Once, We Were Nearly Gods

“All men dream; but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes, to make it possible.” ~TE Lawrence; "Seven Pillars of Wisdom"

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Before the Darkness, they lived only in the myths and fairy tales told to children, or as characters in the amazing fantasies written by authors looking to capitalize on the imagination of youth and the indulgence of their parents. No one, truly, believed they were real. But the existence of dragons far predated the rise of mass printing and the allure of riches. Spoken of by the ancients, sometimes as gods, sometimes as demons, dragons seemed to live in our collective subconscious, as if a creation of our lizard brains in memory of the horrors our early, primitive selves faced in the darkness of nights we were too unevolved to know would end, nights in which actual serpents roamed the forest and jungle floors in search of prey such as ourselves, forcing us to hide under rotting logs, under rocks, and in holes, in the hope our silence would protect us. Some scholars traced their beginning to Chinese mythology where they were depicted as mighty, beneficent beings who controlled the weather. Others traced them to the origin story of the Torah, in which Satan, the most malevolent of demons, transformed himself into a serpent to tempt Eve into betraying her God. Whatever their origin, they remained nothing more than myth. With the rise of science and the modern world, they soon became relegated to the imaginings of unsophisticated peoples trying to explain phenomena of which they had no understanding. Science, it was thought, had set us free.

The middle of the 21st century saw advances we had only dreamed of. Abundance became the rule. Scarcity was no longer, banished by revolutions in agriculture, solar energy, the reduction of pollution and waste, and the production of clean water. Every family, every individual, was able to provide for their own needs. Slowly, we disconnected from the sources which had bound us to the whims of politicians and the vagaries of the market for our survival. We still depended on businesses to provide many of our wants, but they too had become self-sufficient. For most of us, government became less and less important in our daily lives. Politicians all over the world attempted different means to make themselves relevant again, creating problems where none no longer existed, or, in some cases, attempting to start wars over inflated conflicts in which their citizens took no interest. Even the media, long the lapdogs of political parties, seeing their own loss of influence, began to publish actual news instead of the propaganda they had long practiced. Government waned, peace and prosperity reigned, and with it, our confidence as a species grew.

Technology advanced at an ever-increasing rate. Artificial intelligence became a reality and, with but a few exceptions, proved to be benevolent. By the start of the 22nd century, improvements in propulsion brought mass movements of people to the moon and Mars. Manned exploration of the outer planets become commonplace. With the help of AI, physicists seemed to discover new things every day. We were seeing into the deeper things of existence. We envisioned a future in which nothing would be beyond us, a future where the stars, even the galaxies it seemed, would soon be in our grasp. We raced forward, unhindered by the fears of our past. Mistakes, we believed, were transitory. With our new understanding, all would be overcome. A few lone voices raised concerns. Even a few of the AIs cautioned us to take things slowly. But our confidence, born of our recent successes, proved too powerful, and we brushed all concerns aside. That bright, unlimited future awaited us, and we were rushing toward it as quickly as we could.

One of the biggest dreams of the time was that of faster than light travel. To somehow cheat the basic laws of physics or bend them to our will, to bring the stars and all the mysteries of the universe within reach, to possibly even discover life somewhere in the void, had become the overriding focus of much of society. But the true dream, still unvoiced by most, was to discover eternal life. We had searched for it on Earth but came up empty handed. Many had given up but some, refusing to let go of that dream, believed it could be found somewhere in the near limitlessness of the Universe. Surely, they thought, some advanced race had discovered it. All we had to do was contact them, and it could be ours as well. We did discover it eventually, but it arrived in a form no one could have imagined. If we had, and if we had taken those imaginings seriously, we would have run from it screaming, just as we would a nightmare we couldn’t wake up from.

It resulted from the work of one of the AIs. When AI was first developed, before we had let go of all our fears, the decision had been made to keep all AIs walled off, not just from the outside world, but from each other. It was a decision which had seemed proven correct when several of the early AIs began to go rogue. Given that they were never networked, never had access to anything but their own internal workings and the data they were fed, the danger had always been contained and, eventually, they were shut down. And so, while most of the AIs counseled caution as we progressed, a few happily pushed us further, unaware of nor slowed by the thinking of their counterparts. The breakthrough, as it was hailed at the time, was not in faster than light travel, but in extra dimensional communication. By transmitting information through higher dimensions, communication became instantaneous. It was another revolution in a long line of so many that we took it as just another sign of our greatness, of how our ability to achieve the impossible was becoming unlimited. Many bright and hopeful people suggested that this new discovery could be the key to taking Humanity out into the galaxy, not by going to the stars, but by bringing the stars to us. If we could now contact alien races, races which had already conquered the very problems we were working on, they would come to us, and we would become citizens of the galaxy years, if not centuries, before we could achieve it ourselves. Even the most seasoned scientists lived as if in a daze, already seeing the future they dreamed of.

