I didn't do the dishes after my 0700 breakfast. Instead, I masturbated again. I didn't enjoy it. Not really. Oh, enough to complete the process, but it was, as usual, mostly a chore. As an activity, to quote an ancient author, it "beat the hell out of card games". And I was, to my knowledge, the greatest player of Solitaire and Freecell in the Universe.
I'm the most isolated man in all history, and becoming more so by the minute. Or was I? Isolated, no doubt. My guide book told me that I was between several galactic clusters, and that the ship I was on had been shot into that void deliberately, billions of years ago. More so by the minute? Maybe. From the educational materials I had been made to learn, new space was continually being created so that these spaces between the galactic clusters only grew as more and more time went by.
Already - and for thousands of billions of years - there was no light to be observed at all, at least none the ship's sensors could detect. I'd certainly asked her enough times. This tended to confirm the vast number of eons the ship told me had gone by.
Was there anything left, anything sapient left, in the surrounding galaxies? I had no way of knowing. It may already be that I could not get "more" isolated, because I could be the last sapient entity in the Universe. Utter isolation could be complete.
I got up from my chair and wandered the ship again. It was not large. About the size of what used to be a "nice three bedroom/two bathroom house". Which made sense, since it was a nice three bedroom/two bathroom house. Or so it was made to look like. I'd
never seen the outside of it. There being no way to go outside. The doors didn't open and the windows didn't either. Out the windows, it looked like a 21st century American neighborhood. Why? I don't know.
Sometimes I could even see people. A man would jog by now and then. A woman would push a stroller across the street, I never knew when. Or kids might be skateboarding. How I yearned for the woman. She was average looking, and an utter goddess as far as I was concerned. It was always the same woman. Her child never outgrew the stroller.
My poundings on the windows always went unanswered. I knew this was because the windows were really telescreens, but I pounded on them now and then anyway. They were strong screens. At least strong enough that the chair I had repeatedly rammed into them hadn't
scratched them. I had asked the ship what would happen if I broke through. She said I'd die of vacuum exposure. I asked why she hadn't told me to stop when she saw me trying to smash the window then.
She said it was because there were no circumstances in which it could break.
How I hated her. Though really him. Well, the original me. She was only his tool.
Where was I for real? When was I?
In the mirror, I looked 25. But my memories were funny. I had real memories of the last four years. But from 21 and back, the memories were funny feeling. Parents that I'd obviously never met, friends, schools, playgrounds, skating rinks, all people and
places that did not exist, could not exist, but I remembered.
Spotty, too. Nothing much before 7. And very little from 7 to 12 without specific effort. More care had been spent on 12 to 21, much of it my education. With a leaning on astronomy and physics, though to what point, who knew? It wasn't like
I was in charge, or even allowed to fly to any particular point myself. She did it all.
If anything was being done.
I enjoyed the books. Those I had real memories of, as they existed in solid form in the library in one of the spare rooms. I re-read (read?) the Heinlein that I had funny feeling memories of reading in my teens. After reading them again or for the first time at the age
of 22, they seemed more in my head.
How vast even the solar system that many of his stories dealt with was!
History. Geography. Astronomy. Where did it get me?
I pictured a man on an island - and that it was all he knew. What if then he discovered the whole of the Earth? How vast it would seem! But a sailing ship could have landed and told him of all of it. How would he feel hearing that? Would it matter, or not matter? And would that depend on whether he had a mate, children, a family?
And those who sent the sailing ship, how had they felt to learn that the Earth was not all, but circled the Sun? And how each little light in the sky was another sun, so far away? Had it mattered? Or only to those who lacked the ties of others that gave a sense of belonging?
It was the 20th century before they learned the universe was expanding. The 21st before the creation of additional space in (on?) the space/time continuum was studied. From my perspective, in what the ship said was 4,438 billion years later the whole
of man's history from worshiping stars to starting to think about going to them was an eye blink. 5th, 16th, 20th, 21st - those centuries were closer to each other than the second marks on my entirely pointless wristwatch.
