Moving On
by Dan Charles Wild
Daniel Charles Wild, otherwise known on reddit’s writing forums as user BecauseISaidSoToo, is a long-time contributor to Tall Tale TV. These short stories are some of the many wild tales included in his brand new short story collection, ‘Stories For Imaginary Friends’
Author page:
https://www.amazon.com/Daniel-Charles-Wild/e/B07QZPJM2X
Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/user/Becauseisaidsotoo
Other TTTV Stories by Daniel Charles Wild
https://talltaletv.com/?s=Daniel+Charles+wild
Beginnings
I’d been a part of the project’s inception, and when my condition was diagnosed as being terminal, I volunteered to be the first person to have my mind digitized and uploaded. Then I—or the code that identified itself as “I” would be contacted by the team. It worked. I am. I am waiting.
I’ll do my best to describe how it felt. Dying, it turns out, is a lot like falling asleep. There’s a spreading lassitude. A tumble of confused thoughts spiraling into absurdity, a sense of receding from everything. A feeling of arriving. Consciousness narrowing to a fine point, then waking up to emptiness. In the beginning I had no body and there was nothing to see or focus on around me. I was just a sense of self, a self that consisted of memories of what I had been, and a profound curiosity about were I was now.
I was surrounded by what a first appeared to be darkness, but upon further analysis I could see that the nothingness teemed with shapes and shadows. I could see or sense waves of energy and information roiling around me. It was an ocean of possibilities and potential, one that my awareness seemed to be moving through, or since it was distinct from me, I seemed to move across the face of it.
Bare with me, I’m struggling to understand and explain what it’s like. Words fail me though. But here and now, in this moment, words are all there is. In fact being that I’m nearly code, a program in fact, one whose awareness consist of these thoughts I’m sharing with you—words are all I am.
I waited a long time, adrift in this timeless void and personal eternity. I need something to entertain me, something to surprise me, something to give my life meaning, and someone to love. That’s why, at last, out of loneliness and boredom, I have started to manipulate the information around me. I am learning as I go, but in this place I can creat anything I can imagine. I need to start somewhere. I start with these words.
“Let there be light.”
Daughters and Sons
After the planetary wars, destruction of Earth and Mars, and the cultural collapse of the solar system’s network, the united colonies of the Oort Cloud sent out thousands of colonizing ships. Each ship was filled with versatile technologies, embryos for colonization, nanny bots to raise the children, and an adult technician in suspended hibernation to serve as a cultural guide and supervisor for the new worlds.
The ship’s AI was tasked with finding promising planets. Then the technician would awaken and survey the planet. If it was suitable, a medical bay craft of embryos and nanny bots would be deployed, and the technician would remotely program the nanny bots with the cultural objectives for the new society. The technician would then re-enter suspended animation for the next 50 Earth years, only awaking to check the fledgling colony, before moving on to the next habitable planet.
The recent planet was a desert world in a dual sun system. It was low on natural resources and heavy metals, had little wind and geothermal activity, and no oceans for tidal power. Still, its two suns would provide the power the colony required. If the civilization developed as predicted, it could support a large population, and power to the network of planets projected to form over the next millennium. It was a promising planet and be a nice addition to growing network of civilized worlds.
The technician deployed the medical bay landing craft and remotely programmed in the directives for the colony—stressing the importance of the planet’s unique energy options. The technician then unfolded the ship’s solar charging sails, and directed the ship’s nano-bots to create the next medical craft for the next planet. The technician then entered the hibernation chamber for the next 50 year span, excited to see the thriving community that would be born, raised by the nanny bots, and grow over the next five decades.
Awakening, the technician was surprised and disappointed. The culture was violent and primitive. They had dismantled the medical bay craft, used their versatile technology for weapons, and they worshiped the inert nanny bots. Worse of all, a closer analysis of the community below showed them to be a patriarchal society that oppressed its female members.
The technician soon realized what happened. There was a typo in the cultural objectives. Seeking to direct the colony towards solar power, the prime directive which should have read: channel the power of your suns, instead read: channel the power of your sons.
The technician grimaced in annoyance. Patriarchal power imbalances were the flaw that nearly destroyed humanity in the first place. The civilization below was tainted and would never be allowed to join the growing network of planets. In fact, its existence would be a threat to humanities’ expansion. Unfortunately, it would have to be destroyed. The technician deployed the nukes, and turned away from the monitors and wept for what humanity was, and what it had lost. The tears on her cheeks shined like stars.
Hungry Hungry Humans
The aliens began monitoring Earth when they received its earliest radio broadcasts. While human culture was for the most part inexplicable to them, what they observed was a thriving biosphere that had generated self-aware life complex enough to create technology capable of transmitting information out of the gravity well of the planet. Any emergent civilization capable of doing that necessitated monitoring.
They observed the increase of the dominant species to the detriment of all others, the world wars, the discovery of atomic power, the rapid build-up of greenhouse gasses, the increasingly extreme weather and ecological degradation, and the beginning of a primitive space program. These steps were all predictable developmental stages for a civilization. But then they noticed something odd—the planet’s mass seemed to be decreasing.
This was unusual enough for them to pay closer attention. Closer monitoring and analysis of the incoming broadcasts painted a clearer picture of what was occurring. The dominate species was facing food shortages and instead of limiting their population growth, they altered their DNA in a way that allowed them to convert anything into the energy they needed to survive. After that, their already large and seemingly ravenous population began increasing even more rapidly.
First the humans consumed the remainder of their planet’s species, biomass, water, and topsoil. Next they began eating their way through the surface of the planet and deep into its molten interior. Then, as their planet became increasing cored-out, using primitive explosives and small crafts made out of metal, they expanded to the planet’s moon, and the two neighboring planets in their solar system.
It was an absurd situation. One species of the biosphere was literally consuming the planet that hosted it. These creatures, seemingly unwilling or unable to control their population growth, had become a rapidly expanding bio-mass, a living slow-motion population explosion that was now spreading to the nearby planets.
Obviously it would be a while before the species would be technically advanced enough to escape the confines of their solar system. But being that it was likely inevitable that they would eventually, the aliens made the unanimous decision to eliminate the potential threat proactively. They detonated the solar system’s sun and the radio and TV signals stopped.
The problem was eliminated and the aliens turned their attention elsewhere. But an exploding sun creates waves of gravitational force and energy that pushes dust and particulate matter out into space. In this case, some of that matter was biological—humans in fact, alive and feeding on low density particles, hydrogen and helium plasma, electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, neutrinos, dust, and cosmic rays.
In the vacuum of space, the humans, their bellies full and their eyes filled with starlight, began to reproduce. Their population doubled, and then doubled again, and kept growing.
By the time the aliens realized the stars in the section of space the Earth formally occupied were going dark, it was too late. The vast and exponentially expanding cloud of humanity was growing, getting closer, and they were hungry.
Leave a Reply