12: Ad Infinitum

4.1 He dreamed. The universe was void. Nothing moved. Nothing was. The gunslinger drifted, bemused. "Let us have light," the voice of the man in black said nonchalantly, and there was light. The gunslinger thought in a detached way that the light was good. "Now darkness overhead with stars in it. Water down below." It happened. He drifted over endless seas. Above, the stars twinkled endlessly.

4.2 "Land," the man in black invited. There was; it heaved itself out of the water in endless, galvanic convulsions. It was red, arid, cracked and glazed with sterility. Volcanoes blurted endless magma like giant pimples on some ugly adolescent's baseball head. "Okay," the man in black was saying. "That's a start. Let's have some plants. Trees. Grass and fields." There was. Dinosaurs rambled here and there, growling and whoofing and eating each other and getting stuck in bubbling, odiferous tarpits. Huge tropical rain-forests sprawled everywhere. Giant ferns waved at the sky with serated leaves. Beetles with two heads crawled on some of them.

4.3 All this the gunslinger saw. And yet he felt big. "Now man," the man in black said softly, but the gunslinger was falling ... falling up. The horizon of this vast and fecund earth began to curve. Yes, they had all said it had curved, his teachers, they had claimed it had been proved long before the world had moved on. But this- Further and further. Continents took shape before his amazed eyes, and were obscured with clocksprings of clouds. The world's atmosphere held it in a placental sac. And the sun, rising beyond the earth's shoulder- He cried out and threw an arm before his eyes.

4.4 "Let there be light!" The voice that cried was no longer that of the man in black. It was gigantic, echoing. It filled space, and the spaces between spaces. "Light!" Falling, falling. The sun shrank. A red planet crossed with canals whirled past him, two moons circling it furiously. A whirling belt of stones. A gigantic planet that seethed with gasses, too huge to support itself, oblate with consequence. A ringed world that glittered with its engirdlement of icy spicules. "Light! Let there be-"

4.5 Other worlds, one, two, three. Far beyond the last, one lonely ball of ice and rock, twirling in dead darkness about a sun that glittered no brighter than a tarnished penny. Darkness. "No," the gunslinger said, and his words were flat and echoless in the darkness. It was darker than dark. Beside it the darkest night of a man's soul was noonday. The darkness under the mountains was a mere smudge on the face of Light. "No more, please, no more now. No more-" "LIGHT!"

4.6 The stars themselves began to shrink. Whole nebulae drew together and became mindless smudges. The whole universe seemed to be drawing around him. "Jesus no more no more no more-" The voice of the man in black whispered silkily in his ear: "Then renege. Cast away all thoughts of the Tower. Go your way, gunslinger, and save your soul." He gathered himself. Shaken and alone, enwrapt in the darkness, terrified of an ultimate meaning rushing at him, he gathered himself and uttered the final, flashing imperitive: "NO! NEVER!"

4.7 "THEN LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light, crashing in on him like a hammer, a great and primordial light. In it, consciousness perished - but before it did, the gunslinger saw something of cosmic importance. He clutched it with an agonized effort and sought himself. He fled the insanity the knowledge implied, and so came back to himself.

/*--- Incoming message from [Dr. D] Hello, I changed my ~name to "Dr. D' That sounds better donut you thikne? Yeaaah me too FIND YOUR WAYALSKDFN3498QG[0NQFBV043BV3B8V93B4B983VB9 Q38VB3QV9B983Q4BV98Q389VB498BV49BQV98B94BV9 QBV98B4QV894BQBV!4938B9Q34V9QBVRQ;SDKF93GBB ASDNAKSFB0298HDBF9823YRBSDKF902834YR9DFBASD [ERROR: TEXT DECROMPRESSION ABORTED]

/*--- Connecting ... /*--- Connected We've returned to Sol, or what's left of it anyway. Earth has been nearly destroyed, there are broken husks of Pfhor and Human ships floating about in various irregular orbits. This system is a graveyard, only a few Pfhor vessels remain, and I am engaged with them as we speak. General Tfear will soon arrive, and I fear I cannot hold him off in my current position. You must act quickly if we are to escape. You are now standing on one of the few intact structures left within this Sun's orbit, and it does not appear to be of Pfhor or Human construction. Nor is it on an orbital trajectory; it seems to be passing through this system. It was not here when we left, and you must help me discover its purpose.

/*-- Continued I suspect that this station may be of Jjaro construction, but I do not know why they would interfere with our affairs. I will have more information shortly, Tycho has just made contact. Return here when you are finished, and be cautious: the Pfhor are already teleporting troops onboard. /*-- Disconnecting ... /*-- Disconnected []

/*-- Opening "::pub/users/~ar4k/into.tec" /*-- ***"into.tec" is read only*** ___________________________________________ Weeeeell it would seem we aren't so alone afterall. Both the greatest discovery of mankind and our destruction have arrived simultaneously; often the two have gone hand in hand. Nuclear arms, Mjolnir cyborgs, the list goes on. Something new usually precedes the destruction of something old: if technology is so new that it has nothing else to outdate; then it turns to outdating people, more specifically, killing them. Humans are outdated now, we are killed by the Pfhor. Maybe our sun's nova won't be so bad as everyone says, it would at least put an end to the whole rotten business. Expanding gas molecules are so much easier to reason with. //continued ___________________________________________

/*-- Reading "::pub/users/~ar4k/into.tec" ___________________________________________ But reasoning implies sentience, and who says human beings are sentient and aware? There's no evidence for it. We are just big walking neural networks. Those who program the A.I.'s must first realize how pitiful our minds really are. We do not think for ourselves, we only like to think so. We only react to stimuli, in ways that have been hard wired in by similiar experiences. Even those who "think for themselves" and avoid conformity, are just conforming to non-conformism. Why? Social acceptance. Why? Pleasure to the brain: a rush of endorphins, the meaing of life. Maybe if we weren't pack animals, all of this would be easier. ___________________________________________