The Harvester's Logs

[MugiwaraBlair]

I suppose I should make introductions, after all, whoever you are, you may draw the conclusion that pieces of this record are missing if there is no trace of a beginning. Of course you well be astute enough to figure that out by yourself but my experience has shown that this is highly unlikely. I was born on planet Earth, Sol System, Milky Way galaxy, Local Group (yes...those who chose those names severely lacked foresight and objectivity, let us move on), Virgo Super Cluster. They hadn't named the universe when I left so I cannot specify further, which is fine regardless since you most likely have your own name for it, or at least I would dare presume a civilization who can travel to another universe would make some effort to identify individual ones. On the 6th of March, in the 1989th year of the Common Era. But none of that matters now, except to establish a timeframe for what I am telling you, for part of it in any case. I also thought, because of the vast probability of the one finding (or at least the one charged of studying it) this, and because of my substantial link with it, I will place the waypoints of my tale at significant points in the history of scientific happenings. 



2014 CE,
        
        The 1st step into what human society would become, the internet giant Google released it's 1st line of "reality augmenting" glasses. Obviously that appellation         was laughable at the time.

2015 CE,

        The baby steps of Virtual Reality; the widespread of 3D printers, foreshadowing the dawn of matter replicators and everything they changed. It was also at this         time that the underground particle accelerator in Switzerland reached it's maximum operating power, sparking the need to build an improved replacement.

2016 CE,

        They opened an hotel in space, once again wasting science on the whims of wealthy morons.

2017 CE,
      
        This was a rather busy year, marking the advent of electronic paper and health monitoring implants. Teleportation of a molecule was achieve that year also.

2018 CE, 

        Some surgeries started being done by robots, they started putting internet nodes all over the place, seemingly half the annoying insect population had become         military spy drones. More notably they released pills to cure obesity, sending the message that you could be a fat idiot and have a quick n easy way out. A               sadder sign of things to come was 3D scanners that worked from far away and could be stuffed in a pocket.


2019 CE,

        The new particle accelerator was completed, vehicules were now connected to roads and computational power broke the exaflop barrier.

2020 CE,

        Medicine could now implant you with whole stem-cell grown organs, somewhat related were advances in life-extension, which I profited from despite being a           modest 31 years old at the time, still I didn't wish to take chances when it came to avoiding death, which for better or worse has worked out very well in my           favor. It was also that year that saw the beginning of virtual telepathy, people could text without their thumbs.

2021 CE,

        That year was also very busy, marking the arrival of behavior analysing surveillance systems (bringing with them one of the last few drops before the waters           of fed-up ness reached the brim of the glass), the start of manned exploration of nearby asteroids, reusable spacecraft, wireless electrical systems and the             limits of microchip miniaturization. With the methods of the time of course. 

2029 CE, 

        A computer passed the Turing Test for the first time. The following year AI had already begun to spread.

2035 CE,

        Standard infantry was replaced with warbots, the then-secret societies began dabbling into living weapons shortly after.

2037 CE,

        Almost all computers everywhere were quantum computers by this time.

2040 CE,

        Practically no one spoke to each other in person anymore, virtual telepathy and VR dominated civilian activity and communications. 

2045 CE,

        Cyborgs of earlier science-fiction works started becoming a reality.

2055 CE,

        Global population had reached a plateau and humanity was at a crossroads. It is also quite ironic that this was the time researchers announced that it had               become technically feasible to manufacture fully synthetic humans. S&A had been developping this technology for almost 2 decades by that time. 

2062 CE,

        Nano-fabricators had finally become a mainstream product, and economy crashed along with the value of rare materials. But it was also fortunate since we             had dried up the wells of many a critical element. Like say, antimony, copper and silver.

2065 CE, 

        It was revealed to the public that we could stop aging outright, idiotic ethical and philosophical debate having retarted it since the breakthrough had been made         in 2046. I was 77 years old, at the time of my birth that was close to my expected lifespan, at that time my lifespan was indefinite and I didn't look even half           of my years.

2072 CE,

        Pico technology was "becoming" practical, I put the word in quotes since Cerberus had developped it enough for their ARES program to be well underway,               although they would later update it.

2079 CE,

        The flying cars they promised us for the turn of the millenium were here at last. Jetpacks had also been there for a while by then. On a grimer note, some               humans had become more artificial than biological by that time too.

2100 CE,

        Most of the population was now intellectually augmented by merging their minds with AIs. For my part I had merely tweaked my neuronal circuitry and still             maintained the vast gap of cognitive prowess I had always possessed.

2110-2120 CE,

         We started terraforming Mars, femto engineering "started" having practical applications. Again, quotes indicate one of the secret groups was beyond that                point. ARES program was successful and we stopped being secret as Cerberus struck at the world governments and their UNITs devasted all opposition, which          of course forced the rest of us to reveal ourselves so they wouldn't take everything for themselves. In other news, the uploading of minds had become                    widespread and the space elevator finished completion. 

