The Gods, Ourselves

"Haleboro, I have excellent news!" exclaimed Yatri, in the avatar of a child as he ran up the verdant mountain from the entry point into this world.

The air was crisp and cool, and the mountains were designed to simulate the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, a mountain range on Earth. The virtual world the two now occupied was indeed a perfect simulation from the days when Haleboro and Yatri were both human, including the texture of the mountain air.

"Yes? What is it?" asked Haleboro, stroking his golden hair on the body he only wished he could have had 1000 years before, when mind uploading was not even a thing.

"The temporal distortions of the black hole we now orbit. I think I used the data from a very large object I created that extends from close to the event horizon to the edge of the accretion disk to find a method of actually reversing the flow of entropy."

"Fantastic!" exclaimed Haleboro, looking at his research partner's tiny body with a degree of perplexity. "What exactly does that mean, and why did you instantiate yourself into my simulation as a child?"

"I thought it would be fun to be a kid again." said Yatri, shrugging. "Haven't been that in about 200 years, and the last time was only because of a special event in the Sirius system based on an ancient Earth story about Peter Pan and a land called Neverland."

"Sounds fun." responded Haleboro.

"Indeed." said Yatri. "I take it you grew up in the Rockies? You sure do love creating this simulation."

"Yes. I do believe you were born in Russia, yes, Yatri?"

"False. Actually, I was among the first generation of cloned humans to walk the Earth, born only about a decade before the singularity. I didn't spend much of my life as a human at all, as a matter of fact."

"Interesting. I suppose you will be telling me the technical details of what it is you think can be done with this entropy reversal?"

"Indeed. Actually, what I've figured out is that by isolating the region around this black hole and manipulating the flow of energy into the Singularity, I can actually reverse the flow of entropy in the entire universe. The technical details are quite complex, but this entropy reversal of a closed system makes perpetual motion a possibility. I have literally found a way to break the Second Law of Thermodynamics!"

"That... is incredible!" exclaimed Haleboro.

"Aside from an infinite supply of energy that can now power the entire universe, for literally an eternity beyond the big freeze, I have also determined that, by reversing the entropy of the universe, we can use the special time dialation principles of the black hole not only to go forward in time, but also backwards."

"Meaning?"

"I have turned the black hole we now orbit into a time machine! We can go back in time and see the conditions of early Earth, maybe even save our ancestors from the affliction of death!"

"Whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah, whoah! Hold up a minute before we go playing with the temporal dimension here! Haven't you ever heard of the Grandfather Paradox?"

"Yes, yes, yes, all sentience in the solar system knows of the Grandfather Paradox. If you go back in time, killing your grandfather before he ever gave birth, how could you ever exist to kill your grandfather in the first place?"

"Exactly! Who knows what kinds of problems we would create if we started playing around with the history of humanity!"

"But that's just it." replied Yatri. "I've already figured it out. We don't even have to mess with history. I think we were destined to go back in time in the first place. Ancient humans on Earth believed that they were watched over by various gods and goddesses that would carry them to a subliminal afterlife that was wonderful beyond conception, very similar to what we created when we uploaded our minds into vast AI systems at the time of the technological singularity. Indeed, our state of being is if anything greater than any conceptions of heaven they ever had. So, by heeding the lessons of old Earth myths, I suggest we go back in time and place specialized nanobots in the most ancient human ancestors, maybe even the first animals to develop brains in the multi-billion year course of evolution, and offer them a chance at 'ascending' into our post-singularity civilization upon their death. The nanobots will pass on through generations and upload their minds into an orbital ship around ancient Earth that will never be detected by our ancestors. In this way, every being that ever lived will have an opportunity to be a part of our technological civilization. This is the most revolutionary development in the history of civilization since the Singularity itself!"