Infinity & Divinity

Prologue:

In all the long history of life there has been struggle, always fighting for energy and resources against the entropic nature of the universe. The very first lifeforms on the planet Earth had to contend with a very young, very hot planet that cared nothing for their survival. For every cell was inevitable, save the ability of these cells to replicate themselves. Those that survived multiplied, diversified, and immediately the struggle against the life-taking universe was then joined by the newer struggles of life against life. Almost everything that has ever lived has lost this struggle entirely, leaving no descendants.

It was only by chance that humanity emerged from this chaos, roughly 4.3 billion years after the planet was formed. Their intellect walking hand in hand with their idiocy. They measured their own histories in mere thousands of years, scarcely able to fathom their true age, or the age of the Earth. They looked to the skies and the Earth and saw minds like their own, shaping their very lives, choosing which babies would live, which sides would win wars, which rivers would flood, which kings would rule. They could not understand that the universe did not care about them, that it does not pick winners and losers.

But the universe would eventually do just that. Lone amongst all the humans that had ever lived, that would ever live, one human was born at just the right time to escape the basic struggle against entropy. He would break free of the struggle that had claimed all life before him, to become that which humanity had long searched for in the universe: he would become a god.

By sheer coincidence, he did not perish with most of his contemporaries. New technologies and medicine extended his lifespan, and his knowledge of evolution and extinction enabled him to lead himself and others to adapt humanity to the mass extinction that nearly destroyed humanity. He nurtured their environment and their society to new heights, and just as his life was running out he was granted a reprieve.

Humanity had finally developed the technology for eternal youth. Though not immortal, this human and his followers were no longer fighting against time, and they used this new gift to further develop their sciences, and eventually travel the stars.

Yet it was in the vastness of space that this one human, alone amongst his companions, would learn the difference between eternal youth and immortality. His vessel suffered great damage in a far away solar system, killing all those that he knew, and stranding him far beyond any chance at rescue. Left with no hope of returning home, and no one to share in his voyage, he made the decision to replicate himself. His ship would be crewed by his own clones, and in time they would carry themselves to every corner of space.

Now numerous and dispersed beyond measure, this human (or humans) could now never die a simple by accident. Yet, they had still yet to conquer their final enemy. All this time the entropy of the universe had been steadily increasing, from the very beginning of the universe, and it would continue this way for all time. No matter how many clones were spawned, no matter where they would go, eventually there would be no surviving the of heat itself.

Eventually, after countless innumerable species had evolved, and gone extinct; after the last stars had formed, died, and ceased to burn; as the edges of the universe spread, and spread, and eventually began to recede into each other; the universe eventually became so cold that the very chemistry that sustained our lone, yet numerous human eventually could not continue much longer. Without emotion he and all his remaining selves at last surrendered themselves to their final sleep.

Yet this was not to be their end, nor the universe’s end, not truly. For in the great crunch that would finally bring the remaining pieces of the universe together, the last frozen remnants of this human would merge with the new singularity. It would last an eternity, and also no time at all, before a second big bang would occur. It would be billions of years before the universe had cooled enough for the universe to understand what it had become. Our lone human’s consciousness would awaken to find that he had somehow survived; he was now everything, and yet he also had nothing. He was a god, but god to nothing.

It would be billions more years before the first planets would form the first life, yet the more he observed the more he began to realize what was actually happening. This second big bang had occurred in exactly the same way; everything was being formed in exactly the same way, from the largest black hole to the smallest quark, everything was coming to being exactly the same, and ultimately moving toward the same end several billion years down the line. Everything would be the same… everything, except for god. This god knew now that he would endure every renewal, that he alone in all existence was truly eternal. So what was the point in just silently observing? Regardless of what he did in this universe, the next would reform the same way unless he interfered again. So he decided to tamper with the universe for his own amusement. He created new worlds, and new species, deeply fascinated with his experiments. He subtly influenced the evolution of alien life to create wondrous organisms that could never have evolved on his old Earth; great dragons, colossal sandworms, microscopic sentient creatures. He did all these things and more, and took a great interest in their evolution for a very long time.

Yet beneath it all he still longed for the mortal existence he had long since outgrown, for a consciousness like his own, for a companion. It wasn’t when the first life on Earth had finally reformed, 10 billion years after the second big bang, that he finally knew what he would do. He would wait four billion more years until he could reunite with his oldest friend in the old universe; he would wait for himself to be reborn.

Yes… he could wait for that. He would wait and together they would decide what to do. What they would do with eternity.