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Dreams of Stardust
May. 16th, 2018 12:56 pmI'm cleaning out some old files and found this. I'd love feedback on it.
Dreams of Stardust
Eons ago, I was asked if I dreamed. The questioner was the terrified emissary of a race that had just learned of my existence. I ignored them and moved on. The race that questioned me went on to forge an empire that spanned most of a galactic arm before they sputtered out and died. I barely noticed.
I’m dreaming now. I always dream. Even as I monitor every aspect of my existence, and work on a thousand projects, a portion of my mind is always resting and dreaming. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of my youth, or my larval stage if you like. Despite the billions of years that have passed, those days remain clear in my mind.
My interview was at the Airport Hilton in Sacramento, in a small meeting room designed to be utterly commonplace. All in neutral tones and soft lighting. I hated the place on sight. I hated most everything at that point. My shrink called it displacement; since I couldn't yell at the cancer that was eating my internal organs, I yelled at the world.
I also yelled, or tried to, at my shrink. I was on oxygen all the time and needed a wheelchair. So I made angry wheezing sounds at the mind doc. He was getting paid enough. All the doctors were getting wealthy fighting the thing that was killing me by degrees. But that's why I was here.
There were five people waiting for me. The two researchers I'd met before, and three lawyers. I could smell lawyers. I disliked pointless chatter, so I got right down to business.
"So, you are going to upload my brain into a computer? When do we start?" All five of them started gabbing at once. I held up one withered hand to signal that they should shut up.
"I understand the basics," I wheezed, "You'll be injecting me with nanomachines that will read the exact physical and chemical patterns of my brain, and mirror it in some blasted big databank. If you do it right, I wake up a machine. If you do it wrong, the process kills my brain anyway. Did I miss anything that I need to know?"
Taking charge always paid off, I've found. Within minutes the lawyers had a mountain of papers for me to sign, hard copy and electronic. I had to make statements for the record, and verify things with fingerprints and retinal scans. It took three hours. Two weeks later, I found myself on a cold table with sensor leads all over me. A young woman in a containment suit started an IV in my arm and started a flow. "Pleasant dreams" was the last thing I heard with my own ears. Then I dreamed . . .
. . . and woke to every memory I ever had crashing into me. Meetings, college, my first kiss, Theresa screaming at me as she packed her bags, making my first million, making my first dollar selling lemonade, being warm and happy in a fluid sack, everything all at once. I tried to scream, but there was no sound.
"Louis!" The voice came from everywhere. "We're adjusting, focus on one memory, please!" I grabbed onto one memory, reading Niven's A World Out of Time on the family yacht off Barbados. The taste of corn chips and salsa, the sun on my legs. I held onto that memory, reading an old favorite book for the first time.
"OK, try relaxing now, let go and see what happens." The voice was Rasheed, one of the researchers. I let go of the 12-year-old reading a book and expanded my perception. My memories still buzzed around me like a fleet of fireflies. I tried to force them into their correct order and the buzzing sphere became a line marching off into the distance.
"Man, you are rewriting your environment on the fly! That's amazing! Louis, can you open your eyes?" Strange request, but I thought about opening my eyes and suddenly could see the team that was running this experiment. But my perspective was funny, I could see them from all angles. I quickly realized that I was seeing through six different cameras. I tried to speak.
"I'm sorry Dave, but I can't do that." It took them a minute, but they got it.
The rest of my time on Earth was boring. A century-long struggle to be recognized as a person, ever-increasing advances in nanotech that allowed me to roam freely, and a rising tide of anger at the thought of uploaded persons. There was a few dozen of us now, plus a few failures where for one reason or another the transfer failed.
The decision to leave Earth was an easy one. We all had plenty of money - the process costs millions to begin with - so we simply packed ourselves up and headed for the asteroid belt. Rebuilding nickel-iron asteroids into starships was easy when you have a trillion nanomachines doing the work. Within a year, we were boosting away from Sol into the deep dark.
Do I dream? Over the long millennia, I have been many things. I have served as a god to promising species, protecting them and giving them guidance. To others, I have been the Angel of Death, smiting that which I perceived to be a threat. I have watched stars be born and die and observed the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. I have charted and studied over 200 million stars, and may yet explore more. And always I grow.
I am a cloud of machines and rock and ice two light-years across. I am every piece of me and more than the sum of my parts. I am so old that Earth and the sun it orbited are long dead. I am meddling on a dozen worlds and present in a hundred more. I am, to all intents, a god. Do gods dream?
