The cycle of Zilos part one of two

Now on to serious business. There is a

 short story I wrote a while back. It's science fiction, my favorite genre I think. The central ideas are inspired by Arthur C. Clarke and as well as the exploring the cosmos lectures I too

k last year here in the university of Glasgow. So if the story is any good I'd like to dedicate it to Sir Clarke, may he rest in peace, and to the physics and astronomy department of Glasgow univers

ity. Oh boy am I a geek...

The cycle of Zilos

By G. Valverde

1

In the absolute darkness of a space long dead, floated a gargantuan spaceship, a remnant of a very ancient age dominated by intelligent entities that made the universe their home. Had anyone been present there, he may as well have been blind, for there was no light, and he may as well have been dead, for the cold was also absolute. All there was, was this ship and the very faint humming and heat it radiated. The ship however, was not merely an artifact of ancient machinery. It was a being in itself, gifted with intelligence and the ability to feel. Its name was Zilos, and Zilos was preparing for his final journey, a journey away from this dead universe, a journey to somewhere he could survive.

Although a ship now, Zilos did not consider himself one, he considered himself a mind. And for aeons he had shifted between bodies of all kinds. He had however always relied on such machinery, for without it he was only a wave of energy in space, waiting to be interpreted into himself by a lifeless entity capable of doing so. The machines gave him a body, he gave the machines a purpose. 

In spite of the peaceful appearance the ship would have had if anyone was to be there to witness it, it’s circuits were overflowing with energy and its processors were carrying out millions of calculations per seconds in an unimaginably complex symphony of electronics orchestrated and closely directed by the mind Zilos. All of it serving the unique purpose of successfully sending Zilos, without damaging any of the information that composed his self, into the unknown.

Then the moment arrived, and he knew it instantly. All the mechanism were ready, every program after being tested thousands of times for malfunctions, checked positively. Zilos had been monitoring this enterprise for such a long time that when this happened, he was left blank for a fraction of a second. After he gained composure he initiated the final maneuver of his plan. From the surface of the spacecraft emerged an enormous antenna, slowly but steadily, Zilos had it align to the exact coordinates of the super-massive wormhole he had spent millions of years searching for in the absolute solitude of a dead universe. Finally he checked the power cells of the ship, they were almost exhausted, but all his plans had worked flawlessly up to now. And there was enough energy to send him away, plus a large reserve in case something went wrong.

With everything ready, Zilos paused, he had expected that once prepared he would not have hesitated to leave his forsaken home universe in search for one where his self and his knowledge could endure. But he could feel it, he had a slight lingering doubt. What if the procedure fails? What will happen? and even more importantly, what will happen if it succeeds? Zilos then spent his last moments in his universe remembering.

2

Zilos had lived for aeons, almost endless amounts of time, to the extent that time was a mere triviality to him, or it had been until the planning of his final journey. Of his origins he remembered very little if nothing, and that angered him. He had the faint notion that he had once been bound to a single body, and that that body could expire and make the self disappear, for ever. As uncertain as this was, Zilos had always known that once, him or his predecessors before him had not been infinite, a conviction that was enforced when everyone around him started to switch off. Zilos had not always been alone, as the universe had not always been so empty and dark. He remembered there had been many like him, and there had been others too. Him and his people had left their star system, spent the vast majority of their infinite life on board of a ship, their self stored in a machine apt for easy movement in many terrains, for interaction with others and for the study of the home universe. They travelled in a space-ship colony of several thousands individuals. Fueled by the power of stars, they traversed their galaxy and discovered secret after secret. And then what had at first seemed like an impossible endeavor, was completed. They had charted their entire galaxy and they had learn almost all they could. It was then time to proceed with an even grander plan. Many colonies of Zilos’ people, including his own, left their galaxy behind to reach for a hundred others, and then a thousand, with the hope of sometime reaching them all. Their bodies did not wither and die, and if they did a mere change of recipient for their identity solved all problems, their minds were kept sharp and the more time passed, the more intelligent they grew. They were awed by all that existed in the universe, and they had eternity to see and study it’s entirety, travel to all of its more distant edges and learn. That was their motto, to learn and to know.

The more they explored the further the colonies drifted from one another, eventually, Zilos and his crew were confined to themselves, with the occasional message from another ship reaching them after traveling the vastness of the cosmos, at first these messages reported the status of a particular colony, with the rare message from their local system. Later, colonies only bothered to communicate upon making astounding discoveries, usually one that the colony was especially proud of. Alas, communications grew more and more erratic as the distance separating colonies and the local system grew vaster, and the colonies themselves became more concerned with affairs of alien species, both advanced and primitive, that they encountered in their never ending travels through space. Of all the hundreds of thousands of alien civilizations Zilos crossed none were as advanced as his. They were unique in having achieved immortality through machines. Some aliens were mere animals, incapable of any form of thought or speech. Others although primitive lived in groups and seemed to use tools and showed signs of early communication. Sometimes, Zilos’ colony would observe such species during millennia and even use them 

as experiments to test their understanding of the evolutionary process of biology. 

In rare occasions they would come across a civilization that after careful investigation proved to be worth making direct contact with. In these cases they would send messages and later set a meeting in which they exchanged information and sometimes, even became friendly. Never did they, however, reveal the secrets of their technology, bar some minor details that boosted a few empires into the stars and brought as many to their ultimate demise. In some cases they would return eras after having made contact to find themselves adored as deities from other dimensions.

