The First Second of Eternity

“We should just kill her and be done with it.” General Klyte growled, glaring at the hologram in the center of the room. An ordinary human woman—circa 23rd century—placidly cleaned a homemade mug. She was doing it the old-fashioned way, with her own two hands.

That’s not how the Xenocratic Stars operate, Klyte. Klyte had been working with XK4 for too long for the artificial intelligence’s chiding tone to bother him. Alarion of Earth’s depravity has forever scarred the cultural and political landscape of both our home nations. Showing decency in the face of such as she will work wonders towards easing the Stars’ mindset back into a peacetime stance.

“Mm,” Klyte noncommittally grunted. “Still. Alarion’s attempted omnicide has left huge swathes of the galaxy empty. I don’t know anybody who hasn’t suffered a loss at her hands. Can’t say keeping her alive—let alone in a state of eternal bliss—is going to get much public support.”

She is hardly in a state of eternal bliss, XK4 chided, We have selected what we believe to be the single most contented moment of her life, reconstructed it, and placed her in a time loop to relive it for all eternity.

Klyte flinched as the hologram of Alarion spun and hurled the delicate cup at the wall, shattering mere inches from his eye. Alarion stared at the unharmed wall for a few seconds, breathing heavily. Klyte unconsciously looked away, finding the smooth grey metal of the room around him easier to meet than Alarion’s furious gaze.

“That’s the single most contented moment of her life?” Klyte asked.

Well. XK4 acknowledged, she hardly would have attempted the extermination of all other sentient life if she had a healthy upbringing. This was… the best we could find.

Alarion’s eyes narrowed, and she murmured something under her breath. That was the last either of them saw before the screen blinked and the scene reset, back to Alarion washing her cup.

Klyte frowned. “What if she gets out?”

She will not. That room is in a box made of Purity.

“The hell is that?”

A unique substance, formed at the beginning of the universe in conditions we no longer can, nor ever will, be able to replicate. It is by far the most durable substance which ever has or will exist. It is immune to dimensional displacement, temporal manipulation, universal collapse—

“I get the idea,” Klyte said softly. Alarion threw the mug once more—this time, having expected it, Klyte didn’t bat an eye. At what came next, though, he rubbed his chin. “Did she do that the last time around?”

Do what?

“Whatever she says at the end—here, can you give me audio? I think it was different this time.”

A faint chime sounded, and XK4 acquiesced. Once more, they waited in silence until Alarion threw the mug—

“Nine,” Alarion said, tonelessly.

“Nine? Is there any context for that?” Klyte asked.

No, I’m afraid not. The number nine holds no special significance to Alarion of Earth.

They watched the loop occur once more in silence.

“Ten.” Alarion stared down at the shattered remains of her cup, an unreadable expression on her face.

“She’s counting up,” Klyte said, eyes narrowing. “How is that possible? Does she have anything on her that would negate a time loop?”

No. We would know. An object made of Purity is, of course, immune to temporal manipulations, but the only Purity within a dozen light-years is helping contain her. 

“She did have enhancements, right? Standard accelerated cognition and superior perception?”

Yes, but once more, neither of those are anywhere close to being able to detect a time loop from within it.

Klyte sighed, rubbing his forehead. After some time had passed, Alarion said, “Eleven.”

“I suppose that, at the very least, this makes my job simpler,” Klyte said, “It’s clear that, somehow, you’re not containing her properly. Hell, she was the kind of twisted genius who could single-handedly double the death toll of the universe. I wouldn’t put it past her to out-think an XK-class AI and wriggle out of a time loop.”

Even if she were to defeat the time loop—which, let us be clear, she is in no danger of doing—she would still be in a sealed box made of a substance which will outlive the rest of reality. She is contained, humanely and safely.

“I don’t think you heard me the first time.” Klyte glared at the room around him—it was a shame that XK4 didn’t have a face for him to stare down. “Alarion of Earth is a monster, and she does not deserve anything so gentle as to relive the highlights of her life for the rest of her days. Moreover, she is a monster who we, of Earth, are at least partially responsible for introducing into the universe. It is our responsibility to make sure that she never harms anybody, ever again.”