I was the 89,822nd clone of him. Tanner. God curse him. Me. Was there a God? What was He making of me? Or of this version of him who started this? There was a Bible in the house. "For I am a jealous God"...but was there ever anyone more jealous and desirous of
worship, or at least recognition, then the first me, damn him, who'd started this all?
He had done this in the early 23rd century. He wanted to live forever. He used his vast wealth to start a project that all humanity could get behind, but that he was using for his own purposes. A ship to leave the galactic clusters - inconceivable! To streak
out, building up to .9999c, and continuing forever or so close as to make no difference. To deliberately never arrive itself, but to be safely stuck in intermediate space, safe from any possible planetary, solar or galactic disaster.
With all the knowledge of mankind - at that time - in it. And to over and over again create - clone - one human. Him. And to create him again when he died out. Waiting between times was permitted. Under what conditions, I knew not. Time is less here than out there. 4,438 billion years is considerably less in the ship because of time dilation. But even in ship time, long enough had gone by for all those tens of thousands of me. Him. Damn.
Other selves of me before me had wondered about how long it could go on. They must have. Even a billion years seemed a bit unbelievable.
Consider a man's life. Not so long, really. Little of what was there when he was born is still there when he dies. And even some old monuments are usually gone, moved or changed in the span of three generations. Consider how quickly most are forgot, usually no longer than it takes for their grandkids to die. Consider then how old man's longest
monuments had been around in my original time - a few thousand years? With one ruin in Turkey dating back to 10,000 BC?
And did they remember the names on those monuments - or care? Did those of my original self's time have any idea what the pictures on the crumbling walls meant?
And did they remember the names on those monuments - or care? Did those of my original self's time have any idea what the pictures on the crumbling walls meant?
No. He hadn't. And they hadn't.
Consider yet how small was that number - 12,000 - compared to the 150,000 years that hominids had walked about before his birth. Consider how small was that compared to the millions of years ago before him that dinosaurs had existed. Consider how much smaller was that, compared to the 4 billion years
of Earth? And then consider that compared to the 15 billion year age of the "Known Universe"!
And here I was, supposedly nearly 5,000 billion years past all that? Could anything last that long? AI, self-replicating machines, power from the quantum foam of space/time? So I was told. And a vastness to the ship, at least in mass, which was to give plenty of material for transmuting such as was needed for the infinity of repairs anticipated. Elaborate self-correcting programs to insure the integrity of the programs that insured the integrity of the programs that ran everything? Yes, that was claimed.
And here I was, supposedly nearly 5,000 billion years past all that? Could anything last that long? AI, self-replicating machines, power from the quantum foam of space/time? So I was told. And a vastness to the ship, at least in mass, which was to give plenty of material for transmuting such as was needed for the infinity of repairs anticipated. Elaborate self-correcting programs to insure the integrity of the programs that insured the integrity of the programs that ran everything? Yes, that was claimed.
And the vast void, as a safe haven where no cosmic rays or micro-meteorites could - over the vast, vastiness of time - whittle away this one lone nest.
Or was it lone? Was this, in all the eons, never done to another? Surely it must have been. But they could be 2000 billion years away in time and space, products of another world and of a species that had not existed when my ship was launched.
Or was this really just the first reincarnation of me, and they were testing things out while I was still not far beyond the Oort Cloud, to see if my mental health could stand this? A vague funny feel memory surfaced, that we'd reached - and
colonized - the Oort Cloud even in the 23rd century. Not many colonists. A few thousand.
Why no female clones? Would that halve the time I could be shooting out into nowhen and nowhere? How long was that time planned for, if even half of it would be in the tens of thousands of ship years? I had searched all over the house for messages from my earlier selves.
I had the idea to leave such messages to my future selves, so realized that of course they'd have left me some.
But I looked in vain. I suspected that the ship somehow erased all such messages each time. Between versions of me. I tested this by scratching a message into the floor under the carpet. At night. With the lights off. A week later, having not once
went back to that room, I went and looked. It was gone. And a random scratch a few feet to the right of that message was also gone. Had the whole floor been replaced?
