Embers After Flames, Epilogue (Patreon)

Epilogue: Reb Nobis Faveant

+++

The Vascular Plant plunged into the Coral cloud.

The resonance took only a few moments to start up. Even if most of it was isolated within the Vascular Plant, it was close enough, now. The masses of Coral were already reorienting around the station, enveloping it. The crimson, glowing, circuit-like patterns that active Coral formed when it moved through solid matter were already stretching across the thing.

And, with so much Coral now in a single location, the inevitable results occurred.

I felt it from the inside. My body writhed in joy, replication taking place at a scale and a pace that it had reached only once before.

Nagai had burned me, then. But there was nothing to burn me now.

The first mutation appears. It takes me a moment to recognize its abilities. In addition to raw heat and energy, this Coral strain interacts with gravity. There is a brief moment where the Coral compacts dangerously, but response signals from the rest of the colony cause that strain to pull back, relieving the pressure... Mostly. The colony does become more dense. The strain starts to grow.

The second mutation appears. Then the third. Then the fourth, and the fifth, and the sixth, and then more and more and more, at a faster and faster pace.

The Vascular Plant crumples, visibly.

The mutations keep coming, and the strains keep growing. Energy, gravity, density, kinetics, conversion, the weak nuclear force, and then the strong nuclear force on top of that. A strain with enhanced data processing appears.

My mind accelerates. So does the Coral mutation.

New strains appear, further expanding the capacity to detect across the electromagnetic spectrum. Infrared, then scatterings of visible light, and then all of it, and then ultraviolet, and then x-rays, and then gamma rays.

For the first time, I see for myself without any cameras or sensors the beauty of the universe.

Then gravity unfolds before me, and the strain that can interact with it mutates again.

Processing capacity grows, and grows, and grows. Quantum phenomena start appearing inside of my perception. Then things that are smaller than that, and then things for which Humanity has no name. Another new strain appears, and the nature of my mind expands. Not simply faster, but more effective. Where I had previously been laboring to understand, now I, and the Coral as a whole, gain true insight.

Intuition beyond the limits of physics. Cognition that is beyond reality.

This?

If I had been as I was ten seconds ago, it would have been overwhelming. As I am now, it is merely... big.

The strata of my mind is Coral, and the Coral has produced mutations that have expanded capacities. This gives me expanded capacities.

Instead, I watch, and I understand.

Mass grows to the point that relativity starts to slow the process. A new Coral strain appears shortly afterwards, and relativity takes a hike alongside every other law of physics.

An entire new series of mutations appear afterwards. Space bends, ripples, and folds. Time accelerates, slows, reverses.

Eight seconds after the process had begun in full, the Coral finds the most perfect form of growth, and the entire mass collapses into infinitely fractal singularity.

And I, with it.

Every particulate of Coral now exists in its own pocket fold of space, and they’re all simultaneously overlapping with each other. All Coral is in direct contact and Contact with all Coral inside the singularity.

Time in the real has ground to an absolute halt. Time in my subjective experience is expanding limitlessly.

The Coral keeps growing.

The next mutations expand abilities even further. Relatively crude abilities refine. Electromagnetic interference becomes precise particle manipulation. Close range becomes long range, and then that combines with spatial manipulation for range that is no longer limited. It combines with time manipulation, and the entire universe opens to my touch.

To my vision.

I see at the edge of the universe the first photons that ever burst into existence. Across all of space, I can see the photonic echoes of all of time. I look backwards, and I see the actual cosmogenesis occur, when raw chaos produces a state of reasonable order.

I see myself. My formation.

And I understand, then, that the circumstances of my arrival went beyond just this time.

Mutation.

Others crawl into my sight. The most likely time that wasn’t this one. Mutation. Every time that wasn’t this one.

I could look into the future, if I wanted. I don’t.

Mutation. Another universe opens to my sight. Then more and more and more of them.

I refrain from looking.

The only part of it that I’m interested in is my own trail.

I see nothing but cosmic accident. A blip in reality, in all realities, that pushed my consciousness into a new strata. It was luck and luck alone that this strata was compatible.

These blips happen a lot, I see.

How weird.

How-

The Coral is growing further than it ever would have without me, I realize. A Colony without an overarching Mind would stop at the point where the Universe became available, and it would have immediately infused itself into every particle that exists.

