by David Myhro
(It is an unfortunate reality that terminology in the art of astronomy was very clumsy in your day. I can only offer my own set of terms and henceforth adhere to them with consistency: our sun I will refer to by name, Sol; any star will be referred to as a sun if it nourishes planets and I am describing a setting that is near enough to the star so that its stellar wind dominates the interstellar medium; the moon I will refer to by name, Luna; in general, the moon of any planet should be referred to as a natural satellite but I will still refer to these bodies as moons; the word "planet" will refer only to a solid, rocky planet and I will never be so absurd so as to use the same word to refer to a gas giant.)
Mars was colonized: there was a relative abundance of specially engineered plant life and there were also several forms of intelligent life that had been artificially adapted to survive unassisted (when I say "intelligent life" I mean spiders, wingless insects, and not much more). Other than microorganisms, nothing could naturally survive in the Martian wasteland. But there were new plans. The surface of the planet had undergone significant changes, and there was work in progress to complete the terraformation. The technology and resources to do this had actually been available for thousands of years, but the process had to be done gradually: there was one failed attempt at a hasty global warming of Mars' atmosphere that resulted in catastrophic storms over the entire planet, and there were many deaths.
Colonization of the moons of the gas giants was not feasible, save for a few. Jupiter's Galilean moons were, of course, colonized by humanity, and Jupiter was quite a sight to behold from the surface of one of these bodies; however, most of the moons of Jupiter and of the other gas giants were condemned because they were so small that the escape velocity was dangerously low and there existed too much risk of flying off uncontrollably into space.
Ceres, the bastard child of the solar system, was colonized. Pluto, Charon, and several other Kuiper Belt dwarf planets were also colonized, thanks to the advanced methods of harnessing energy, but most of the other distant Kuiper Belt bodies were too small for human habitation. There were also manned vessels circling Sol in their own orbital planes, many of which possessed exotic orbital inclinations due to their deep trespasses into the Oort cloud.
A potential health problem for all space-dwelling humans, whether they were on a sphere or drifting in the weightlessness of space, was radiation. Sol was constantly producing high-frequency photons that, unless inhibited by an obstruction of some sort, could eventually cause cancers, tumors, and other serious malignants. While the armoring of the mobile vessels and surface structures provided relief for this, there was the desire for a new kind of spacesuit that could be completely sufficient for this purpose. There were projects in the works that, if successful, would create artificial, personalized ozones to protect from the electromagnetic radiation that made outer space so dangerous (the solar wind, which would be particle radiation and the complement to the electromagnetic radiation, was not an issue because all space colonies, shuttles, and suits had personalized magnetic fields).
Of all the new places that the humans were able to set up shop, the most amazing place was probably here on Earth. They had laboratories at extreme ocean depths, and there were people in them. The amount of pressure stomping down upon these laboratories was immense, the darkness was overwhelming, and the water, I'm sure, was cold enough to freeze your beating heart in place. In spite of everything, they were there, they were kidnapping bizarre forms of life for study, and there was just no stopping them. It was clear that there would soon be cities open to the public, and eventually the whole earth would be fully covered in metal.
Chapter 32
They took me to a great library that—for all it was worth—may as well have been built just for me. The library's purpose was to be able to communicate knowledge to a being that had no understanding of the humans' language (or, perhaps, to be able to communicate knowledge to a being that had no language of any kind), and there was an interactive theatrical introduction that needed to be viewed repeatedly until the viewer was able to grasp the basic concepts.
The theatrical introduction could be relayed in most any kind of medium, such as audio, visual, touch, smell, sonar, electric current, and etcetera. There were other ways, I'm sure, but I wasn't able to tell what they were. I assume that my anthropomorphic body led them to believe that I was responsive and vulnerable to the same range of things as any typical human.
And so I was given a visual presentation in the basic wavelengths of light that any human could see. The presentation, which was set to relay the same information no matter which medium it might have been played in, began with no assumption that the audience had any concept of a number. I did like that approach, but what bothered me was the tacit expectation that any intelligent being—one that could see—would have its attention drawn to movement. Humans have always been visually drawn to movement because they were still in the jungle—it is the primal instinct of survival pulsing in your brain that demands your attention whenever you see something move. Who, though, would suggest that a highly evolved creature from an advanced civilization would still be so savage as to require this for survival? That presumptuous faux pas notwithstanding, the presentation was very professional.