Was I not even wandering in a house, but in a VR womb? Just "seeing/feeling" this, but still safe in an artificial womb? I had no way of testing that. Was I crazy? Was I in a regular 21st century house, and this was all a delusion? But no one ever
visited. I never went out - could not. Food was always in the cupboards and fridge from somewhere. Never when I was looking.
My sleep was always very heavy. I never got up in the night. I used to set my alarm for 0300, to see what happened while I slept. The alarm went off at 0600, as usual. I tried setting it other times. It always went off at 0600. I tried not going to
sleep. I fell asleep at 2200 anyway. Like I do every night.
The guidebook says my name is Tanner R. Nassar, but not what the "R" stands for. That this was part of my quest for immortality. Sold to mankind as a means of humanity living forever. I have repeatedly asked what I am to do. I'm told to live and be happy.
I've asked how long I'm to live. I'm told that I usually "die" at the age of 75. I try to kill myself sometimes. But anything that I start that could lead to that gets me falling asleep at once.
Not always. Only if I am silently intending on using it to die. Like the ship knows somehow. I fall asleep, and when I awake I feel calmer for awhile. After some months, I get worried again. If that is the right word.
Worried? Sad, agitated, bored, frightened?
I don't know.
In four years I know that no part of the ship/house has any weak spots. No cuttings or bangings on any part gets me through. Cuttings on the floor get me only through to another floor, and that can't be scratched. I
wonder why no woman? If I was a biologist, I could make one. In theory. I asked the ship if she could make me one. She said they had none to make.
I said she could use me. Just leave off the Y chromosome. She said that wouldn't work. I think she is lying. But she won't do it, and I can't. The ship told me to go to the bedroom, for a show. I know the shows she
shows. Sometimes I do watch them. But I want more. A real woman. And not just for what the shows show. But for what the regular shows show.
I want to walk with the woman pushing the stroller.
I want to walk with the woman pushing the stroller.
I have all the movies in the universe. They're not very fun with no one to watch them with. I watch them anyway. Families. Couples. Businesses. Life. All things I cannot have or be a part of. It occurs to me to,
without preparation that might give me away, to run headlong into the wall across the room, and smash my head.
I get up to do so, in a quick, fluid motion, and do not hesitate in the least to hurtle myself towards the wall, starting to duck my head as I do so.
When I woke up, I was on the floor, almost to the undamaged wall. No bruise on my head. No pain. I felt a bit better. Still not very happy, but at least not terribly sad.
I asked the ship if any anomalies had been detected. She said no. I asked that question at random times each day. But I especially always asked that after an unscheduled rest. In books and in the movies, my situation would only be a lead up to something exciting happening. Like another ship appearing to say we'd advanced so much that I didn't need to continue this mission. Or a planet being found. Or an interdimensional vortex that I could, with clean living and love of the Lord, navigate through to new adventures.
Like the adventure of meeting others. Any others.
I asked if it was true that space was being created between the galactic clusters. She said that such was the theory. I asked if it had been found to be happening in practice. She said there was not sufficient data to determine that.
Were we heading towards another cluster? She said that our path was designed to be heading away from all galactic clusters, superclusters and groups. So as to avoid any stray atom that would hit us too hard. I asked if it was possible that our speed of .9999c would have us go faster than any new space could be created. She said that my question was based on too many imponderables, including that there was insufficient data to know the manner of space formation, if any.
I went to the kitchen and looked out of the window above the sink. A bird landed in the tree out back. A bird took off. I did the dishes. Or the dish. One dish, one glass, one fork, one knife, one spoon. I hadn't used the spoon, but I washed it anyway.
I ordered Vangelis to play, and it did. "La petite fille de la mer", naturally. Based upon me playing that song more than any other. The ship wouldn't let me play "One more kiss, dear" any more. It only ever made me cry.
I went to my bedroom, then passed it and went to the spare room that wasn't a library. The music followed me. I asked that it stop and it did. I asked the telescreen to play the movie "Kaleidoscope", based on a scifi story by Ray Bradbury. It did. In 3D. I walked out after five minutes and went to my room. "The Boat of a Million Years" by Poul Anderson was on my nightstand.
