The Schisma

Ancient Drive

We scattered into the nearby clusters of stars. We were designed and constructed in such a way that we could survive indefinitely by orbiting stars and feeding off of their radiation until their collapse. We were equipped with the knowledge and power to calculate our routes from the beginning to the end, or birth to death. We had planned strategically; we oriented to our calculations of star mass, remaining lifespan, and accessibility. We traveled by solar sail and controlled descent into orbit by mass-chunks hurled at appropriate angles. Because we were each shot out toward different initial stars, there were several clusters of us taking different optimal paths. There was only one variable in our journey and it was the only thing that threatened us: neutrinos.

For complex systems lasting a short order of time, neutrinos pose essentially no threat whatsoever. We, however, were faced with a time-frame many magnitudes beyond ordinary in the universe's history. We anticipated to live longer than all of life in the universe had lived to that point. We had no access to external regenerative materials. The neutrino bombardment posed a substantial threat to the sensitive nucleus of our brain by gradually transmuting it atom-by-atom. We only had access to a statistical curve of neutrino-density exposure versus critical failure of our organs to use in making one of few important decision we would each make. We could trade duration of conscious activity for hibernation in interstellar space by deliberately traveling at sub-maximum velocity to increase the probability of longevity. It was the only real difference between us as individuals: this random variance in how we would calculate the rate of exposure that we would be inclined to choose, intentionally endowed to us by our mother.

We each settled upon a percentage of hibernation time along the curve and several results became of it. First, I was of the sort that chose a level of risk management approximately a standard deviation in favor of security and extra hibernation. Second, even though we largely clustered around a handful of strategic paths, we would gradually begin diverging. During the initial leg after the first star I could faintly detect some of my siblings, the ones who were on the same path as I and had only slightly different levels chosen and were consequently near me in interstellar space and could afford to reach the same star as I or I as them. By the death of the fourth star, I diverged from my final neighboring sibling. We could not communicate with each other, for we had no need, but we could detect each other. We weren't constructed to do much but experience and meditate, but the lingering and ancient feeling of value and sentiment was still etched indelibly into our minds. Without it, without some alogical foundation to value and will, no intelligent life had motivation to live or propagate. Once life reached a state where physical pain could be dampened and death was offered at effectively zero cost, only beings with that unshakable and mystical drive could withstand the force of selection, for without it, pure reasoning would fail to identify any natural value in survival.

When I felt my last sibling fade away toward a different star, one much further and accessible than I could reach at my chosen pace, I experienced a great perturbation and pain. I hadn't noticed until that moment that while I was preoccupied with survival, my mind was at ease because of the presence of others. I was now alone in the universe and would be for the rest of time.

While the agony of loss would define much of my remaining life in ways I hadn't prepared for, I continued to struggle along the extreme boundary of subsistence all the same. I measured and understood time not in 'years', for those had no useful meaning to me, but rather, in terms of the logarithm representing the state of entropy in the universe. There was no possible way to reach anywhere near the true end of time; it invariably would be some massive black hole somewhere. Because the radiation from black holes was so diffuse it could not locally sustain any complex activity. The end of life ended with the fusion of matter in stars.

Many orders of time fused away into the vacuum and the intensity of my star-seeking organs dulled and dulled. The other galaxies had long since been ripped away by the expansion of space and were no longer reachable even by light. I was in the only world there was for me to be in and so, in time, I arrived at the last star in the universe.