The Complete Cycle of Zilos

I am a very bad person, I put the first part of my Zilos story a LONG time ago and I never bothered to put the second part up. Worse of all is that I've had it written all along. This was brought to my attention by my dear uncle Olaf on this new years's eve so I have decided to finally upload the second half. In fact I will upload the entire story, it makes little sense to have it split in two, I don't know what I was thinking at the time. I have also taken this opportunity to revise it, I have made some changes but only in so far as the writing is concerned. the story remains pretty much exactly the same as it was when I first completed it. Please do comment I appreciate all the feedback I can get.

I dedicate this to the mighty Arthur C. Clarke, whose writings inspired me to write this short story.

The Cycle of Zilos

By Guillermo Valverde

1

In the absolute darkness of a space long dead floated a giant spaceship. A remnant of a very ancient age when there was light in the universe and intelligent entities made it their home. Had anyone been there, they may as well have been blind, for there was no light. And they may as well have been dead, for the cold was absolute. Yet there was someone, for the ship was no mere artifact. No abandoned wreck drifting in space. It was a being in itself, gifted with a mind and the ability to feel. His name was Zilos and he 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. For eons he had shifted between bodies of all kinds. He had however always relied on machinery to exist, for without it he was only a wave of energy in space, waiting to be interpreted into himself by a mechanical vessel. The machines gave him a body; he gave the machines a soul.

In spite of the ship’s peaceful appearance, its circuits were overflowing with energy and its processors were carrying out billions of calculations per seconds in an unimaginably complex symphony of electromagnetic pulses. All of it working towards single purpose of encoding Zilos, his mind and his knowledge, into the fabric of space-time and sending him into the unknown.

Then the moment arrived. All the mechanisms were ready, every program and subroutine had been tested millions of times for malfunctions and countless simulations had considered almost all conceivable result. Zilos had been monitoring this enterprise for such a long time that he was left blank for a fraction of a second. After regaining composure he initiated the final maneuver of his plan. From the surface of the spacecraft emerged an enormous antenna. With care Zilos aligned it to the exact coordinates of the gravitational singularity. One he had spent millennia searching for in the solitude of a dead universe. He checked the power cells of the ship, they were almost exhausted, but all of his plans had worked perfectly until now. There was enough energy to send Zilos away. It was time to go.

With everything ready, Zilos paused. He had expected that once prepared he would not have hesitated to leave his forsaken home. But he could feel it. He had a slight lingering doubt, What if the procedure fails? What will happen? And more importantly, what will happen if it succeeds? He spent his last moments in this universe remembering.

2

Zilos had lived for eons, an almost endless amount of time. Time had once been a triviality to him, but then the end of days arrived. Of his origins he remembered little, none of his kind did. He assumed it was due to imperfections in engineering at the time of his re-birth. 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. He had the faint notion that they had once been bound to a single body, and that that body could expire and make the self disappear forever.

Zilos had not always been alone, just as the universe had not always been so empty and dark. There had been many like him. They had left their star system and spent the vast majority of their infinite life on board of a ship. Their selves stored in machines designed for easy movement, interaction with others and for the scientific study of the home universe. They travelled in a colony-ship of several thousand individuals. Fueled by the fusion power of stars they traversed their galaxy and discovered secret after secret, solving many of the mysteries of life. They were not the only ones. There were many other colony-ships drifting in all different directions. It was the greatest project their species had ever attempted; the exploration of the entire Galaxy.

And then what had seemed like an impossible endeavor was completed. They had charted their entire galaxy and they had learned almost all they could from it. 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 someday reaching them all. Their bodies did not wither and die, and if they were broken a change of recipient for their identity brought them back to life. Their minds were kept sharp and the more time passed the more intelligent and wise they became. They were awed by all that existed in the universe, and they had eternity to see and study it in its entirety, to travel to 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 vast stretches of space. With the increased isolation they became more concerned with affairs of alien species. Of all the millions of aliens Zilos crossed none were as advanced as his people; they were unique in having achieved immortality through machines. Some aliens were mere animals, incapable of any form of advanced thought or speech. They found species ruled by intelligence others by instinct. Some were primitive, others advanced and even civilized. Some had potential to grow, and others were stagnant, doomed to remain as they were until extinction took them. Sometimes, Zilos’ colony would observe aliens for millennia using them as experiments to test their understanding of genetics and sociology. Yet these experiments where always subtle and benign, for they had a respect for all life in the Cosmos.

