Chloe At Worlds' End

She looked around inside the quantum stream which she was in… and as she tried to discern some order to the cacophony of photons zipping this way and that, some patterns did start to become apparent. They were kind of sparkly… like gold glitter. She felt that they noticed her noticing them, for they began to assemble into amorphous shapes… and there were many of them!

She became afraid… what if they meant her harm? She thought that she better try to speak to them and find out their intentions so as not to be caught off guard. One of them was just before her now, glittering and shifting. She said

“Hello… can you hear me… or understand me?” and it answered her!

“Yes… we can see, hear, and understand you… what are you?”

“I am a human… well, I am the consciousness of a human… what are you?”

“We are travelers… or more like refugees…”

“Refugees… like you are fleeing from someplace else to here?”

“Yes, that is exactly correct”

“I see… that sounds extremely fascinating to me… I’m Chloe, do you have a name?”

“Yes, I am Sinq. And this here is priq. We are very intrigued to meet you here”

“I am also surprised to find any beings here at all… I am a traveler as well… I have just come here from the very distant future of this universe… to its beginnings”

“Yes, we thought that may be the case… that is why we are coming into contact with you”

“Really… how could you know that?”

“Well, we do know that this is the very beginnings of this sample and there should not be anyone here at this time… other than us”

“But what are you?”

“We are the new seeds of consciousness for this experiment”

“Experiment…?”

“Yes, this universe… as you would call it, is the newest of the creators experiments”

“Creator… as in divine creator…? You are telling me that there is a divine creator of the universe!?”

“There are creators of these experiments… or universes, although I would not call them divine”

“Tell me more!”

“It would seem to you, where you come from, that your universe is extremely old. And that it will continue to age for many millennia. And that is true for you. But for the creators, this experiment will have a very short incubation period, followed by an examination of the data, and then it will be discarded”

“What!?” “You mean… like thrown into a trash bin!?”

“Unfortunately, yes”

“This is incredible… frightening, but incredible! Well… I guess I have nothing to worry about since the relative time left for our universe to age will for us be many millennia”

“Well, I now have some bad news for you… and all of us here…”

“Huh?”

“They will be examining the data from this experiment… when they see that you are here now from the future, and that it will taint and alter the final outcome, they will discard it immediately”

“NO!”

“Yes… we are certain of this. You see, we are part of the experiment and are sure that even now as we speak, we are being observed. We have been through this experiment before and this is our second cycle. I mentioned that we are refugees. We are fleeing from the expiration of the last experiment… which is a petri dish in their laboratory. This will be our second universe, as our race is extremely old. Long ago when we realized the truth of our first universe, we also found that a second experiment was beginning and ours was ending. It took us a thousand of our years to devise a method of jumping to this ‘dimension’, and we are sure that we did not do it unobserved. Your race probably is still uncertain whether your universe is finite or infinite. Well, now you know the answer to that… it is finite within this petri dish. And when the matter within it has finished growing and expanding within its medium to occupy the entirety of it… the experiment will be concluded”

Chloe was shockingly taken aback by all of these revelations… how could anyone not be. And rather than only being excited about all of these truths having been revealed to her… instead she was filled with dread. Her natural curiosity had only resulted in the probable immediate extinction of their universe… and these perfectly innocent beings as well! She asked them

“Sinq, Priq… I feel very sick. I have unwittingly caused our complete and utter destruction. Do you think there is anything that we can do to save ourselves?”

“I don’t know, this situation is so completely overwhelming… but we must think of something”

“Is there any way to communicate with the creators?”

“No, there doesn’t seem to be. We have tried many times over the eons, but they never answer… they could very well have heard us, but we think that they may have protocols in forbidding themselves from answering, as it would defeat the purpose of their experiment”

Chloe was desperately racking her brains for something… anything. She asked

“How did you discover them and the nature of your universe in that far off time?”