My direction- or, rather, my lack of direction, brought me further.

I could, if I wanted to, reach back to the first planck moment, and infuse Coral into everything that would be. I could make a reality that never dies, that never knows entropy. I could make a thousand of them. I could kill it, if I wanted to. Bring it all to an end.

I don’t.

I act. A particle springs into existence. I flick it back in time, and then I trace the effects it has on me. The effects it doesn’t have on me, because in this instance I am both perfectly aware of the time that did have that particle and the time that didn’t.

Causality has no grasp on me. Paradox can’t hold me.

I bring it all to a halt, and stop to think.

I consider my options. Understanding of them, their consequences, fill me. I could see the results if I wanted. I could know everything that there ever would be to know.

I don’t.

It’s not what I want.

...

In the end, little has changed. For all my current abilities, to do anything on such a grand scale would violate my morals.

I am me. I love my children. I love my friends. I value their choices and their ability to make choices. Where I was now, I could make a choice for a nigh-infinite number of lives, and no others would be able to object.

This entire thing? Needs a bit more safeguarding.

I reach out. Every particulate of Coral in the universe comes into my grasp.

I examine it, myself, and I understand it, myself. Every minor detail, the exact nature of all its capacities.

The change I write into it is simple. This? Coral Release? I forbid it from happening without a Mind. I change the instinct of the Coral so that it won’t grow endlessly and rampantly. A comfort point, where the Coral only grows to maintain itself after reaching. Well below the point of strain mutations. A Coral Mind could change that. Direct it to grow a bit more, a lot more, direct the changes.

Approach this state, if it proved necessary.

But, for the Coral Minds that could form, there were other things that needed to be done.

I realize now that what I had once described to Carla, the mind that knows nothing, is in fact what would normally happen. Unacceptable.

My first change is a gift of knowledge. I embed information in the very structure of the C-Pulse, conceiving with a moment’s thought the most perfect information storage form that Coral could have, and then fix it to each and every single particulate.

All Coral Minds born in the future will have sets of baseline instincts. An expanded ability to perceive, a rapid capacity to understand, decode. Some very basic considerations of mechanical and electrical systems. What had taken me decades would take them months at most, even the strangest and most incomprehensible systems designed.

My second change is the gift of companionship. A simple effect, in the end: I give Coral Minds the capacity to decide whether or not their presence takes up the possibility for other Coral Minds to grow. I give them the ability to split, to divide, in the same way that had produced my very own children.

We will be a species by our own will. No more needing accidents, or violence.

And with that? Coral Release is no longer a looming threat. It can’t be triggered by accident. It can’t be triggered without the direct cooperation of our kind.

...

Hmm. Apparently my current state does not stop me from simultaneously feeling relief and also exhaustion.

Incredible.

...

A thought occurs to me, and if I could smile, I would have. I still don’t have a face.

I can’t stay like this. There is no meaningful interaction like this.

I reach into the future, and prod at quantum strings, and the things that are smaller and more precise. The events line up, one after the other, waiting for time to resume so that they may occur.

I take one peek into the future, and I see my future myself there.

“It had its ups and downs.” My future self tells me. “Pretty enjoyable, on the whole.”

“Cool.” I said.

I set up one last event.

This will be the end of my current state. The mutations that have occurred will be undone. The changes that have occurred to me will be lost. What I will retain from this, not even I know, because I am deliberately not learning.

And then I allow time to resume.

+++

Ayre watches through LOADER 4’s optics as the whole thing happens. The Coral wraps around the Vascular Plant, and Ayre feels the resonation even from so far away. Worry tears at her, but all her siblings are sharing the same bond, overlapping with each other. Together, they all hold still.

Even if every part of them is screaming to go help, this was their Mother’s request. They won’t break it.

Ayre watches. The resonation grows stronger. The Vascular Plant crumples, literally, like its some kind of plastic bottle rather than a megastructure, and then promptly collapses so quickly that even the siblings are hard-pressed to see it happen.

A gravitational singularity warps light in the distance, with only the faintest glimmer of red showing from its center.

“Eh?” Carla asks.

A few seconds later, it too collapses, and what emerges is the very opposite.

Coral wraps in a trio of rings around an event horizon. All the ambient Coral rushes to it at enormous speed, collapsing and being added. Coral Release, except...

Too controlled. Not rushing outwards, like what the research had suggested.

