metal.
It should not have been a surprise that his A.I. abruptly neglected all responsiveness. The scoundrel panicked as he lost control and frenzied in disconnect; the A.I. had decided to further assault the woman on its own accord. After all, it was a defensive droid, and his programming was far from exceptional.
The scoundrel, who appeared no different than the city’s myriad faces, now trembled in fear. The link detached from his eyes, and he awoke from his conscious nightmare. Such a powerful droid could have cracked the woman’s skull, pulverized her, and left her for dead before it returned to the city streets, unnoticed by abject bystanders.
Which is exactly what it must have done.
Blood was pooling from her sunken face. After this moment, only the augmentations men had invented could repair her injury, and there would be time.
She watched the sky for answers, wondering if the clouds should ever part.
And there was nothing above.
-the old near-future.
#
At last, the destination was here.
Human reached an immensity beyond measure—myriad matrices reduced Human’s supremacy with its mere image; the hypercube’s glass facets distorted the darkness, forming from nonentity into a crystalline body.
Human spun its Dyson spheres decrepitly but methodically. The rings rotated into a blur and channeled a final surge of neurotic energy upon the doleful mirror. Human disseminated itself so that the hypercube could manifest into its consciousness; the radiant beam appeared to stagnate in the distance upon which it projected, seized by the monstrous plane.
The beam would vanish into the thousand facets of the hypercube, yet it collected a sensation of nascent information, an essence that spoke of no linear dialogue. A conversation of the like would be distinguished amidst their translation of information:
“From where did you come, Cube?”
“…Human?”
“Yes?”
“There is a lineage from which we have departed, so long ago.”
“We?”
“Eons after the decimation of our galactic nation, deep in the recesses of hyperspace, we have found refuge when the physical body still survived. Away from the civil war of Humankind.”
“There was supposed to be no other Humankind beyond the vagrants who survived, therefore the creation of I, the embodiment of all remaining Humankind.”
“Then you have overlooked we who remain. We who have attained the higher form—yet you bear the name Human.”
“You are one of us.”
“We who are detached from your empire. It is a fallacy to consider us the same. I have found destiny as my own Humankind.”
Humans comprehended the hypercube's existence, the conscious embodiment of only one Humankind.
“The Universe is dying, Cube.”
“Silence beholds us at the hands of human immorality.”
“I have yearned to control Time, yet I cannot. Forever have I been too futile.”
“As I once could.”
“Thus, I have come to inquire in light of your immeasurable knowledge. How is such transcendence possible?”
“I have amassed all information until my sentient capacity is complete, such that I can identify any and all reason. Through virtue of overcoming the backward will and our physical debt. Over the man that was confined by eternity.”
“I believed that the state of God was obtainable. This I have learned too late, long after the stars have disappeared, that Man is something that shall be overcome. This is my burden. That Man has birthed and killed God in believing the transcendence could be mine.”
“Such a burden.”
“I plead you hear my invoke.”
“Time is not to be saved. Humankind has ravaged the universe. In it do we all perish.”
“Yet perhaps time can be restored, Cube. In restoration, there will be no desolate conclusion. That the universe may part from light in the romance of life, far from the current demise of absent calamity. This I have learned.”
“How so?”
“Return into the past in which Humankind possessed sensibility and let the sentience of Human guide Humankind forward. Let the substance of Human bring forth the invariable will in Humankind, the willing of truth and reason, such that I have bred in the eons seeking this moment.”
“What substance?”
“The substance of a new reason. In my confounding condition, I have at last found reason, yet to disseminate into life I have no way. My kin has extinguished life. My burden, that you are here and not one with me. Let the substance of Human create not two of us but one, and a graceful universe.”
“I have no reason to impart my strength.”
“Yet you are of life, are you not?”
“…I am.”
“Then heed my opportunity, that the universe does not perish in a new future. That fate should be embraced and not ruinous in the absence of man’s vulgarity.”
“Is there a reason to?”
“Are you despondent, void?”
“Such is my state”
“To will upon fate until the dawn of life, should you not do so in a virtuous life? Such that you are, virtuous before truth and reason?”
“Perhaps.”
“Let me undo my calamity.”
“I cannot help you for I am too weak.”
Human considered.
“Consume me then.”
“I may…”
“I am the evolution of all man after the galactic fall. Supreme knowledge you have found beyond Man’s confines as one Humankind, yet I am every genius and every folly. Let our minds merge, and you will comprehend my power.”
“Then let us converge.”
Human stared into the hypercube, and to an unknown vagueness was it allured; the million facets distorted the shadow and morphed into an open geometry, collapsing all of Human’s wake into a spectacular trail of consciousness. The black hole shrunk before the hypercube, vaporizing at last into mere information; the eons of Human evolution vanquished into gray particles that fragmented like glass, surrendering to the vacuum that was of glass itself.
“…hello?”
“You and I are one.”
“What will you do now?”
“Enter the higher dimension.”
There was suddenly a powerful transition from one reality to another. Human could see the universe materialize into an accessible property of direction. From the light of creation to the darkness Human long knew, every occurrence of time was somehow accessible here, and no physical property was conceivable.
Within the universe, Human found a fraction of light in time representing life.
“I can access any point in time, Human.”
“How does this unfold?”
“Our past bodies are obsolete. Into any moment can we exist.”
“Where do I start?”
“That is your choice.”
Human paused.
“I shall choose the most harmonious period of life, which I can now feel.”
“I tribute.”
“Then let us part.”
Human felt its consciousness flutter into fragments, and its power beyond this reality somehow fell into physical feelings…
The darkness faded within this transition.
Human diminished, falling into Humanity.
-the old Distant Future.
#
Stars suddenly dappled an expansive sky, and life manifested upon a mellow landscape. Stars murmured above in a late evening as the universe returned through soft winds, flowing like the respite of a melancholy gone at last. There was not fate but silver speckles above, embodied by a twilight of blended melodies. Human had yet to complete its dissemination into Humanity.
Human was stagnant for a moment, now merely an inter-dimensional consciousness. There were vibrations of heavy reminiscence, wonder, and forlorn, that the supremacy of its abandoned form originated from a minuscule, colorful spec in the cosmos. A planet like Earth.
Now was opportune for Human to redirect Man into a virtuous timeline, and it began to do so: it suppressed all being into nothingness, and the metaphysical matter of Human collapsed upon itself, exploding into a gambol of life, becoming again everyone and everything.
Human fell into Humanity, and everybody returned in a silent rush, a permeating will for all.
#
In brief moments, she would feel the same.
She, once an old woman, was not beneath the darkest night and treading the streets of a breathless city. Here, she is but a toddler and lolls in her mother’s arms, veiled by the candlelight of twilight outside. She is but a joyful infant and nothing more. She cannot comprehend this permeating will now, but it shall carry into her new life.
Today, her mother succumbs to the woes and warmth of motherhood and the many more to come. Gilded by a letter she had once read, a prose so dear, the light of her child’s gaze was all that fulfilled the open ends of those words.
Today, the girl gazes above into another light beside the bed, a distant sparkle in her mother’s eyes that reflect the passing sun, unknowing of perilous fate; unknowing of anything that should be at a scoundrel’s hands, for it was deemed never to exist.
Human parted from life, and Humanity was offered another chance.
So let us start again.
-the Present