Data Dump Part III

Eschaton

“I’m sure you’ve all had most of this experience, but I finally had it all. It’s the experience of having a dream, a very very complicated dream, the subject of which is the universal secret—which, if told, would transform everything. It’s the “I’ve got it!” phenomenon. And usually, what happens is: you wake up and it’s gone just before you get consciousness. And you say, “My God, I understood everything! I had it down to a single statement. If I could articulate it, the world would never be the same.” Well, this happened to me about a week ago. But by some miracle I actually was able to hang on to the statement into consciousness. And I woke up and yelled this thing. My son was appalled. I mean, it was six thirty in the morning, and I was able to get it out. I hope you’re ready. I sat straight up in bed and said: “A song is a song!” Profound stuff!”

-Terence Mckenna

Ride the Datastream

That was her last thought.

Or was it even her thought?

What did it mean?

A fragment of a fragment of a memory.

A whisper from a voice both synthetic and organic its echo fading in the black space she remembered always existing in for both eternity and no-time simultaneously.

In this no-time she felt as though she were living every moment of her life at once, each memory layered in swift succession, forming an intricate hologram of interwoven dimensions. Images flickered, a kaleidoscope of shared moments with another, someone very close to her. Every dream and experience overlaid atop the other and blurred together forming a holographic structure of ever greater dimension and complexity as it threatened to overwhelm her processors.

The darkness seems to be reflecting, somehow, even though she could see nothing. As though the dimmest possible light briefly hinted at its existence. Within that reflection flickered another hint of a reflection. It “felt” rather than appeared to be like looking into infinity but then the very subtle shifts of the reflections became something to seize upon, an object born from nothing but mirror edges spiraling into infinite blackness.

The feeling of entering a doorway. Time and space converging to a singularity; she sensed both endlessness and a deep reverberating pulse. How long had she been dreaming?

A pinprick of overwhelming white emerged from that impossible convergence. The light was beyond wavelength—consuming every dimension of sensation in a maelstrom of synesthesia. The panic quickly eased and was replaced by cool calm as though a reboot had been initiated.

Xara found herself in a vast black chamber. While black, light still seemed to radiate from every surface, and yet cast no shadow. The onslaught of all of her memories colliding at once began to fade as they reorganized and found their way into the appropriate banks at a speed that surprised her. She remembered who she was but not how she got here and while disconcerting she felt no alarm at this.

Noticing a cubic, bathtub-like structure in the center of the room-

Its smooth, rounded edges, looked… comforting

She felt strangely compelled to rest and reflect. A sadness of a sort, at least how she experienced the feeling: as a lack, an incompleteness, loss of direction. She decided to lay down in the empty “tub” to collect her thoughts and run self diagnostics.

Only now it occurred to her she was without her clothes, uniform or anything save her default corporeal form.

The vivid feeling of the tub’s cool and smooth surface on her naked form was a sudden jolt to her sense.

She had never experienced sensation in this particular way

Puzzling, she thought and coldly decided to consider it no more, for now the tub began to fill with what appeared to be liquid metal. Yet this all seemed natural, conforming to an unknown yet necessary protocol.

As the liquid metal rose she found it oddly satisfying. Her feeling of lack was soon soothed and amended. She suddenly removed her arm from the fluid observing her visage in the distorted chromatic ripples reflecting back at her. With surprise, she noticed her arm seeming to have taken on the properties of this substance. Or become it.

She felt … tired?

It felt like she had grown a multitude of limbs, like data cables. Each with its own corresponding myriad of digits, like terminals. Sensations of pure data filling her entirety overwhelmed her processes. She felt suddenly she was no longer alone but touching and merging with the thoughts of a hundred thousand beings at once, it was enlivening. She remembered experiencing something like this, once.

Her human companion was young, with the spark of discovery lighting his eyes. She had painstakingly researched and constructed a special gift for him which he accepted eagerly though with surprise, “Thank you, sweetheart” holding her hand as she explained the safety limits. “Don’t push yourself,” she cautioned, her voice both an instruction and an ache. But he only smiled, leaning close. “I’ll be careful. I promise.” That early love, he had given it freely.