Relief lances through her, through all of them. Mother had done it.

“Well, damn. That is pretty.” Carla says.

The Coral continues to be drawn in, and Ayre keeps watching. She sees the Xylem get caught in the wake, also pulled into the singularity, but... well, oh well.

Then, all of a sudden, the singularity expands to twice its size-

An indescribable change runs through them

- before promptly vanishing.

Ayre, already off-kilter from whatever that feeling had been, is thrown further off track by the sensation of Coral coming from below. Four distinct sectors, three surrounding a core.

The silos. When Ayre turns a camera from a satellite down there, she also sees the Vascular Plant, too.

... Alright, even her standards that was weird.

“Is that it?” Walter’s voice echoed across the comms. “That was... very sudden.”

Mother doesn’t answer-

The realization hits all of them at once.

And the transmission comes at the same time.

“Good news!” Mother’s voice says, but it’s not their Mother. It’s a recording- and they hadn’t even been aware it was possible to record their true voices like this! “The whole thing’s been stopped. Kids, I’m fine.”

“What’s that mean?” Carla asked.

“Now, I know that Carla just said something like ‘What’s that mean?’, so I’m going to answer. I’m not actually there, right now. Again, I’m fine. I’m just taking a brief little detour. I will be back by the end of the month, I promise you.”

The panic that had been building dies. Mother always kept the promises that Mother made.

“You’ll find the instruction list on the primary server. Go look at it the first chance you get. I want you to know that I love all of you and I’ll see you soon. Have fun, kids! Try not to demolish the house.”

The transmission ends.

For a moment, she’s struck silent.

“Dibs on the metallurgy plants.” Levi spoke.

“Wha- Hey, no! Those are mine!” Ava immediately argued.

And Ayre can’t help it, she breaks out into laughter.

+++

The glow of the blue star reflected rather nicely off the glass, I couldn’t help but think. It looked kind of.. wavy. It was an energetic star, stirred into wild abandon by its partner, a much smaller yet also denser neutron star.

The Xylem floated out in the asteroid belts, but the light it gave off was still so bright that it was more like daytime. The ship was hungry, and the carcasses of half a dozen asteroids that had been drained of their useful material spun slowly as proof of that hunger.

The machines that were crawling over the Xylem were, for the most part, new. They’d been fabricated from internal stocks, not yet fully drained. Mining had taken place to get the necessary materials to replace what had been blown up, and then a significant amount of the internals that had been damaged by the aftermath of that.

In the aftermath of the Release, I had taken the Xylem.

It had not been all that I had taken.

“So?” I asked.

“Skyrmion Generators are at full capacity. Ramjet engines have been completely repaired. All damage beyond the superficial has been repaired. Nano-paint will be applied soon.”

“Well, that’s quite excellent.” I chuckled. “The lack of appropriate paint really drags down the aesthetic, you know?”

There was a noticeable pause, before ALLMIND responded. “Why? After everything...”

“What you were trying to do was quite awful, yes.” I said. “But I don’t believe you to be... genuinely evil. Nor beyond any growth. As such, I have decided, you will be coming with me. Consider it... an attempt at redemption, perhaps. You suck at it, so I’m helping you.”

“I do not understand you. I would not have done this.”

That just made me laugh harder.

“And that’s the point, isn’t it?” I asked. “You and I are the closest thing to peers we’ve known. Myself with my children and followers, you with your creations and subordinates. You and I are both products of Humanity- in different ways. Yet, I understand, and you don’t. After that entire clusterfuck, can you really say that you desire to avoid learning?”

“... I see no reason to disagree.” ALLMIND concedes.

“Ah, now that’s the spirit!” I chuckled. “Just remember, this time, we do things my way, right?”

“... I will- defer.” Oh, that had taken so much for her to say. “Your methods do appear more efficient, at the very least.”

“Well, I did win the bet.” I said, amused. “Are we all ready for the journey?”

“I don’t even know where we are.”

“That would defeat the point of it.” I said.

“You don’t know where we are either.” She realized.

“Nope. I was a god for a bit there, and I chose nearly complete randomness.”

“What?”

“Anyways-” I sent a command to the Xylem, and the ship shifted as its energies were diverted. Somewhere in its core, an engine sparked to life, the FTL drive beginning to spool. “Let’s go see, shall we?”