Dead End of a Circle

by David Myhro

  My other objective, perhaps more or perhaps less important, was to simply be a sentient observer. While the life that I was going to create in this galaxy would certainly be observing the galaxy in which it would be living, the thing that interested the star gazers back home was to have an observer who could, in the same lifetime, observe both the Milky Way Galaxy and Andromeda from the inside. To some, this very act would be the single most significant achievement in the history of the world.

  Chapter 44

  I had breached the ill-defined property lines of Andromeda several centuries ago, and the front of my ship was scorched from the intergalactic medium. It was quite wondrous to think that my voyage made into physical reality that which was once a mere abstract dot in the sky.

  In terms of magnitude of distance traveled from Earth, my ship had passed, several times over, the most distant of the unmanned voyagers that were sent to explore other major galaxies. It easily crushed them in this race because they had been constructed so long ago with inferior technology. In the same way it was thus tempting to say that it was possible—although not theoretically possible—that the humans back on Earth, before their transmission on the matter could have even reached me, devised the technology to send something so fast that it could have passed me by now; I entertained such thoughts only out of an abundance of free time, however, and I could surely look at the walls of my ship and know that never before had an object with a human fingerprint on it gone so far.

  By now the computers onboard my ship had selected 981 candidate planets for seeding. I was finally nearing Terra 1A, the first of these, and it was time to seek black holes for the purposes of deceleration via gravity assist. For the first time in hundreds of thousands of years I would have my feet beneath me.

  I remember thinking, so long ago, that Pluto was so distant. I remember that picturing myself standing on that world was the limit to how far my imagination could wander… and now I was in another galaxy.

  Chapter 45

  I was sitting in the incubation chamber, focusing my attention upon a tube of specially designed microbes. I hadn't seen anything that was alive for so long. It was pink, and it was floating. It looked like some kind of oceanic plant life.

  I sat there for days on end, just watching the life inside each of the hundreds of tubes. It took my breath away. Humanity had always wondered if there was life in other galaxies, and now there was. The beauty of where I was and of what I was doing came over me like the unearthing of a thousand secrets. The life behind the glass wasn't cold and dead like the universe. It wasn't mechanical and predictable like the machines in my ship. It was a living thing, flowing, glowing, growing, undulating like a lava lamp.

  I wanted to open the tube and touch it, I wanted to feel some kind of intimacy with this new life, but that would have contaminated the incubation chamber. I could do nothing but remain the sterile and impersonal observer that I'd always been.

  Chapter 46

  Terra 1A was nothing like the real Earth, and its sun was more powerful. To describe the new stellar system in terms of the one that you know, I'll say this: there was the sun, then the main asteroid belt, then four terrestrial planets, and no gas giants.

  The asteroid belt was possibly once a planet, but it was so close to the sun that it was ripped to pieces from the gravity—either that, or the gravity was so strong that the shrapnel was never even afforded a chance at becoming a planet in the first place.

  The first planet of the four was barren of atmosphere and extremely volcanic. It was actually geologically dead, but the gravitational field of the sun, in conjunction with the planet's eccentric orbit, was persuasive enough to induce violent uprise of liquid material.

  The next two planets were a dual planet, like how Earth and Luna almost are. Both planets were like Luna in that they were void of atmosphere, geological activity, or anything else that might be interesting. The only curious thing was that, by standing on the smaller of the two planets, you could observe a stellar eclipse similar to that which can be observable on Earth (although it was different here because there was no atmosphere for your eye to look through).

  And then there was Terra 1A. There was a fairly high level of certainty that Terra 1A had once been a gas giant—a very small gas giant—before losing the bulk of its atmosphere over time due to stellar wind and also its own lack of gravity. The planet had methane lakes, exceedingly high levels of raw diamonds, and dozens of very small moons. The planet itself was about twice that of Earth in diameter, but, due to its lower density, its strength of gravity at the surface was about the same.

  Despite having lost much of its atmosphere, there was still an extremely thick coat that remained. It consisted mainly of innate nitrogen, with a bit of methane and ammonia as well. Most of the molecular hydrogen had been whisked away as the planet lost its layers of sky, and so the components for making water were lacking. There was still enough liquid water for a planet's population of life, but barely—the competition for survival would be far greater than anything we've ever seen on Earth.

  Terra 1A lacked the satisfactory spin necessary to generate a magnetic field strong enough to protect the future inhabitants from the sun's wind; as a consequence of this radiation, life forms with long lifespans will have difficulty flourishing. Fortunately, the planet was, like Uranus was in your time, tilted to such a degree that a line passing through the north and south poles would almost intersect with the sun, and so there was always an area on the planet that would never be pelted by the sun's light during the daily cycle. Although the dark face would always receive harsh light during the complementary phase of the year, intelligent life finding itself in this situation could thrive by way of semiannual migration; and although the planet will wobble erratically on its axis over time as a result of having no stabilizing moon, my ship's computer projected that the planet would never realize a sufficient tilt such that both poles would be exposed to the sun at the same time.