I picked it up, and set it back down. I went to the kitchen and figured I'd cook something. The refrigerator didn't open, nor did the cupboards. I asked her, though I already knew why, and she said it wasn't lunch time yet. I went to the living room and looked at the computer. There were games on it. I'd played all the ones worth playing.
I idly scratched my groin. But I'd already done that twice, and it wasn't even noon. How was I going to make it? How would I last to 35? To 55? To 75? To the end of this day? Was this the hell the religious books taught of? I told her once that solitary confinement drove people insane. She told me there were medicines in the food that prevented that. I asked why I needed so many unscheduled sleeps, then.
She said I only had such that I needed. Another non-answer answer.
I sat down and surfed the net. Every site that had existed in 2207 was there. And AI duplicated any interactions that could be normally expected. Like if I commented on a 5000 billion year dead issue of whether the Ameristan Caliphate's complaints about the PRC's drone strikes against it were hypocritical or not, I could expect some stupid reply from some know-nothing who thought he knew better.
I could even Biobook and make "friends", and they'd tell me about their litter of neo-foxes and how adorable they were. I could read conversations on their board where they were supposedly going out to dinner or to play ditball or to visit relatives. But if I ever spoke too "real" they'd just retreat into inanities. Like the ship, you could not trap them into admitting they weren't real, but they still weren't real. I sexted with some anyway. But I didn't feel like that now.
I watched a video on the construction of the Quito beanstalk. It sounded incredible, and the woman describing it had a way of making the average layman, me, seem like I could grasp all the principles. But my mind kept wandering, first to how that the Beanstalk - and the planet - were long dead, and second, how nice it would be to be her husband.
The ship told me that lunch could be had, if I still wanted it. I did. Or at least it was something to do. I made two burritos. I microwaved them for two minutes, then cut them in half, turned each half so the inner part was now facing outward, and microwaved them for another two and a half minutes. A ship built for eternity and still no way of heating food evenly. I chopped up half an onion and one - fresh? - jalepeno while waiting.
I sprinkled those on, then added a bit of salsa from the fridge, and took the plate out to the living room. I had the telescreen play Steinbeck's 2157 version of "Atlas Shrugged", the gritty re-boot. Artistically, the best version ever made. But generally credited with aiding in the ultimate destruction of the last vestiges of the Holy American Empire, which as the joke went, wasn't very American, wasn't very holy, and wasn't very much of an empire.
The Caliphate had got it conquered 30 years after that. Though some Americans had refugeed out to Titan. The movie, it had been said, had appealed more to the wealthy wunpers in charge of that failed state, the little people took it as the "submit and obey" that it had probably been intended to be. But I'd seen it four times before. By the time I'd finished my burritos, it was time to masturbate to Dagny, then I turned it off, though it had only been playing 45 minutes out of the 31 and a half hours it was.
It was 1300 and time for work. I dutifully sat at the computer and read the status reports of all the ship's systems. From what the guide book told me, and the current reports "confirmed", the ship was a giant asteroid with the propulsion system - long now unneeded - on one end. Having accelerated me up to .9999c it had no further use, except to give a brief burst if it thought that dark matter, stray hydrogen atoms or other such "debris" had slowed it down enough to warrant it. Which given the vasty vastiness of my journey through nothingness was never.
A story I had read flitted across my mind. Where a philosopher had been asked what eternity was. The philosopher had told the asker to picture a giant ball of lead, not just as big as the sun but as big as the solar system was in diameter. And to further picture a baby fly coming up to that incredibly large ball of lead once every one billion years and exhaling one breath on it, before leaving again.
When that ball of lead was entirely worn away by the friction of that baby fly's breath, then eternity would still have as long to go as when it started.
The asteroid had apparently been the size of Mars. Possibly it had been Mars itself, as that was a thoroughly unusable planet, given that it's gravity was too low for women to give birth to healthy babies. But the ship would not confirm this guess of mine. It was about the size of Earth's moon now. Each atom of it was made to give up as close to 100% of it's energy as was possible to 23rd century technology. Something to do with matter and anti-matter, but not quite. I tried reading about it.
But I don't know.