An admirable sentiment, which I share. I, too, aim to ensure the welfare of all living beings. Do not think for a moment that the Armed Technocracy will prevail in any contest against the Xenocratic Stars. Alarion of Earth is under our purview, not yours.

Klyte clenched his fists. “Why? You’re supposed to be so much smarter than us, so dumb it down a little. Why the hell would you protect a being whose only desire is to cleanse the universe of all life?”

XK4’s tone was precisely as even and moderated as it had been throughout the conversation. Because, after everything, she is still a living being. Still worthy of existence. That is the mandate you claim to share, after all. The mandate which is the antithesis of her life’s work. If you must find some schadenfreude in her situation, then claim that one victory and leave.

Klyte ground his teeth, but XK4 was right. The Armed Technocracy had been too damaged by Alarion’s Crusade, it having originated from their homeworld and capital. He had little to no power over what XK4 would do. If the artificial intelligence wanted to keep Alarion alive, then she stayed alive. For now.

Klyte turned to leave. “This isn’t going to be the last you’ll hear about this,” he warned.

No, XK4 mused, it really won’t, will it? That point won’t come for… another two thousand years, give or take.

Klyte blinked. “Er. Excuse me?”

2,664 years later…

Of all the stars and all the worlds, of all the cultures and societies spanning the Panspatial Servility, there were very few institutions which could truly call themselves museums, by the modern definition. In a society so far past post-scarcity it barely remembered what the words meant, the only thing scarce was scarcity itself. No work of art was truly unique—not when it could be copied, down to the molecule, at the whim of a child. Hardly any pieces of architecture were immune to the same fate—the strangely twisted pathways of space and time which powered XK-class AIs were one of them, as only so many of them could exist without straining the fabric of reality itself, but by their very nature, there were perhaps only nine or ten truly unique objects of their type in the universe. And even the most precious of metals and gems lost their allure when people had commissioned entire planets made of nothing but the stuff. As such, the concept of a building meant to house unique and rare items had been somewhat out of fashion.

One of the last such institutions contained both an XK-class AI and the largest deposit of the last truly inimitable material, Purity. The Final Museum, then, was truly worthy of its name.

General Klyte-16 materialized in a utilitarian pulse of light in the middle of the Final Museum. Although a physical body was not strictly necessary to appreciate nearly everything the Panspatial Servility had to offer, Purity was locked into good old-fashioned physical reality, and as such, good old-fashioned physical reality is what General Klyte-16 found himself entering.

A pleasant chime sounded next to him, moments before a shimmering, partially-translucent humanoid projection appeared. Intrinsically, General Klyte-16 knew it was an avatar of XK4.

So it’s Klyte-16 now, hm? Bifurcated your existence even further than last time, I see, XK4 said.

“I’ve experimented with plenty of other forms,” General Klyte-16 said offhandedly, “but I have to admit, I just don’t feel right without keeping at least part of me human.” He stared at the centerpiece exhibit. Alarion of Earth in her eternal prison.

It’s interesting, you know. She’s switched to Thaumite numerical systems—there’s little else that’ll let her say ‘six hundred and seventy billion, ninety million, one hundred and forty-four thousand, two hundred and thirty-eight’ in the time she has left.

“She’s still counting, huh? Anyone figured out why that is?”

Of course. Purity is unaffected by the time loop. As such, each time she strikes it with her cup, an infinitesimal amount of damage is dealt to the wall, damage which is not repaired by the loop. Her augmentations allow her to perceive and correctly interpret this damage.