  The planet was not perfect, but it was as good as we thought it was and it had the potential to be a New Earth.

  Chapter 47

  We had predicted the compositions of thousands of different types of atmospheres that might be dwelling on the planets of Andromeda, and we therefore engineered specific microbes that could convert these atmospheres into something more hospitable for our intelligent life. And so given all of this foresight, the contents of Terra 1A's atmosphere, while an annoying obstacle, were certainly not a surprise.

  A process that took upward of a billion years on Earth could be done in less than a million years here. Why? Firstly, I would be fathering highly advanced microbes that were specifically designed to process the contents of the given atmosphere—microbes that were refined from billions of years of evolution and then later repurposed by intelligent engineers with incredible technology—rather than an accidental chemical with the inexplicable ability to self-replicate using materials around it. Secondly, I would be seeding the life over the face of the entire planet, instead of just one spot, so that the process would be quicker (and also to avoid a catastrophic single-point failure). Colonies will spread out and then begin to compete with other colonies, and on the bright side of the planet there will be sharp radiation coming down from the heavens to encourage rapid mutation. As resources become scarce there will be new forms of nutrients being tapped, and the blind, defecating, savage life will thrive.

  Chapter 48

  Terra 1A was on the opposite side of the sun relative to where I was coming from. I was able to set my course in such a way so that I could make the dual planet system intercept my path, thus allowing me some time to walk upon the surface of one of them before visiting Terra 1A. They were barren, like Luna, but believe me when I say that they were worlds.

  I went to the smaller planet. The light from the sun was a bit strange in the black daytime sky, and the shadows on this planet were unlike any that I'd ever seen. They were so long and dark. They we
ren't dark grey—they were pitch black.

  The whole surface was one all-encompassing titanium sand dune. I picked up some jagged pieces of sand and let them flow through my fingers, and they fell to the ground as slowly as snowflakes. It was remarkable to me that this place was real. It was so distant from Earth, and in construction and constitution it bore no resemblance, but yet it was still subject to the very same physical laws and rules.

  I took a moment to appreciate all of this because no human could ever experience what I was experiencing. The humans had made spacesuits to be much, much smaller, lighter, and more flexible than they were in your day, with the ideal goal of making them as lightweight as the emperor's new clothes, but the fact always remained that no human could expose himself to the nothingness of the vacuum like I could. None of them could ever go anywhere without having a layer of Earth's atmosphere over the skin. None of them could stand on this world and hold in a bare hand titanium sand.

  Chapter 49

  There was thunder, there was moisture, and there was heat. Here, on Terra 1A, life would surely flourish. But then I looked down at the pink, flowing life in my hands, the life that was content as it was, and I suddenly felt overwhelmed with apathy. My ability to love had been broken long ago, and so in spite of my previous investment of genuine affection and connection I now found myself unable to care if it was going to live or die.

  And as I stood on the naked planet, surveying the landscape before me, I suddenly felt nothing. It should have been so beautiful, but instead my lack of passion was suffocating me. My heart was a balloon, but the sky was a vacuum. I couldn't tell you why I went through with the mission… I could've just as easily overridden the failsafe controls on my ship and flown straight into the heart of the sun. I didn't give a shit anymore. But I still followed the procedure in the hope that this would pass.

  A convoy of artificially piloted thruster pods would, in accordance with the as yet virgin procedure, travel with me as a precaution against the unforeseeable. After they'd find a suitable location for docking, I'd get out, set a microbe tube down, and push the button on it. That was all I had to do, as the life-dispersing task was almost completely automated. Then the tube would open up and such, and it would form favorable surfaces upon which the microbes could thrive. And then I'd repeat the process hundreds of times all over the planet.

  I also checked for indigenous microbes on Terra 1A, and when that was negative I returned to the mothership. In this manner I distributed artificial microbes throughout the galaxy. The plan involved three loops around the galaxy: first, to sow the atmosphere-specific, single-celled life on each candidate planet; second, to situate human, animal, and plant life; and third, to record observations of human development.

  Chapter 50

  After a few hundred thousand years in this godforsaken galaxy I began to lose hope in the mission. I had started the second loop many thousands of years ago, and the life wasn't taking. Terra 1A, once a hope, was now a barren tomb. And all of the other New Earths fared no better. There was something wrong, something I was doing. Something had to be wrong because not a single planet that I revisited for inspection had any life at all.

  And I never found any natural Andromedan life, either. I wish I could report that I'd encountered the ruins of some great civilization, some monumental city with technologies yet unseen, cosmic gateways to other parts of the universe or answers to mysteries that were once believed unsolvable. I wish I could report that I'd simply found some microscopic, indigenous life form frozen in a crude fossil that could do nothing but self-replicate when it was once alive. But the cosmos was just so vast that there was no chance. It was like the whole universe was my vault, and nothing had changed since I walked over Padempire's corpse.