2150 CE,

        Interstellar travel was starting to look seeable on the horizon, some cities were fully automated, and worked better than those that weren't I might add. Lesser         corporations boasted having the technology to make androids physically indistinguishable from humans, S&A boasted back with SIGRUN, the 1st successful               subject of Project Valkyrie, who was indistinguishable from a physical goddess.

2160 CE, 

        Humanity celebrated the anniversaries of the 1st bi-centenarians, including Madeleine Moreau, who was even the 1st person to reach 200 years old, making             her the oldest living person in the history of the world, despite looking mid-20s at worst, which hadn't changed one bit when I left. I myself was 171 years old,         though I also looked in my 20s. Which I still do for that matter.

2200 CE, 

        Information had officially supplanted material value. A global re-wilding effort was also started.

2250 CE,

        Humanity had become a Type 1 civilization. 

2300 CE,

        Augmentations that made me a goddess amongst mortals nigh a century before was now available to common people, to which the reactions of most was               along the lines of "meh, this sucks, I can do way cooler things in VR".

2500 CE,

        Terraforming of Mars was finished.

2700 CE,

        Completion of the Venus terraforming process.

3100 CE,

        Humanity had become a Type 2 civilization and I had reached the peculiar age of 1111 years old. I leave Earth through an experimental wormhole-esque rift             created by S&A.

3500 CE,

        Completion of the Solar Ring, 1st step of the dyson sphere. I return from my voyage, changed. And irritated since what seemed like a mere 4 centuries to               them was 100s of 1 000 000s to me, perhaps billions.

4000 CE, 

        Computing had more less reached it's full potential. Or so we thought in a way.

~22 000 CE,

         The old russian site of Chernobyl had finally become safe again, when I was a little girl people thought that place was ruined forever. And here I stood, over            200 centuries old, right at the center of it, inhaling fresh air. Not that the radiation would have been a bother by that point mind you. 

~30 000 CE,

         The 1st wave of exploration vessels reached the galactic core. With ridiculously obsolete technology by the time they arrived.

52 012 CE,

          The time capsule they sent into space when I was 23 came back, and they laughably dismissed me when I said I would see it back.

~100 000 CE,

          VY Canis Majoris exploded into a supernova.

~1 000 000 CE,

          "Humanity" had transformed into a Type 3 civilization, all systems were controlled by vastly advanced AIs, planet-sized computers dominated the Local                    Cluster and they moved around with FTL ships powered by Alcubierre Drives. By that time I had long left them but I continued watching that insignificant                  little blue planet, I guess home meant more to me than I thought, or perhaps I had simply nothing else to do.

~10 000 000 CE, 

           Earth was threatened with massive amounts of gamma radiation from a supernova, I protected it. 

~50 000 000 CE,

            Europe and Africa merged, birthing a new mountain range in the process.

~150 000 000 CE, 

            The Atlantic Ocean closed.

~225 000 000 CE,

            Sol system completed a galactic year, I took mental note of the time span so that I might count my age with this unit if I ever decided the number became                too great.

~250 000 000 CE,

            The Earth's surface had fused back into a supercontinent like it had been in prehistoric times.

~600 000 000 CE,

            I had been unsure for a few years but I could henceforth affirm with certainty that Total Solar Eclipses were no longer possible on Earth.

~750 000 000 CE,

            The Milky Way began merging with the Sagittarius galaxy, though hazard might have allowed it, I ensured Earth stayed safe during the entire event.

~1 000 000 000 CE,

             Earth's named had become sadly appropriate as the last of the liquid water evaporated.

~3 800 000 000 CE,

             Andromeda started merging with the Milky Way/Sagittarius (the descendants of humanity had assigned it a coded combination of letters and numbers)

~5 000 000 000 CE,

             The Sun had become a red giant, engulfing everything in the system up to the asteroid belt. I could have saved Earth again but it was already dead by that              point, is home still home when everything that made it so has vanished ?

~12 000 000 000 CE,

             Sol had started shrinking back in the process of becoming a black dwarf. Of course that didn't "give" the planets back, they had completely evaporated.

~100 000 000 000 CE,

             The Virgo Super Cluster started converging into a single, humongous hyper galaxy.

~1 000 000 000 000 CE,

              I celebrated my 1 trillionth birthday, and fittingly enough the universe blowed candles for me as star formation declined in most if not not all galaxies I                   could observe.

~2 000 000 000 000 CE,

               Galaxies outside the mostly done hyper galaxy were no longer visible through normal photon reflection.

~20 000 000 000 000 CE, 

               Red Dwarfs across the universe were reaching the end of their tremendous lifespans. I was starting to feel a bit old.