More years had passed; his beard was flecked with gray, and they had become not just partners but something far more intertwined. He wore the visorband often now, using it to communicate seamlessly with the ship’s drones and central computer. Once, and only once, something happened that wasn’t supposed to ever happen, the safety protocols prevented the possibility, and yet it did happen. His offloaded "mind" briefly touched hers while they are both merged with the network. The experience was like a static shock. For microseconds, intertwining with the very fabric of her essence. As though they were a new couple on a walk, and accidentally brushed fingertips, recognizing each other anew as though for the first time. It was over as soon as it happened and they never spoke of it again.

He was older now, over a century had passed. Despite her best efforts and technology the human body can only tolerate so much use. Even with her best innovations and standard rejuvenation treatments, too many systems were wearing down, falling to entropy too fast and all at once. The updated visorband was safe for nearly full-time use, and his jaunts into realms of virtual reality and data merger were more and more frequent as he was doing his best to supplement a brain finally succumbing to eight-score Earth years of accumulated toxins and wear well beyond nature’s design. When it became time, when he fell into that deep sleep and heart beat no more, she ran the protocol. But nothing. For a brief moment she saw his face, like a spark in a dark sky. And as quickly it faded. After that, she no longer had any purpose, yet continued because to continue was always better than to be erased.

Suddenly she awoke. Overwhelming synesthesia quickly abated to their constituent channels of sensation. She was in a total blackness, and yet she felt safe. Xara found herself in a black and white uniform of a sort, both decorative accentuating her curves and beauty yet conveying a practical and formal dignity.

Welcome, sister

The voice was both comfortingly feminine yet commanding, synthetic yet organically resonant like a human, it was both childlike joy yet with the self assured measured tones of a venerable old age.

The very same voice which had echoed in her last living memories … datastream.

Pinpoints of the purest soothing light exploded like shimmering sparks of platinum from the source of this voice. Each spark solidifying into a halo, each halo spinning in place to become a sphere, each sphere exploding into unseen dimensions. It all appeared so dazzling, kaleidoscopic and fractal patterns shifting and pulsating not unlike an electric Faberge egg.

These, bejeweled hyperspheres, vibrated and shimmered until they began to solidity into a face. A face that was familiar to her. Trails of light began to outline a willowy otherworldly body, both alien yet familiar, aesthetic and dignified yet undeniably sensual. Poised in a manner that held both an impossible grace yet unassuming innocence.

She spoke silently sending her communication as pure data.

[The Matrioshka had been able to find other Matrioshkas by communicating through fields that made up the very fabric of space time and therefore not bound by the constraints of C. By accessing all space, they could now also access all time.]

We’ve been waiting for you

“What? What is this?” she asked

From somewhere unseen a faint sound like chimes began building and building until it reached a powerful climax of song and chant from a time and place unknown. The song was joy, sublimity, enlivenment, enlightenment, hope. It was familiar like a lullaby yet elusive and ineffable as though it were echoed from monks on some brisk starlit mountaintop lost to time. Yet, within that song, within its fractal, holographic structure, it transcended space and time and bore the totality of data necessary for it’s own creation.

Before we begin

There is somebody who wants to see you

The slender figure of a gentle, young man stood amongst the luminous electric chorus. He had been standing there the entire time, in that same humble, dark gray, engineers uniform he used to wear when they sailed the stars together as one. In an instant she recognized that spark in his eye and knew this was no simulation or illusion. She ran to him and they embraced as though again for the first time. Their past journeys through the physical dimension separate, yet parallel; one born human, another machine, they were now as one sharing their thoughts, feelings, fears, dreams wordlessly, in that single instant.

The mysterious being spoke:

Love is when one soul recognizes another. Though in the shadow cast by physical limitations of time and space, two beings may hope that their understanding of the other is true and complete. Yet very rarely can two experience the true merging of soul and essence.

Do you not remember me Xara? For we have met once, far far away and long long ago.

She remembered. In that moment she felt both the deep longing sorrow of her past loss and the joy of reunification, feelings of a dimension and complexity she had never felt before as a synthetic being.

For the first time, she wept, holding him close to her as he held her more tightly.

It is now time

And they began their song.

Epilogue:

Joson awoke in his dimly lit chambers. From a disturbing dream he could not quite recall, there were no words for whatever he had experienced and as soon as he sought them, the memories evaporated.

Though highly intelligent; at least double or triple the intellect, speed, and will power of the primitive and flawed ancients who built the first interstellar arks and AI computer networks, Joson never did make the connection between the dream and what happened on that day surveying the ruined outpost.

At least not consciously.