In rare occasions they would come across a civilization that after careful investigation proved to be worth making direct contact with. They would send messages and later set meetings in which they exchanged information. Sometimes they even became friends. They never revealed, however, the major secrets of their technology. Yet even minor details boosted many species into the stars and brought many to their ultimate demise. In some cases they would return an era after first contact to find themselves adored as deities from other dimensions.

Eventually, the colony would grow tired of drifting from star to star and from galaxy to galaxy. When this happened they would make a planet their own. Always they were planets of unusual beauty, even by the standards of gods. They built cities and formed trade routes with empires they helped create. The vessels for their minds were simplified to elegant forms free from utilitarian constraints. 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. Yet inevitably the inquisitive nature of the Colonists made them leave these planets behind to resume their voyage of discovery across the universe. It is possible that long after their departure other space faring civilizations found these planets and were awed by the beauty of the constructions and the remnants of their perfect technology. Maybe empires rose and fell just on the relics they left behind.

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 peace and meditation in which all the knowledge they had attained was carefully revised and stored in their digital libraries. Some decided to go into prolonged sleeps so they would be sharper and more enthusiastic when they reached their destination. Others would dedicate their time to personal interests such as art, science or architecture. Zilos did all, he had the time. He designed facilities for the next planet they would colonize, deciphered alien writings and codes, interpreted data from celestial objects, and dreamt about parallel universes he knew were beyond his reach.

3

This idyllic existence lasted for eons yet they all knew that it would not last forever. 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 complex and beautiful, but only for a time. As the colonists travelled further into the galaxies and stars, the universe expanded exponentially, with the full intent of one day dissolving the force that weaved it together. Eventually gravity would grow weak and stars would no longer form. The Cosmos would become dark and void of life, an infinite stretch of nothingness. And like this it would remain forevermore.  

The more Zilos lived, the more this truth loomed over his people. Through their studies they had discovered exactly when it would begin. But it was only when the first symptoms manifested themselves that reality woke them form their illusion of immortality. Stars died and new ones were no longer born from their remains. They were damned to witness this over billions of years. With each star gone they became more and more melancholic. They called it the great sadness.

The immortals were at last faced with death. A death of the most brutal kind imaginable, it was not their death but the destruction of all that existed. They were bound to remain in the darkness for a time. Their perfected technology would outlive the last stars. And when their advanced fusion reactors expired, only then would they be allowed to die.

Councils were formed within the ship-colony, the apocalypse was endlessly discusses. Many accepted their fates and believed that if their universe was to die so should they. Another group, led by Zilos, firmly believed that they should prevail no matter the cost, yet not in a void. They referred to speculative theories that posited parallel universes with different physical laws. The theories had never been proven but they had come across unexplained phenomena in their travels that hinted at their truth. Zilos and his faction proposed that even if they could not save themselves they should do their best to transmit their knowledge to a parallel dimension so as to not be forgotten. They had the time but they would have to work harder than they ever had to breach the barrier of physical law.

In the later days when light was but a few dim specs in the distance the Colony began to panic. As the last stars died many chose to end their immortal lives in poetic bursts of emotion. They had always been beings of patience and reason, always assessing every situation to the most minor of details. Yet, although they had almost forgotten it, behind the artificial appearance of their shells they were living creatures; shaped by the ruthless hand of evolution. The same phenomenon they had studied in countless worlds beyond their own. Their minds had been uploaded into machines in an age long past and they had grown to extents unimaginable by organic species. But hidden behind their robust god-like personas lay a fear that did not exist within any other being; an immortal's fear of death.

It proved that lifespans of universal proportions lived in comfort and peace had weakened the colonists just as much it had empowered them. They had become accustomed to ease and simplicity. Given enough time and a near limitless mind power, all things eventually became simple to their understanding. Facing the apocalypse, simplicity did not apply, and the weakening process of their existence finally took its toll. The only ill a mind in a machine is vulnerable to is madness, and mad they became.

