In the blazing heart of the Sun, a spark of light comes to life with an astonishing quality: self-awareness. As it struggles against loneliness and the loss of energy, it desperately seeks to uncover its purpose and if there is anything beyond its b...
"I emerged from pure energy in an eternal instant and today I am aware of a single ineffable truth: I exist, and don't exist."
Age 1 second (Approximately 42 minutes in human perception)
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In the blazing core of the Sun, where temperatures of millions of degrees and unimaginable pressures reign, nuclear reactions convert hydrogen into helium with blinding intensity. In this cosmic crucible, a flash of light came to life.
This was no ordinary ray in the incandescent dance of photons. No, from the first flicker of its existence, this spark of energy manifested the astonishing quality of self-awareness. The ability to think and process its surroundings at the speed of light.
Though not for certain, it has been estimated that different neural signals travel at speeds ranging from 0.5 to 120 meters per second. So our friend's perception is thousands of times faster than the human mind. His perception of time was dilated in a way that organic beings could never understand.
His first moments of existence were an overwhelming whirlwind of impressions and thoughts. His mind worked at a frenzied pace, analyzing every subatomic particle, every nuclear collision, all perceived with pristine clarity.
Around him, a chaos of tiny particles collided incessantly, like cars in an endless multi-car pileup. The hydrogen atoms, those little hot dots, slammed into each other furiously.
"Hey, be careful!" he thought exasperated, though of course no one heard him.
Suddenly, two atoms came too close and something magical happened. A strange, invisible force seemed to unite them, dragging them towards an inevitable collision.
"No! Stop!"
But instead of crashing and destroying each other, the two atoms merged into a new one! A small tremor of energy shook that entire region of space. Being in the vicinity, our friend felt a pleasant warmth.
"Wow..." the ray was amazed.
He could perceive the violent clashes of subatomic particles, the powerful nuclear forces working their fusion magic. It was a mesmerizing spectacle.
He didn't know it with a scientific focus, but... what he was gazing at in awe was how two hydrogen nuclei approached each other, overcoming electrostatic repulsion thanks to kinetic energy and the quantum tunneling effect.
In a fleeting instant, they fused into a helium nucleus, releasing a burst of gamma rays and a small amount of mass converted into pure energy according to the famous equation E=mc².
Every instant, hundreds of these small nuclear reactions exploded around him like cosmic fireworks. Each one releasing an energetic flash that propagated in all directions, feeding him.
In this seething cauldron of incessant activity, the conscious ray marveled at every new discovery, absorbing knowledge like a young child observing the universe in wonderment for the first time. Each clash of energy, each flash of light, each cascading shower of resulting particles was an inexhaustible source of fascination.
And amidst this frantic turmoil, the newborn consciousness of the light ray differentiated itself with adamantine certainty: "I am, but at the same time, I am not like these other blind forces of nature."
"What does it mean to exist?" he wondered. "Am I just another particle in this sea of energy, or is there something more to me that makes me unique?"
"Why me? Why here and now?" The magnitude of his own consciousness in the face of the cosmos's indifference overwhelmed him. He felt as if he were on the brink of an infinite abyss, facing a truth he could barely comprehend.
The intensity of his introspection grew with each moment. "What am I really? Am I just a fleeting flash of light, or is there a deeper purpose to my existence?" The notion of being a conscious entity in a sea of blind forces filled him with a mixture of awe and fear.
A spark of individuality burned inside him, an emerging consciousness that contrasted with the vastness of the indifferent natural forces surrounding him. An inner conflict raged as intensely as the flames that had birthed him. An internal war between savoring his newfound consciousness and the overwhelming immensity of the cosmos that threatened to consume him.
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Age 8 minutes (Approximately 14 days in human perception)
A few minutes after his birth, what would feel like several days to us, our friend realized he could concentrate and "see" more clearly the harder he tried.
As his thoughts, flowing at unimaginable speeds, processed his entire environment, the conscious ray analyzed the complexities of the proton-proton chain that initiated nuclear fusion.
He contemplated how two protons joined to form a deuterium nucleus, releasing a positron and a neutrino, then fused with another proton to form helium-3, until finally two helium-3 nuclei combined into one of helium-4, releasing two protons and an immense amount of energy.
But this new way of seeing things came with some demerits.
The light ray became aware of something unsettling as he observed the nuclear reactions around him. With every passing moment, he felt his energy slowly waning.
"What's happening?" he thought alarmed.
Panic began to take hold of him. He felt a kind of inner void, a growing chill that contrasted with the incandescent intensity of the surroundings. The clarity of his thoughts began to fade, and his perception of his environment became blurred.
A biting cold spread through his being, as if an invisible hand was trying to extinguish his nascent consciousness.
"No, this can't be," he told himself, trying to cling to his existence. "I have to do something, I have to understand what's happening to me."
He strained to concentrate, but the energy drain was relentless. He struggled to hold onto his thoughts, but it was like trying to catch water with his hands. His mental clarity slipped through his energetic fingers.
In desperation, he tried to analyze the nuclear reactions around him, searching for some clue, some hint of what was happening. But it became increasingly difficult to process the information with the same precision as before.
"Think! You must find a solution!" His own inner voice resonated weakly, like a distant echo.
He felt the dispersive forces of the solar plasma dragging him away, and in his state of confusion, he could not resist them. He drifted, lost in a sea of particles and radiation.
"I can't just disappear," he thought in anguish. "I've barely begun to understand what I am. It can't end like this."