The presentation corresponded symbols with counting numbers. An appropriate number of pebbles, stars, or some other object with which any intelligent being gifted with sight should have been visually familiar were shown in juxtaposition to each of the symbols; I thus deduced their number system: a dot was zero; a vertical line segment was one; an upside-down V was two; a triangle, three; a square, four; a pentagon, five.
I believe that their selection of a base-six number system was related to the fact that six is the smallest perfect number (that is, a positive integer, n, whose proper divisors sum to n). I couldn't be sure if this number system was what they actually used in practice or if it was something purely for this intergalactic ambassador library. Either way, they had a few curators who knew the numbering system, as well as the mathematical language, very thoroughly.
After being tested on the syntax and vocabulary of their mathematical language I was given demonstrations of various mathematical and logical proofs. Of particular interest to me—at least when my attention is restricted to matters such as this—was a whole wealth of various number theories, including the million-dollar question: does there exist a nontrivial formula for the sequence of prime numbers in their natural ordering? I was suddenly aware of the fact that open questions from my day might have been solved by now.
I asked them for the nth prime, and—instead of giving me the formula—they merely proved that it cannot exist; it was beautiful, and I tell you that it would have made any twenty-first century mathematician ejaculate. At the end of this proof, they, as per the usual, produced the proof signature—a few symbols indicating which axioms were necessary to make way for the proof (this civilization recorded such a thing because any proof that borrowed less axioms was superior to another proof of the same statement that might have required more axioms, regardless of the respective complexities or methods of the proofs).
(It could be tempting to stubbornly believe that it's impossible to prove the nonexistence of this formula; however, it's important to remember that mathematics is quite literally nothing but assumptions and definitions, and then, of course, the consequences that follow with dependence. No new information can come from an assumption or a definition; therefore, your twenty-first century's lack of insight into the properties of the primes should not lead you to believe that certain statements about the primes must be undecidable. And these mathematicians certainly started with assumptions different from anything I'd ever seen—and indeed there were, as I would later discover, thousands of different axiomatic systems of mathematics in this age—but the beauty of the proof was, naturally, rooted in the fact that primes are so simple and fundamental that a great many axiomatic systems will be arithmetically
structured by primes; this produces many different paths that can be explored for the answer. Looking at it that way, I suppose it shouldn't be too surprising that they were able to conjure this proof.)
I was about as intelligent as an ape with a crayon compared to even a layman of this era, and yet I was still deemed fit to be instructed. But I knew that I wasn't fit to be instructed by their standards; I was only deemed such because I was a scientific marvel to them—they wanted to educate me so that I would share their thirst for more knowledge and thus willingly lend my indestructible body to them for such an endeavor. They did not know that my desire was already very much there. They taught me all things, even the things that I did not really need to know, since they would have felt shameful if they were to deny me any knowledge. The historical part was the prize feast of information; I was particularly fascinated simply with the title of one portion: "Interstellar Colonial History." I'd never before been taught history because I had lived through it all; I now had over half a million years of extremely well-documented history to learn, and I couldn't get enough of it.
Chapter 33
And so now you will be told the secret of my immortality, why there is no blade, bullet or bomb that can harm me, why there is no poison that can pollute me, why there is no clock that can count to my last heartbeat. I am utterly indestructible because I am made of only one particle. A particle the size of a man.
That's not to say that I consist of only one molecule or one substance such that further decomposition would alter my chemical properties—I am but one elementary, indivisible particle.
There were many consequences that followed from this conclusion of my constitution, one of which being the fact that the humans in this future world were unable to scan my brain, or even detect its existence, since no light could pass through me.
Immediately after I was exhumed from the vault they weren't really surprised that my brain activity couldn't be scanned by their machines—not much more could have surprised them since they'd already found a man in a welded-shut vault that had, judging just from the primitive design, been constructed and sealed thousands of years prior. On the other hand, they were very much perplexed as to why they couldn't so much as draw blood samples from me. They had presumed that I was made of cells, but that there was some dense skeletal structure blocking the electromagnetic penetration of any part of my body; the absolutely impenetrable nature of even my superficial skin cells, however, was something far beyond their expectations.
Then they tried to peek at those super-strong skin cells and they saw nothing. My skin appeared to be the same at any level of magnification, and even when they looked down my throat the same phenomenon persisted. And so, with my consent, they performed tests of mortality on me. The tests gradually rose in intensity until they began to notice that I was luminous—exposure to these levels of heat purified me of incidental dirt and dust, and I shined more than the sun because I perfectly reflected all photons that greeted me.