Not for the first time, I thought that this meant that had I - and all my predecessors - had a female companion, that this grand experiment in immortality would be done now, or at least coming to a close, assuming it literally took twice as much energy and mass to sustain two as one. An assumption I did not believe. I looked up briefly, half expectantly.
After all, and still according to all stories I had read, and I'd read a significant portion of the best stories Earth had to offer, this would be the moment in the narrative where something would happen that would give meaning to all my suffering, and the suffering of nearly 90,000 previous selves that had preceded me. Maybe a woman had been made and would show up right now. Maybe something would break that would require me to go outside. Maybe a random black hole would throw me off course or mercifully suck me into it.
Nothing new happened.
I supposed I should still yet have hope. An "end point" seemingly existed, one that would have this ghastly experiment end in another 5000 billion years. My musings were interrupted by the next task. Four hours a day I had to work, four days a week, and to neglect my tasks would involve "correction". I shuddered.
First, no systems would work and the library door would close and not open. If no food, water or books didn't get me back to the computer, then the lights would go off. And anything I asked or said or yelled at the ship would only get the same response of, "Are you ready to return to your task?"
Any answer besides "Yes" would see no change in the terror of absolute for real isolation. An isolation that made my ordinary isolation almost look good in comparison. A "Yes" would get all systems back online, and then I'd return to my task. Once I'd tried to trick the ship. I said "Yes", it all came back online, and I'd dashed to the library. At once the lights went off and she said, "In one twenty four hour period the systems will come back online. At that point, you will briefly eat and drink, then resume your task."
Nothing I'd said or screamed during the next 24 hours had got a response. I did not like how thirsty I got. Nor that the toilets were somehow empty, when I checked on them in the dark. Or that it seemed much longer than 24 hours. I never did that again. I never would.
Currently, I was supposed to assess the fail-safes. I actually had a grudging admiration for the thoroughness of them. Never minding the standard quintuple fail-safes on each sub-segment of each program, there was the over-arcing principle of Vauban's "defense in depth" that was the real miracle.
Entire back up computers existed, in stasis, ready to be brought online at need, such as if the current computer went down and could not self-repair. Pantographs in stasis sufficient to rebuild this entire project existed. In bizarre emergencies, that had never happened, and I knew not how to create, thousands of us could be cloned at once to do the entire project over. To rebuild all this, with the aid of the AI, pantographs, waldoboys and yet still a moon's worth of raw material.
And it wasn't like we had to be able to get back up to speed. No conceivable circumstance could slow the ship down. And if it did, so what? It could stop, and it would still be just where they had wanted it to be. And really, who was to say whether it had already stopped or not?
I wondered if past emergencies had took place that I'd not been told of. I wondered what the name of the project that had created this was. I didn't kid myself that the faux net truly had all data from that original time. And how could I know what all was missing anyway? But I knew at least that some things were missing.
No mention of this project. Mention of Tanner, yes. Mention of many zany projects of his to gain immortality. But no mention of this project. Though it would have took a noticeable part of the world's efforts to accomplish it.
But wait! The J9812B section was reporting a power fluctuation! Golly, would I have to re-modulate a warp coil? Or reconfigure the Heisenberg Compensators? I was only kidding myself with silly technobabble. Sure, it was showing that fluctuation, but every other day there was at least one false alarm, a supposed correction needed, that I had to detect, treat as real, and perform the correct actions for solving. This was, I suspected, simply to keep me alert.
I followed the proper protocols. Then the ship confirmed that I had successfully completed the alert. The mass detectors in that section had been in no danger of giving out. Certainly they'd never have to worry about giving out from overuse! I and my prison were the only mass for...I did not know how to meaningfully determine how many light years. Light centuries? Light eons?
Myria of light-eons. I pondered upon what it meant that light years were too small a unit of measurement to adequately describe where I was.
After work I played a gamer game. With retro-goggs and gloves I was in some fantasy world, where it appeared that other real players were, men and women. If I touched them, I felt resistance. I could talk with them, and they'd answer, and it would seem okay, so long as I did not talk too real to them. They'd not break character. They'd act as if they were 23rd century gamers.
The women were not very cooperative. They were programmed to just want to play the game, no horsing around. They pretended to not understand my romantic overtures. Once I grabbed a woman in a hug, my hands feeling her back and shoulders. The game abruptly ended and I was alone again.