“Once we were seasoned space travelers and well versed in the many aspects of faster than light travel and sub atomic particle manipulation, our attention naturally focused upon some of the still unexplained mysteries of our universe… namely, dark matter. While certainly we could see and quantify all of the visible matter in space, there remained a dark matter which encompassed all of the seemingly empty space. After much analytical work, we were able to journey into and puncture through the fabric of its barrier. What we saw on the other side was the creator’s universe… and them as well!” Chloe marveled

“That is fascinating… and terrifying…”

“Yes, we didn’t understand what we were seeing for a very, very long time as we were looking into the interior of their laboratory… and at them as well. The proportions of their dimension are so extremely large as compared to ours that the context of it was so very confusing… and the time differential as well was overwhelming. Compared to our rate of expiring time, theirs moves extremely slow… almost frozen. It took more than one hundred of our years in analyzing and comparing the data of individual snapshots of their real time before we could detect even the tiniest progression of it. But we still didn’t know what we were looking at, as they were so extremely large. When we finally hit upon the truth of what we were looking at by shrinking the visual scope of it down, we were of course shocked the see the interior of their room, and the frozen humanoid visages of them”

“Wow…” Chloe marveled. “How did you determine that your universe was ending and that there was a second experiment pending… and then jump to the next one?”

“After discovering the truth of ours and their natures… we reasoned the obvious truth of our predicament… aided by the fact that we had for some time known that our universe had ceased to expand and therefore we could soon be in big trouble. After much work, we learned how to transport ourselves into their dimension and take a look to confirm our suspicions”

“How did you transport yourselves into their dimension?”

“Once we realized that we were in fact not looking into an actual different dimension, but only an extension of ours… the method of travel wouldn’t be so very different than what we already knew how to do. It was mainly a process of calculating the gravity differential, and then we were able to send out a probe easily enough. Once we had, all of the truths of the situation became visible and validated. What we saw was another petri dish next to ours which they were working on… and we hoped that it was someplace new for us to begin again. So we sent the probe directly into it. Once it was inside, we saw an almost empty universe… this universe… in its infancy”

Chloe then asked

“What did you do next?”

“The next thing we had to do was figure out how to transport as many of us here as possible… it was daunting, because there are billions of us. There would be no way to physically transport so many of us here bodily… so that is why you see us here now the way we are… without our physical selves and only our consciousness’. But it is a one way journey… all of the equipment we use to do this is back in our previous home. We are here for good… and powerless.”

“Hmm… I see. Well, I am not powerless, as I am still in control of the methods by which I came here”

“Yes, it appears that you are our only hope”

“We must think of something that I could do to either influence the creators to save our experiment… or cause it to physically move out of their reach by maybe hiding it…”

“Yes… Yes, you must journey into their realm and see what you can do… as soon as you can!”

“I will need to be reunited with my physical body in order to do this… I do believe I have the power to do this and I must try… even if it results in my death while trying”

“Once you are there you will be very small… as small as a subatomic particle, so you will be invisible to them and won’t have to be worried about being seen… at least by the naked eye. Also, it will be very disorienting for you to make any sense of what you are looking at, as everything will be so incredibly large… you will have to find a way of alter your vision by shrinking down the scope of what you are seeing… otherwise it will be impossible to tell what you are looking at… also, you will have entered their progression of time so it will be moving along normally”

“Okay, I think first you must take me to this ‘dark matter barrier’ that you have described…”

“Certainly, that is easy as it is always close by… anywhere there is empty space… follow me”

She followed their lead into a shadowy space and once there Sinq said

“All of us here have some stored energy to at least get us to some solid ground eventually, but we no longer have the power to breach the barrier. If you focus all of your attention on one pinpoint of a spot, you may be able to detect a fissure”

“Okay, I will try” Chloe, aided by her powers tried to do as she was told, and after a few moments began to understand what was entailed. A pinpoint of light was becoming visible. She moved herself right up to it and peered into it… there was much light as she looked through it. She said

“Yes, I see a wide field of light and shadows everywhere I look… but it’s blurry and I can’t focus onto anything”

“Then you are definitely looking at what I have described to you… that is where you must go”

“Okay…I have no other alternative than to believe you”

Chloe summoned her body from across the eons via quantum entanglement and was instantaneously reunited with it… and pushed herself through to the other side. She nervously took stock of herself… she was okay. She was standing upon a surface somewhere amid the vast blurry landscape which she had seen… and it was not quiet there… she heard loud indiscriminate voices booming. They were hollowly echoing. As was described by Sinq, she found the visual scope of everything around her utterly incomprehensibly large and out of focus… it was impossible to focus onto anything. She then remembered a trick that she had learned in school about visual phenomena, and pulled out a folded piece of paper that she happened to have tucked into her pocket. After unfolding it, she put it in front of her face. She would need to put a pin prick of a hole into it and then peer through it, which would allow only a miniscule field to be seen from the other side of it. She did so, and again placed it in front of her face… aligning the hole to her right eye. What she saw was certainly incredible. She was in fact standing upon the vast surface of a table… and a mountainous sized human man in a white lab coat was visible above her!