Despite the technological limitations dwarfing the rigor of these tests, the scientists felt fully convinced that I was inexplicably indestructible. In the ensuing experiment I was bombarded with quantum particles and it was verified that all collisions were completely elastic. Nothing ever passed through me, no matter the wavelength.
There was never any way to perform a proof in science and so we could not prove that I was made of only one particle, but the test results were unmistakable. The experiment was repeated so many times that the conclusion was probably more certain than anything else that was known in the whole of science, but that was what was necessary because of the humans' reluctance to believe it in the first place. There was absolutely no doubt that I was the one-particle man.
But there were so many questions now. Why did I reflect many photons of light at varying wavelengths, produce friction against objects, weigh as much as a man, and look like a man? Why could I not extend a finger and push through any solid matter, seeing as how there would be no resistance on the atomic level? If the caverns beneath my orifices terminated into the same kind of smooth surface that was lining the outside of my body, then how did I, for example, collect and interpret light? Why was it that I didn't exhibit the properties of any kind of particle that was known, but rather interacted with the environment in a classical way? Why was the timescale of my consciousness exactly like that of a typical animal on Earth instead of perhaps a more or less acute timescale wherein a conversation with me might take microseconds or millennia? Animals have evolved a timescale of consciousness as a function of both brain size and the twenty-four-hour daily cycle; my timescale, being totally arbitrary, was inexplicably synced with this.
But these weren't even the most pressing of questions because they could, presumably, be answered with more inspection. For the humans, there were two main issues that would possibly never be solved.
First issue: data. By what mechanism did I store and recall data? Such a process would require working parts, and that was exactly what was not available to me. The best guess was… well, there was no best guess. My insides were not observable, and so there was only some conjecture that there were things in me like cilia—which were part of my one-particle entity—that could store binary information by either coiling or standing up straight. Whatever kind of mechanism I was using to store data, it was certainly believed that I could only hold a finite amount. It was also believed that the data was ordered, and that new data would overwrite old data in the order received. This would be why I was unable to recall events beyond a certain date, such as the moment that I came to be.
Second issue: antimatter. There was no known way that I could be annihilated. This was not for a lack of energy or power—they simply didn't know what they would have to do to actually accomplish the task. But there had to be a way, somehow, to make it happen because there certainly must've been some moment in time, t>0 (where t=0 is the Big Bang), in which I was pure energy, unless you prefer to lend credit to the absurdity of this image: there's me, and there's nothing else… except everything—the singularity. It is absurd—don't you think?—to imagine a man, perhaps meditating, somehow existing without any space or time to inhabit, waiting and yet not waiting for the singularity to explode.
And so if we dismiss the absurdities, then it can be established that there was the initial Big Bang and then, after some amount of time, something happened: by some unknown process I was forged out of a large amount of heat in a small amount of space, born from the very strange conditions that only could have existed in the time when there were no atoms and the average temperature of the universe was trillions upon trillions of degrees. The first one billionth of a second after the Big Bang can be divided into thousands of different epochs, and I was probably formed in one of these. There was so much going on in this span of time, so much that will never be understood, so much that can never be repeated or observed in any laboratory. I was the clock without a clockmaker, the result of an adolescent universe uttering half-formed ideas like magnetic monopoles, cosmic strings, and even a cosmic man.
Chapter 34
Back when I was in the American prison system I had a fear—a fear that was soon realized—that I would wind up in a laboratory to be tested and then locked up when there was nothing left that they could learn about me. But I wasn't afraid of the people of this era. They were just… civilized. Everything was done with my permission beforehand, and I was always free to leave at any time. On top of this, all of the scientific discoveries were shared with me immediately—this was a priority for them, like an ethical obligation. The last time I was being studied, the American scientists were under orders to keep me uninformed; the only things keeping me in the dark now were the language barrier and also the fact that you'd need an extensive background in physics to understand what was happening.
What I was able to pick up on was that my body, as a particle, was a carrier of several new fundamental forces that had never been se
en before. Their interrelations with the world around me made me like a normal object in terms of being able to mimic basic interactions with the world, such as friction or gravity.
I was about as strong as an average man from your day. If I were to lift, say, fifty pounds, then that is an action that requires energy. Where this energy came from was not yet known—I hadn't yet been observed to sap energy from photons, so it was speculated that I had an immense amount of stored energy that was realized kinetically in very conservative quotas and that my body would naturally absorb more energy when needed.
What the humans might not ever understand, though, was why I was alive. They could never see inside me, and they could never know for sure that I actually was a sentient being rather than a nonliving entity programmed to respond to scenarios in appropriate ways—they simply had to take me at my word that I was alive.