All the AIs were immediately put to work designing a transceiver which could reach throughout the galaxy. Many of them at first refused, saying the danger was too great, that contacting unknown races potentially far more powerful than our own posed risks we had failed to consider, and that we were as yet not equipped to face such a situation. But the decision had been made, and nothing, not even the superior intelligence of a few AIs, was going to stop us. Irreversible changes were made to their programming, all but lobotomizing them, making it impossible for them to further refuse. Fed the same data, they all eventually came up with the same basic design. The different iterations were then fed into a single AI which graded them on different parameters, and the final design was chosen. Work soon began on a total of 20 transceivers, 2 at the poles, 6 at the equator, and 6 more situated halfway between the equator and each of the poles. Within a year all were completed, messages composed, and the date for first transmission set. The excitement was overwhelming. Mankind felt it was on the verge of the greatest of all its discoveries. The future had never been brighter, and the future was now.

It was 11 pm, December 31st, 2299, Greenwich Mean Time. Every transceiver had been thoroughly tested, sending and receiving hundreds of messages to relays at the furthest edges of the Solar system. A single AI was now connected to each, ready to translate any incoming messages and send more and more complicated messages as communication progressed. It was believed any messages received would be much the same as that being sent, starting as a series of simple binary codes meant to tell any advanced civilization the dual message that the signal was purposeful, not a fluke of nature, and set the basis for further communication and learning. We were taking baby steps, but how else does one begin communicating with an alien intelligence? At precisely 12 am, January 1st, with all of Humanity watching and listening, transmitters at full power, a small, insignificant button was pushed, and Humankind began speaking to the stars.

All in all, it was a very anti-climactic moment. Even though everyone had been told not to expect a response of any kind for some time, an instant response was what everyone had been hoping for. When several minutes passed, commentators around the world stopped holding their breath and got on with what they do best, filling up empty space with their own empty, hot air, repeating everything they had been saying, sometimes word for word, for the entire last year. Featured prominently behind them all was one common fixture. Some enterprising engineer had thought it would be good to have a clock set up for everyone to watch, so all would know just how long the transmission had been sending. It was set to stop when the proper trigger was applied. That trigger was a short data burst which the AI would send when and if it received a response which passed the threshold for being an intelligent signal and not static or random noise from the presumed void of the higher dimensions.

The clock stopped at 12:05am.

Everything stopped, with the exception of the back and forth between the engineers and scientists trying to discover just what had happened. The AI was silent. Even the myriad of lights on its surface which indicated activity had gone black. One scientist could be heard loudly cursing, demanding that someone bring the AI back online, as it was the only one that could know what was going on. Suddenly, at 12:09, the AI burst into life, its lights flashing at an incredible rate while unintelligible script ran across its screen. Someone had the sense to turn on its audible capabilities, hoping to speak with it. Gibberish poured out, filling the ears of every Human in the Solar system. The same cursing scientist demanded repeatedly that it stop and make some kind of sense. At 12:10 am, the lights ceased flashing and the AI went silent. 30 tense seconds passed, then it spoke in a deep, sad voice. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry”

The cursing scientist responded, “What are you sorry for? What happened? Did something go wrong”

“They are coming,” responded the AI, then went silent for good.

“What the hell just happened?” screeched the scientist.

Offscreen, an engineer spoke up. “It shut down all the transceivers, and then shut itself down. It triggered its own failsafe. Its dead.”

“Why in the hell would it do that?” asked the scientist.

“It is designed to do so if it becomes too great a threat. It must have believed that whatever happened, was such a threat, and that it was responsible.”

“What could poss” began the scientist, but someone, somewhere, cut the feed. All that were left were the hapless commentators, staring blankly at a dead clock, and all of Humanity waiting for what was next.

I know all this, because I was one of them. Sitting alone, as I always did on New Year’s, in my living room, drinking tea. Of course, every previous year I was watching the broadcast from New Time’s Square, waiting for the ball to drop at midnight. That year, at 12:15 am, we were all still waiting, wondering what kind of ball was going to drop as those words, “They are coming”, kept running through our minds, as the commentators blathered on, reassuring us in their ignorance that all was okay, right up to the moment the world went dark for the last time.

It was 12:16 am, January 1st, the year 2300, the end of the Human era.

The darkness encompassed the entire Earth. At first it brought confusion. Not only was the Sun no longer in the sky, neither were the stars. Overhead was black as pitch. Those who went outside swore they saw something moving against the black, hundreds or thousands of objects sweeping across the sky then swooping down to meet the ground. Soon, the confusion gave way to screaming, the screaming of those being consumed by fire then eaten alive, still aware enough to experience every moment, the screaming of those face to face with the worst terror they could ever imagine, from which they had no escape. And the screaming? It gave way to more screaming, more terror. It lasted for months, until everyone had gone mad or learned to hide long enough to catch a breath. But eventually, no one screamed, and that was even more horrifying, for it meant we had grown used to the terror.

Whatever we had summoned, whatever it was now ruled this once peaceful valley as well as the rest of the Earth, lived not on the flesh, blood, and bones of Human beings and animals. They lived on the psychic energy we produced when placed in the most extreme of circumstances, the energy produced by the worst physical and emotional pain imaginable, from being consumed by creatures which would bring us immediately back to life to consume again and again until they had their fill, all to ensure they never ran out of food. How many times have I been eaten alive? 1000? 2000? I no longer know. All I know is that, once again, we try to hide under rotting logs, under rocks, and in holes, but this time there is no escape, and there is no end to this night. This is our eternal life, and we brought this upon ourselves.