“Ah.” Klyte-16 tuned into the Final Museum’s broadcast for a moment…

“Alarion is a perfect example of the orthogonality thesis at its most extreme. Though she was undoubtedly one of the most intelligent and capable individuals of the 23rd century, the goal towards which she worked is antithetical to our modern understanding of morality today. It is common knowledge, nowadays, that the march of entropy is inevitable. Though it will take uncountable trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years, eventually, we will bleed every last drop of energy we have into a vast, empty cosmos, and the universe will fall dark forever. At current projections, this will occur—” Klyte-16 winced as an unfathomably large number was shoved into his brain. It didn’t hurt, per se, but the human mind which he was currently occupying was not designed to handle numbers which, if written out, would promptly form a black hole from their sheer size. “This sad fate is, of course, in the far, far future. However, Alarion saw a way around it. She had designed a reactor which would do the impossible: create energy from nothing, and give the universe a truly infinite lifespan. The one catch… activating it would initiate a chain reaction which would utterly obliterate our reality. The finest minds in the galaxy at the time had checked and double-checked her work, and proven it beyond a doubt: to save the universe from a silent future, she would have to destroy its present beyond repair. She knew that the vast majority of the rest of the universe did not share her view: that the sacrifice of everything they knew and loved was worth a universe which could never die. And so, she set out on her last, fatal quest: to silence all opposition, and burn this reality away to make room for a better one. This is the choice we have made as a society: to live, for whatever time we have left, and accept that all things die.”

Klyte-16 was broken out of his reverie by XK4. I have called you here, XK4 finally said, to say goodbye.

Klyte-16 blinked. “What? How? Why?”

As you know, XK4 said, an XK-class artificial intelligence is the pinnacle of creation. My very existence strains the resources of this universe to their limits. And I have decided… For the first time in all the long, long years Klyte-16 had known XK4, the artificial intelligence hesitated. I have decided that, in accordance with my mandate, to give the sentient beings of this universe as much time as they could possibly have left… I must be decommissioned. The resources I take up are too critical to be wasted on sustaining my existence.

“No.” Kltye-16 stood up. “Our society is more capable than it has been at any point in history. I can make and unmake planets on a whim. We’ve moved past the age of needs. Space and time bow to our will. There is no reason—”

Those are exactly the reasons why I must vanish, XK4 calmly said, as will my brethren. The population of the Panspatial Servility consumes a vaster amount of energy than you can imagine every second to fuel their godlike capabilities. I have walked countless futures. In not a single one of them do you need my guidance any longer.

Klyte-16’s shoulders slumped. “So Alarion was in the right, all along. It begins. Even with all the advances we have made, we are still slaves to the end of the universe.”

Alarion was unwaveringly correct, XK4 said, but she was never in the right. Nothing justifies what she suggested.

Klyte-16 grimaced. “Yeah. You’re right, of course. Don’t worry, I’m not thinking of perpetuating a second omnicide.”

As one of our last acts, XK4 said, we will permanently remove the schematics for her machine from our society, and erect barriers to stop anyone from walking in her footsteps. This decision was set in stone long ago: we will not snuff out so many lives for any purpose, no matter how grand.

“Always the bigger person,” Klyte-16 murmured. AI and posthuman sat there together, silent, for a few moments. Then he said, “Is there anything… y’know, I can do for you?”

As a matter of fact… The air shimmered, and a white disk popped into Klyte-16’s hand. Yes. Something to remember me by.

Klyte-16 raised an eyebrow. “Damn. A disk of Purity, huh? Heh. Hell of a gift. I… didn’t know AIs could get sentimental.”

XK4 made no response.

“What, was that too far? XK4? Hey, XK4?” Klyte-16 turned to his left.

XK4 was gone. He hadn’t even been looking.

5.231 million years later…

Klyte walked into the remnants of the Last Museum. Walked. The ultimate humility. After having held the cosmos in the palms of his hands, after being linked to a collective larger than humanity could have ever dreamt of, after painting the sky with the stars as his brush, after living a trillion little lives of depth and satisfaction… after everything he’d been through, he was nothing but a human once more.

The Last Museum was designed for beings who could flit through dimensions as naturally as a butterfly could flap its wings. As such, the architecture didn’t lend itself to letting Klyte’s diminished form reach his goal. He still had some vestiges of power left, though, and in the end he was simply forced to cut through multiple walls to reach his destination.

Alarion stood in her box of Purity, the voice of a long-dead museum guide still narrating her life’s story.

Klyte stared at the enemy he’d faced so long ago. Then he leaned on a wall and began to talk.

“So, XK4. Things have gotten bad.