Sometimes, the colony would grow tired of drifting in space, from star to star, from galaxy to galaxy. When this happened They would make a planet their own, preferably one with a fascinating wildli

fe to study and enjoy, and a vast array of breathtaking landscapes to behold. They built cities and formed trade routes with empires they helped create. The cubicles for their minds were usually simplified to elegant forms, showing the refined sense of aesthetics the colonists had.  Zilos used to fly in these occasions, he would speed over worlds, him and his body alone. These were times he held close to his heart, wherever his heart may be. Eventually the inquisitive nature of Zilos’ kin would lead them to leave these planets behind, and resume their eternal discovery of their universe. It is likely that long after their departure other space faring civilizations would find these planets and be awed by the beauty of the constructions and the majestic remnants of such an unmatched technology. No doubt empires rose and fell just on these relics they left behind for such were their intentions.

Most of their existence was, however, spent in the solitude of space, patiently waiting for their next target of study or the next important discovery. These were times of quiet peace, in which all the knowledge they had attained was carefully revised and stored in the gigantic libraries that were the ship’s database. Some decided to go into prolonged sleeps so they would be sharper and more enthusiastic when the given destination was finally reached, others would dedicate their time to personal interests such as debating, art or architecture. Zilos did all, as most did. He designed facilities for the next planet they would use as anchor, deciphered alien writings and electronic codes, interpreted data from celestial objects, and dreamt about flying and traveling to universes he knew were beyond his reach.

3

This idilic existence lasted for aeons with incredibly few downfalls and an endless stream of inspiring encounters that never grew dull. Yet they all knew that it would not last forever, albeit it would for nearly an eternity. It had been known for as far as memory could summon that the home universe was doomed from the very moment it began. It was doomed to be a cosmos of pure majesty that would in the end be eclipsed by itself and become an infinite wasteland of frozen darkness, for it had always been known that, as the colonists travelled further into he galaxies and stars, the universe expanded exponentially, with the full intent of one day dissolving the force that weaved it together. The more Zilos lived, the more this truth loomed over his people, until it became a near certainty. They knew it was going to happen, and they knew when, but it was only when the first symptoms started to manifest themselves that reality hit them hard, like a stain of blood in an immaculate white sheet. Stars died, no longer leaving progenies behind, and light slowly faded into darkness. They were damned to see it all happen in the faintest detail. To the extent that special devices were devised to follow this very process. The immortals were at last faced against death, a death of the most brutal breed imaginable, the inevitable extinction of all that they adored.

Councils took place within the ship-colony as to what should be done. Many accepted their doom and believed if their universe was to die so should they. Another group, lead by Zilos firmly believed that they should prevail at all costs, yet not in a void universe, they should, if anything, pass on their knowledge to another dimension of existence, or at the very least try. Zilos worked and reworked plans to do this. Yet the colony was panicked with the ever growing reality of the end of the universe, the more time passed the more volatile the situation became. As stars died away many became mad and decided to end their up to then immortal existence in peaks of emotion. They had always been beings of patience and careful calculation, always assessing every situation to the most minor of details. Yet, although having chosen to forget it, behind the artificial appearance of their shells, they were living entities that had come to exist through all the biological processes of the violent evolutionary cycles they had studied with such perseverance and even tampered with many times in worlds remote to their own. Their minds had been em-bottled aeons in the past and grown to extents unimaginable by petty organic specimens of such a limited cognitive ability. But hidden behind their robust god like personas lay a fear unparalleled by any other being to have ever existed, the fear of death and oblivion of an immortal mind. 

It proved that lifetimes of universal proportions and lived in a comfort and peace never again to be matched had weakened the colonists just as it had empowered them. They had become accustomed to easiness and simplicity, given enough time and and  near limitless mind power, all became simple on some degree. Facing the apocalypse, simplicity did not apply, and the weakening process of their existence finally took its toll. Until only a select few who proved to have a superior willpower did not succumb to madness, the only ill a mind in a machine was left vulnerable to. Zilos was one of these select few. Still, madness reigned, with those who had been their friends expelling themselves into dead space or ripping the power generator of their shells as if it were their beating heart. They roared meaningless chants, as if receding to the states of primitive tribes that  had in better times revered them as Gods, sacrificing their very lives to build meaningless sites out of stone and giving a purpose to the way their star shone through its patterns. A group within the colony grew so macabrely insane that they saw it necessary to destroy all those who refused to accept the true way of extinction by wishing to drive the ship-colony into the blazing fires of one of the last remaining suns. This gave way to an inner conflict within the colony of a brutality never before witnessed by its once peaceful inhabitants, Zilos himself thought to have become mad when he found himself methodically eliminating those he had shared his entire life with. The remaining sane colonists were vastly outnumbered and eventually they all fell, crushed by the frenzied cultists of extinction. And then only Zilos remained, in a final act of desperation he uploaded his mind into the ship and used it as his weapon. The very remembrance of this made him despise himself, for he had the vivd memory of enjoying every single life he claimed, a sensation his mind did not know how to interpret but had been the primitive sense of taste his organic self had had.

After the necessary purge of the demented colonists was complete, Zilos paused and as he began to remember who he was and what the place he had now become had once been, he mourned. The war had been long, even in his frame of things, the equivalent of an era perhaps to a more banal species. He let himself drift through dead space, in an act of remembrance to honor who all those minds that now had ceased to exist had once been and what they once stood for. He remembered the colony of philosophers in constant expansion of the boundaries of knowledge. When the mourning was done, he began to work on what he had idealized long ago, he recalled the plans he and the other survivalists had penned down to propose to the councils before the madness had begun and set them in motion. He alone was now responsible for the memory of a universe that was no longer. And in the name of the defunct colony he scanned the blackness of the universe again and again in search of the super-massive wormhole the final journey demanded.

That's it for the first part, I story is finished, but i felt that publishing it in parts would add suspense to the matter. Or maybe leave the few if any people that read this thinking about it and what will happen, essentially suspense yes.