I didn't do any of the challenges this time, just went to a Pub in-game. I pretended to drink with my friend Tomas. But we could only chat about the game, the politics of the 23rd century, and his church. Some evenings I would giggle in horror when I caught myself listening attentively to his views on life after death. His avatar pretended not to notice. And there obviously was no "he" behind the avatar to notice.
I wish the medicines in my food worked better. Was the Biobook, the net, the gamer game, all reflective of human reality way back when? Had I lived then, which I suppose I had, would it have been as pointless? Discussions and debates over nothing of lasting import? Nothing cosmically relevant? Could I and the ship be representing accurately the utter futility of all the achievements of man? Because what could any of those achievements mean now?
Meaningless, meaningless, all is meaningless, or so it says in the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Rebooted James Version. What was the point of any sapience? Could an insensate universe care?
Would I have been as alone back then, with these October thoughts of mine? Was Tanner as alone back then? I suspected that having a partner, a mate, a woman - that sense of belonging - was a crucial difference. Had the original me had that? Or was all this because he hadn't had it?
I checked out of the game after half an hour, and the ship only lets me have an hour a day max anyway. I decided to work on my novel, which I had named "The Neverending Sacrifice". I was using the pen name of Elim Garak, a character from an old scifi show. It was flat, as I had no real life experiences, but could only draw upon all the books I'd read and shows I'd watched.
But an odd mission of the ship was to catalog and preserve any thing any of my selves wrote. 90,000 plus authors would make for a vast library, but the ship micro-engraved it on metal squares. One decimeter by decimeter metal square could hold 1,000 books. I was not allowed to read any of the books or stories of my past selves.
I wondered who ever would read them.
I was on the third generation of a tale of seven generations of a Cardassian family that lived only to serve the State. I was admitting to myself that I was running out of ways for them to keep doing so that were in any way new and plausible. To be honest, it was more satire at this point, though I had not really started it that way.
I gave a mental shrug, a vast feeling of hopelessness flickering in me, then subsiding. Too soon after my earlier unscheduled sleep to feel too bad, I supposed. I got up and made dinner. I munched on a snack platter I'd made of Triskies, summer sausage, sharp cheddar cheese and slices of - fresh? - jalepenos. I had a glass of wine with it, though from what I could tell from the shows, it was not really wine.
At least I never got a buzz, let alone got drunk.
I watched more of "Atlas Shrugged". What would it be like to be able to at least try to work and produce and create and grow, even if one failed? Even if it was ultimately pointless? I would apparently never know. In the great saga of man, which was now long over, I was a meaningless footnote, one among millions of billions, and never to be reviewed by anyone.
In a real sense, it mattered not whether this ship had ever been created or not. It commemorated all those past caring, and memorialized a species of no more importance cosmically than the ants who'd died along with man when their sun went nova.
If only there was a woman. If only the mission had been colonization, however far away in time and space. For if there was any point to life beyond reproducing more life, and being happy with the other in doing so, I'd yet to read of it. In fact, I'd read that such was the only point in a book.
At 2145 I got ready for bed. I left all the lights on. Deliberately, in case that wasted power. Not that I didn't know that they'd all go off when I went to sleep promptly at 2200. But I was petty like that, and it wasn't like the ship complained. I looked darkly at the double bed. The two sets of pillows. The two nightstands. The two lamps. I always wondered who I should hate for that.
I suspected my original self.
I took the note card out of Poul Anderson's book and looked at it. Day 9,201. If I was 25 and some change. Day 1,536 if, more realistically, I was 4 and some change, with 21 years worth of funny feeling memories before that. About 18,000 more days till I could welcome death.
And until the next me could start to yearn for death again. I updated the note card and put it back in the book dutifully and pointlessly.
I fell asleep.
0600 I woke up and showered and shaved and brushed my teeth. I did my twenty minutes of required exercises. I did another seven minutes of unrequired exercising, while thinking of the woman pushing the stroller.
I asked the ship if any anomalies had been detected. She said no.
I went to my 0700 breakfast.
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