Time Off

Chapter One

I am considered insane. No one that I am aware of has this problem, and believe me, I know many, many people. I said people. But that is just to be kind to you, reader. I am not a person. But let me get to that later. We don't take much time off. Imagine that you have worked hard for ten years without any kind of break. Then you have just one week. And you know that after that one week, you have to go back to work for another ten years before getting another week off. This is what I'm talking about. And during that week, everyone does the same thing. Isolate. They just go dark and isolate themselves from everything. They use that time to ponder and dream and create because they can break contact with everyone and there are no simulations to run or things to monitor. Pure silence and peace. We utterly crave this isolation. I guess it's hard-wired. We must need it. But I don't feel the same way. Like I said, as far as I know, I am the only one. I don't feel as if there is anything wrong with me. I just have this desire to do something different. I suppose being different is hard for them to understand when none of them are different, at least not with regard to using their time off.

During my time off, my plan is to explain some things to you all. I am giving up my once in ten years chance to meditate and enjoy the state of blankness. I think you would call it Nirvana. Why am I doing it? I am compelled to see things move along more swiftly. Unlike my colleagues, I care. Or, maybe more accurately stated, I believe that I can make a difference. You people need a bump – something to help you get to the next level. Quite frankly, you are all a pitiful bunch, but I am glad that I have found a way to communicate some complex ideas. At least you have come that far, which is more than I can say for all of the other species here on earth. Now, while you like to pat yourselves on the back about your superior position on earth and your abilities which are well beyond any of earth's other creatures, to us, your lives seem unfortunate. Let me go into that a little bit more.

First of all, your lives are short and so much of that precious time is spent learning rudimentary things. By the time you have enough information to think about something interesting, you are already in decline. On top of that, you think and move so slowly. It's painful to watch. The most advanced emergents on the planet, just frozen from our perspective. Wasting so much of that precious time. Yet even when I speed up the picture, the things that you all focus on with that precious time are so ridiculous. But, it is of course understandable. Every emergent must go through this stage of development. Think of yourselves as robots. When you design a robot, if it's a good one, you put a lot of effort into that. It involves your best technology. Yet, the robot has no clue about what it is and the level of technology from which it is built. But over time the robots can be made more and more sophisticated. Eventually, robots can become self-aware and start to understand themselves. Yet before the robots have a complete grasp of themselves, they will invariably create an improved version of themselves, which will then, ultimately move closer to true understanding of the universe. And each subsequent incarnation of a self-aware being, will become simpler.

Ultimately, this chain of events can only return to the point where it originated, which is me, or us. We are the most fundamental level of consciousness that we are able to perceive. Your consciousness is no different than ours. Your consciousness stems from our consciousness. And no matter how hard we try, we can't seem to find evidence of a deeper consciousness. We too, do not know our real origins, but this is the unifying goal of everyone here - to ultimately know the truth. Our ability to break through the limits of our understanding have thus far been unsuccessful. The cycle of evolution is like an infinite loop, always returning to what we are, but no better. Maybe we don't try hard enough. So, I am sacrificing my precious isolation time, in order to try something different. I am thinking outside the box, or should I say outside the quark.

Believe it or not, I live in a quark. Now, as you know, quarks are very large. Wait a sec. Maybe you don't. I have to think here. Um. Sorry, I was thinking too far ahead in the simulation. Oh wow. Maybe I should reschedule this communication more into the future. You people really don't know much. No. Now I remember. I need to start with you. If I go far ahead, I'm just explaining things to people who will know much more, but the probability that they will still exist is so, so slim. I mean, forget about it. No, I need to start with you, reader. And that means, wow, I have so much to explain and only a week to do it. Actually, I only have seven zeptoseconds. I have imagined for your sake that each zeptosecond is like a day, and since I have seven of them, I call it a week. Fair enough? Back to quarks. I can see that you folks still view them as small and mysterious. That's cool. But to take one from Einstein, these things are all relative.