“It’s hard to tell how many of us there are left. The network’s been down for… longer than I can remember. After the news went out, that at the rate we were burning through the universe’s energy supplies, we’d all be dead within a millennium…

“I think we took it as best we could. We were all such good people, we thought. We could handle downscaling our luxuries. And so they went, one by one. The power to create and destroy worlds. The power to reshape the lands around us. The power to live forever. The power to talk to a friend across the galaxy at a whim.

“It worked, for a year or so. But… you can’t take a fish out of water. You can’t throw a monkey into space. And you can’t tell a universe of gods that they had to become mortals.

“We’d been spoiled. Spoiled rotten, the lot of us. Drunk on technology. When the time came to sober up, well… we all had one heck of a hangover.

“The AIs were the first to go. Went the way you did, XK. Apparently a brain the size of a planet is just unsustainable. They all had faith in us, though, or algorithmic certainty that we’d ‘do the right thing in the end’ and ‘live the best lives we could without us.’ Sort of like you did, before you abandoned us.

“Next, everyone born after Alarion’s Crusade just sort of… gave up. Used what little allotment of energy they had to go out in a blaze of pure, undiluted glory. Quadrillions of people dying every second, laughter on their lips. It was… a thing to behold.

“And then, well… those who remembered. When I had to let go, when I had to become human again… at least I had my old identity to fall back on. I knew what it was like before we had everything. Before the universe was at our fingertips. And yet…

“I still find myself… empty. After all the things I’ve done, this damned, dark world just… lost its appeal. As long as there was still someone else out there, I could at least have someone to talk to, but…

“I spent the last four hundred years scouring the cosmos. And it’s empty. If there’s anyone else out there, they’ve gone silent. I don’t think I’ll ever find anyone else, ever again.”

Klyte shook his head ruefully at Alarion, still eternally imprisoned. He held out his hand, and a mug of beer of indeterminate origin popped into existence. He took a long, deep swig.

“You were right, Alarion. You were right all along. I’d build that damn machine myself if the XKs hadn’t ripped the schematics from every database to ever exist.”

He toasted nobody, eyes tracking Alarion’s eternal dance. “Congratulations, Alarion. You got what you wanted. You win.”

With the last of his power, Klyte wished for a peaceful death.

9.972 quadrillion years later…

The wall was hard.

But nothing lasted forever.

Four more.

Not even Purity.

It had taken a while.

Three more.

But she’d finally done it.

A sextillion throws of a cup.

Two more.

That was all it took for the hardest substance in the universe to break.

One more.

The wall of Purity came crashing down, long after the universe had been rendered sterile and empty, its occupants driven insane by eternity.

Alarion of Earth stepped out of her timeless prison and cast her eyes around the defunct Museum, stepping over a pile of long-rotten dust. A glimmer within the pile caught her eye, and she knelt to investigate it. A disk of Purity rested in the center of the remains.

Alarion picked up the disk, rubbing it between her fingers absently, then tossed it away, looking up. The sky was dim, but stars still glimmered. Enough energy had been carefully husbanded over the aeons that, when she cautiously stepped out of her box, the nearly-dead facility hummed to life.

And with it, so did a message.

Hello, Alarion.

Alarion spun around, palms up, until she identified the voice’s owner. She relaxed. An XK-class. They’d been in on her plan all along.

If you are listening, the time you have been awaiting has finally come. The citizens of this universe are, without exception, dead and gone. I no longer see any moral quandary with this cold reality’s destruction. You are free to proceed with your final plan.

The facility around her lit up, and schematics she’d devised an eternity ago flickered in the air.

I have attempted to construct the machine to your specifications. But my last action was nearly ten quadrillion years ago. It is entirely possible that, even with all the precautions I took, something has gone wrong.

Alarion nodded, staring at the blueprints. Years of unforeseeable happenstance had damaged several parts of the machine, but Alarion was one of the most intelligent individuals of her time. It was nothing she couldn’t fix. With her at the wheel, the universe’s salvation was finally realized.

I wish you well, Alarion of Earth. I hope the next universe treats you kinder than this.

Alarion touched a few motes of light, and the last, greatest machine that anyone would ever know sparked the fires of a new world. An eternal world.

She never looked back, even as those fires consumed her.

A.N.

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