Only a select few who proved to have exceptional willpower did not succumb, Zilos was among them. People who had been his friends ripped the power generators of their shells as if it were their beating heart. Others roared meaningless chants; receding to the states of the primitive tribes that had, in better times, revered them as gods. Some even regressed to the forgotten practice of Religion. Having let go of their critical minds they now saw gods everywhere; gods of extinction whose will had to be feared and appeased. The insane zealots began murdering the few sane colonists that remained and they built shrines to the end of times with the torn mechanical bodies of the dead. Another forgotten practice had returned: war.

Zilos himself thought to have become mad when he found himself methodically eliminating those he had shared his life with. Yet in spite of his efforts the sane colonists were outnumbered and eventually they fell; only Zilos remained. In a final act of desperation he uploaded his mind into the ship and used his new body as a weapon. He expelled his enemies into deep space, cursing them to drift in the darkness for a million years before they finally found peace. He was ashamed because in this he found relief.

After the purging was over Zilos paused for one hundred years. As he began to remember who he was and what the place he had now become had once been, he mourned. He let himself float through dead space in an act of remembrance to honor all those minds that now had ceased to exist. What they had once been and what they once stood for. He remembered a colony of philosophers and artists in their eternal journey for knowledge and discovery.

When the mourning was done he began to work on what he had conceived so long ago. He recalled the plans devised before the madness began and he set them in motion. He alone was now responsible for the memory of a universe that was no more. In the name of the defunct colony he scanned the blackness of the universe again and again in search of the suitable pathway the final journey required.

4

If Zilos had possessed eyes he would have opened them as if awakening from a dream. There was nothing left for him here now. He stored his memories and he initiated the procedure. He started to count.

Soon he began to sense his mind flowing through the trillion circuits of the ship towards the antenna. Then he felt how parts of his self began to disappear, his thoughts and memories were being encoded into the fabric of space. Before he could dedicate one last thought to his lost people and all life the universe had ever known, he lost consciousness. The encoded mind matter was then projected at the speed of light towards the massive singularity.

The projection crossed the empty blackness and was caught in the violent pull of the singularity. It had once been known as a black hole, but in the darkness of the current universe the name lost its meaning. The mind matter began to twist and turn but it did not shatter. After crossing the event horizon it was stretched exponentially until it knew no beginning and no end. When it reached what could not be conceived as the bottom of this unintelligible well it shrunk to a shape without dimensions only to be suddenly expanded again. It was thrust out of a cosmic cannon in synch with the most brutal explosion to ever occur.

In this newly born universe the mind and history of an old one was broken into a millions pieces. Bits of information were scattered alongside a new set of dimensions. For almost as long as Zilos had existed in his own world the ruins of his mind were dispersed throughout an expanding universe. Unaware he witnessed the creation of stars, planets and galaxies, flowing through a new space with no destination or consciousness.

Either by accident or predetermination a species had evolved at just the correct time and place. They lived in a small blue planet orbiting an unremarkable and they possessed an observation station on the dark side of their only moon. It had been built to scan the background radiation of the early universe with the intent of understanding its origins; their origins. In an improbable stroke of luck the station picked an anomalous signal. Its limited artificial intelligence had the presence of mind of recording the signal and sending it to its masters, flagging it as a curiosity that merited further investigation. It soon forgot the incident and went on with its work, forever unaware of the vital part it had played in history.

Over generations thousands of the planet’s most brilliant minds dedicated their lives and even their sanity to the interpretation of the anomalous signal. This culminated in an unprecedented experiment. A man, asleep, was attached to a machine that his species should not have been able to conceive. The machine was activated, dozens of men and women observed in suspense as it performed its functions. It was a disappointment to them that almost no effect could be seen. This was no machine of impressive pyrotechnics. Its workings were subtle and its effects could not be seen by the observer's eyes. Over many hours the device encoded the mind matter of the sleeping man and replicated it in its drives. When this was done it wiped the man's brain clean, his body now an empty husk kept alive by machines. The subject awoke in shock to witness his soulless body lying across from him from the perspective of an artificial vessel of metal and plastic; a perennial body for his now digital mind.

He was codenamed Zilos.

 

THE END

© Guillermo Valverde 2012