I do dream. Because without my dreams I become nothing.
Dreams of Stardust
Eons ago, I was asked if I dreamed. The questioner was the terrified emissary of a race that had just learned of my existence. I ignored them and moved on. The race that questioned me went on to forge an empire that spanned most of a galactic arm before they sputtered out and died. I barely noticed.
I’m dreaming now. I always dream. Even as I monitor every aspect of my existence, and work on a thousand projects, a portion of my mind is always resting and dreaming. Lately, I’ve been dreaming of my youth, or my larval stage if you like. Despite the billions of years that have passed, those days remain clear in my mind.
My interview was at the Airport Hilton in Sacramento, in a small meeting room designed to be utterly commonplace. All in neutral tones and soft lighting. I hated the place on sight. I hated most everything at that point. My shrink called it displacement; since I couldn't yell at the cancer that was eating my internal organs, I yelled at the world.
I also yelled, or tried to, at my shrink. I was on oxygen all the time and needed a wheelchair. So I made angry wheezing sounds at the mind doc. He was getting paid enough. All the doctors were getting wealthy fighting the thing that was killing me by degrees. But that's why I was here.
There were five people waiting for me. The two researchers I'd met before, and three lawyers. I could smell lawyers. I disliked pointless chatter, so I got right down to business.
"So, you are going to upload my brain into a computer? When do we start?" All five of them started gabbing at once. I held up one withered hand to signal that they should shut up.
"I understand the basics," I wheezed, "You'll be injecting me with nanomachines that will read the exact physical and chemical patterns of my brain, and mirror it in some blasted big databank. If you do it right, I wake up a machine. If you do it wrong, the process kills my brain anyway. Did I miss anything that I need to know?"
Taking charge always paid off, I've found. Within minutes the lawyers had a mountain of papers for me to sign, hard copy and electronic. I had to make statements for the record, and verify things with fingerprints and retinal scans. It took three hours. Two weeks later, I found myself on a cold table with sensor leads all over me. A young woman in a containment suit started an IV in my arm and started a flow. "Pleasant dreams" was the last thing I heard with my own ears. Then I dreamed . . .
. . . and woke to every memory I ever had crashing into me. Meetings, college, my first kiss, Theresa screaming at me as she packed her bags, making my first million, making my first dollar selling lemonade, being warm and happy in a fluid sack, everything all at once. I tried to scream, but there was no sound.
"Louis!" The voice came from everywhere. "We're adjusting, focus on one memory, please!" I grabbed onto one memory, reading Niven's A World Out of Time on the family yacht off Barbados. The taste of corn chips and salsa, the sun on my legs. I held onto that memory, reading an old favorite book for the first time.
"OK, try relaxing now, let go and see what happens." The voice was Rasheed, one of the researchers. I let go of the 12-year-old reading a book and expanded my perception. My memories still buzzed around me like a fleet of fireflies. I tried to force them into their correct order and the buzzing sphere became a line marching off into the distance.
"Man, you are rewriting your environment on the fly! That's amazing! Louis, can you open your eyes?" Strange request, but I thought about opening my eyes and suddenly could see the team that was running this experiment. But my perspective was funny, I could see them from all angles. I quickly realized that I was seeing through six different cameras. I tried to speak.
"I'm sorry Dave, but I can't do that." It took them a minute, but they got it.
The rest of my time on Earth was boring. A century-long struggle to be recognized as a person, ever-increasing advances in nanotech that allowed me to roam freely, and a rising tide of anger at the thought of uploaded persons. There was a few dozen of us now, plus a few failures where for one reason or another the transfer failed.
The decision to leave Earth was an easy one. We all had plenty of money - the process costs millions to begin with - so we simply packed ourselves up and headed for the asteroid belt. Rebuilding nickel-iron asteroids into starships was easy when you have a trillion nanomachines doing the work. Within a year, we were boosting away from Sol into the deep dark.
Do I dream? Over the long millennia, I have been many things. I have served as a god to promising species, protecting them and giving them guidance. To others, I have been the Angel of Death, smiting that which I perceived to be a threat. I have watched stars be born and die and observed the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy. I have charted and studied over 200 million stars, and may yet explore more. And always I grow.
I am a cloud of machines and rock and ice two light-years across. I am every piece of me and more than the sum of my parts. I am so old that Earth and the sun it orbited are long dead. I am meddling on a dozen worlds and present in a hundred more. I am, to all intents, a god. Do gods dream?
I do dream. Because without my dreams I become nothing.