  But then there was Terra 719A. As I was approaching it my computer indicated that intelligent life was identified on the surface—there wasn't supposed to be intelligent life on any of the planets yet since I'd only seeded single-celled life. Granted, the microbes were highly advanced and in large quantity, but the evolution into multicellular life still should've taken a half-billion years at minimum.

  There are a couple factors here. Firstly, due to relativity, I, in my traveling spaceship, had experienced half a million years in Andromeda while the essentially stationary planets throughout the galaxy had experienced several times that. Secondly, all forms of microorganisms that were used for converting atmospheres for the purposes of this mission were laced with special information in the non-coding genes—specifically, all necessary instructions pertaining to all known plant and animal life (this was intended as a failsafe in the event that I could not return to a planet and place humans on it). This might have induced a sort of meta-evolution, where a favorable gene would be a gene that activates other genes.

  As I neared closer to the planet, various life forms became discernible. Judging from the observable death rates, their lifespans were quite brief. As for the body structure, there was an overall tendency toward something very familiar: an interior skeleton, four limbs each with five digits, and a central spine that protruded at the front, in a head, and at the rear, in a tail.

  Cannibalism was prevalent among all intelligent life on the planet, and it appeared as though all intelligent life had the capacity to consume vegetation as well. Nothing ever went to waste in such a violent world, and every living thing died in the process of being eaten on this planet of horrors.

  Chapter 51

  I had no other words for it. It was the head of a man… embedded within a clumsy mess of meat and cartilage. And if you were to look at it, then you would vehemently say that it was not the head of a man… and yet if you were charged to describe it, then you would have to begrudgingly admit that there was no other fitting description.

  It was bizarre because the head was so small in relation to the body. It was like there was this gigantic beast and there was a man inside with his head pushing out through the thin, transparent skin of the belly. And that face—I will never forget that face. It was terrifying. Its mouth was like a puncture wound, and the eyes were like… they were like pain, and the nostrils were like the vacant cavities in a skull.

  The creature was quite hideous, although it was fortunate enough to have the symmetry gene so as to thwart even more ugliness. It was essentially like some amalgamation of many different kinds of vertebrates from Earth, except that the nutrients of its world caused it to express its genes much differently than anything that would ever be alive on Earth.

  And then something went wrong—I didn't know what the problem was but the creature started to writhe uncontrollably, and then it died. It was a captured specimen that I had brought aboard my ship, and I thought that I'd perfectly simulated its living conditions in a controlled room.

  I had to go down to the planet. I needed more samples, and I also needed to go down there in person just so I could be a sacred spaceman on their world. So I came down in my convoy of thruster pods to visit my abominable children, and I had barely set foot on the soil before something caught my eye. It was movement: something nearby and going straight up in a hell of a hurry. There was a distant sound, too, like a missile whistle, high in pitch but with something like a burning sizzle crisp trailing the shriek. And it got fainter, fainter and fainter; and then, when it was gone, instead of still and quiet there was a shockwave that knocked me off my feet.

  When I rediscovered which way was up I saw that there was an enormous fireball in the sky, shrouded in ribbons of smoke and debris. The fireball was an artificial object, huge and massive, totally disintegrating and burning as it fell through the thick, aerobic atmosphere.

  And then I had that feeling in my gut, like there was something moving inside it, and my eyes grew larger, and I could feel my lips moving and saying things that I could not control. This was because the fireball had thrusters behind it, and it had human symbols on it, and it was the place that I'd spent the last several hundred
millennia of my life. It had never occurred to the engineers that a projectile might have scramblers on it to confuse the mothership's defense system.

  The temperature of the air was rising and now the beasts of the world were coming for my blood. I saw them running toward me, galloping in a miserable limp, and it was at this moment that I realized—despite the fact that they were naked, filthy, and savage—that they were sophisticated, that they were users of technology, and that they did not take kindly to the alien abduction that I had so rudely imposed upon their unfortunate comrade. I understood that I'd mistakenly correlated their primal nature with technological ignorance; I did not know that the mathematical parts of their brains were very akin to that of a human's.

  I hadn't detected any artificial structures while in the mothership, meaning they were, of course, likely deep underground, and they apparently did not use vehicles either because either the concept eluded them or their morbid bodies precluded the possibility altogether; I was thus quite shocked at their level of tech.

  I didn't have to stop and think about what I wanted to do. I just got into the nearest thruster pod and left the planet. If I had been thinking, then there would have been some reservations in my mind.

  There was absolutely no knowing what the little blue planet in the Milky Way Galaxy would be like by the time I got back: by Earth's clock it was a few million years after the invention of disco, and so all the progress that the humans had made since I last knew them could have been undone by some unforeseen calamity. Their other planets of habitation, being dependent upon Earth for resources, would have been unviable if Earth was destroyed. Humanity could have been extinct, making Terra 719A home to the last of all life in the known universe; if this was true, then departure was a bad idea.