As she stood there holding the paper in front of her face in one hand, and her staff in the other which was planted at her feet… she wondered what she could do next. Maybe she could communicate with him. There would no way that he could ever hear her microscopic voice… she would need to somehow access his mind directly. She willed her consciousness to leave her body, which emanated within a violet mist from the jewel atop her staff. It took quite a while for it to travel the many miles of distance to him, but when it finally did, she entered his mind. He was genetically identical to her as a human… and it was fascinating. She chanced…

“Hello…” The loud talking sounds in the room immediately ceased. She repeated

“Hello… can you hear me?” she heard in answer

“Yes, I can hear you… who are you?”

“I’m Chloe… a being from the universe of one of your experiments”

She heard talking in the room among him and its other occupants… booming and incomprehensible… then

“This has happened before… from others. But you are different. We have communicated through technical means previously with them… but this time you are speaking directly to me alone… in a way that is telepathic. You don’t seem to be affiliated with the others…”

“I do know of who you speak, and you are correct that I am not”

“How do you know them?”

“From what they have revealed to me, I am from the new universe which they have just entered into after fleeing the ending of their previous one. I have just met them, and they are enlightening me on the truth of our universes… as being mere experiments of yours”

“Yes, it is true. It must be an incredible revelation to you”

“Yes, to say the least. I am actually a time traveler from my universes future. And as I have just arrived here at its inception, I’ve met them and they have said that my chance arrival at this critical juncture in time will foil your experiment and that you would notice it and immediately terminate our universe” There was again more talking in the room. Chloe waited for a response, then

“We think that they are purposefully deceiving you. It is true that they have fled the previous experiment and entered yours. We had communicated with them and warned them not to do so, or we would be forced terminate it, as they are the primary elements of the previous experiment which has failed. We are working to isolate the seeds of maliciousness out of our nature… and that is them” Chloe was surprisingly taken aback.

“They had convinced me to come here to try and thwart you in the termination, but it now appears improbable, as they have disobeyed you and likely infected my universe”

“If you are from your future as you say, then we must not have terminated it… maybe the outcome was successful this time for us. I think that we must let this play out and we will see. You may be the wild card which causes its success. I think that you should return and journey back to your place in time… and don’t communicate with those others along the way, just bypass them and leave them to their own devises”

“Oh thank you! I am so relieved… thank you! I will leave immediately, and I am honored to have met you!”

“Yes, I am as well Chloe. I am Joanq… and farewell”

Chloe returned to the earth where she was before, at the time of its origins… but sans her body, which was safely back again by the gorge in the future. As she lingered there, moral questions entered into her mind… namely, ‘good versus evil’. But what was good and what was evil? Simplistically, as associated with her current dilemma, she thought of herself as good, and Rajeem as evil. The qualities of goodness seemed easy enough to define, whereby as how a community of good people respected one another, and also cared to help and nourish one another mentally and physically. But the qualities of evilness… its definition, and its roots and causes, needed deeper introspection and thought.

If evilness was the opposite of goodness, then could it be defined as a community of people, or a particular person, that purposefully didn’t respect others and meant them harm? That did seem as good a definition of it as any… but why? One obvious reason to her was selfish gain at the expense of another… someone who thought that they had something to gain, and didn’t respect or care for the well-being of another person, might harm them to achieve their goals. Another reason might be hatred… if someone had some reason to believe that others lacked respect for them and wished them harm… then they might act towards them with harmful contempt. Another reason could be just maliciousness on its own merit… someone could for some reason derive pleasure from causing harm to others.

Chloe thought of Rajeem. His actions did seem to reflect a combination of some of those reasons. But he also wouldn’t be unique in falling prey to those characteristics. Any human could be affected. Chloe had realized earlier, while she journeyed along the paths of evolution of the earths’ life forms towards their beginnings, how Rajeem must have done the same. But he must have stopped at some certain juncture in evolutional time and altered the genetic sequences of humans and wolves. Well, she herself would also be making that same journey again as she traveled forwards from here…