~100 000 000 000 000 CE,

                There were no candles to blow on my 100 trillionth birthday, because all the stars were gone.

~10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 CE, 

                Only degenerate objects like neutron stars and pulsars were left. And anything denser too of course. I thought I could push some of those into a black                     hole to use the quasar as a candle but I decided against a birthday that time. Mostly because 1 with 37 zeroes isn't a named number.

~10 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 CE,

               Only the largest Black Holes and subatomic particles remained.


As I finish recording these log entries, I feel....nothing anymore, much like this barren abyssal desert. I have personally watched the very last black hole evaporate. Oh of course there are still some photons, neutrinos, electrons and even some positrons, but they cannot interact anymore and I suspect they will eventually disappear too. As the universe continues to expand beyond and beyond, gets colder and colder..and I remain...alone....in the darkness.

[Lady Ruliya]

That was a brilliant read xD It's something I almost wrote myself once. Did you just write this, or did you write it a while ago?

[shadowknight]

That was oddly beautiful in a depressing sort of way, and it also shows way I wouldn't want to live forever.

[MugiwaraBlair]

I already had cliff notes for it but ya, I made the text as I typed it pretty much.

Thanks for the positive feedback both of you ^^

What'd you think of the little jokes sprinkled in there ?

[shadowknight]

I thought they were nice, and really set a contrast with the end, but in a good way.

[Lady Ruliya]

I enjoyed them ^^

[MugiwaraBlair]

The contrast was part of why the humor was there, I wanted to show that numb husk of a person was once nice and upbeat. The other reason why is just to be funny, that's important too, especially in darker works I think.

[Lady Ruliya]

I wanted to ask actually... why "The Harvesters Log"? What are they harvesting?

My sci-fi is going to be pretty dark. It's difficult trying to get humour in there, even though I know it's important to storytelling.

[MugiwaraBlair]

The Harvester is the narrator.

[Lady Ruliya]

Yea, I got that. But why Harvester?

[CosmicBehemoth]

These kinds of stories are always fun to read. Sometimes they can ruin my entire day with how heartbreaking they are, but always fun and engaging.

Like Ruliya, I considered this kind of idea for a short story. I called it The Last Candle, which featured a man named Jonavon Visser, who like in Mugiwara's story lived in the far future.

SPOILER: Click to show

One of the last remaining humans in his dying galaxy, even his modified body is beginning to give out, and under desperation invents and builds a device that apparently draws energy from another dimension or universe. He believes that with the device, he can sustain the remaining humans until they are able to find sanctuary elsewhere and rebuild.

When he first turns it on however, the physics breaking effects of the machine, well, break physics and trap Jonavon in an isolated bubble where time moves at a far slower pace than the rest of the universe. By the time the anomaly finally dissipates, Visser finds that not only are his friends long dead, the Milky Way and most of the galaxies nearby have been consumed by black holes. Grief-Struck, he sullenly waits for his own inevitable death on the last small remaining chunk of matter remaining of the galaxy, but instead finds that the bubble was a sort of "Space-Time Cocoon" that has fused the device to his body, and made him immortal. Alongside indefinite longevity, he is able to manipulate matter and energy on a cosmic scale, travel instantly across impossibly huge distances, and even control time to a limited degree. 

Using his powers, he tries to re-create the Milky Way and Earth and bring back his friends and species. Frustratingly, while the machine gives him almost unlimited control of existing matter and energy, he is unable to draw enough from the alternate dimension to subvert the Laws of Conservation outside of his own body, and he slips into a several million year depression.

After many millions of years, he more or less comes to terms with his predicament, and begins to explore the universe in what he considers his "Cosmic bucket list" doing everything and seeing the places that he always dreamed of. Not far in, he comes across a world that had just developed life, and "like a father beholden to an infant" he resolves to protect the fledgling lifeforms, a commitment that he extends to every inhabited planet he discovers. Soon enough, several planets develop sentient life and begin their civilizations. After uncountable years in isolation, he is caught between desperate loneliness and fear of the consequences if he interjects himself into their lives. He strives to remain apart from these lifeforms, but eventually his desire for contact wins out and he partially reveals himself to several of the planets. He teaches the primitive races, and guides them to develop along the best paths. Some accept his presence as a fact of life, no different than the weather, and some others inevitably begin to worship him as a god, but, for a few centuries he is happy for the first time since his transformation.

Due to his influence, a number of races reach their spacefaring stages at the same time, and Jonavon proudly watches them take to the stars, and as an experiment decides to leave the species to develop on their own for a time. His joy turns to horror when he returns to find the various races had encountered one another with terrible results. Those races that worship Visser violently begin wars of conversion against those that don't, and sectarian bloodshed breaks out over minor differences and economic and political competition, leading to the extinction of the civilizations. Aghast and distraught over both the his failure and the loss of his adopted children, he flees again into the empty and isolated parts of the universe to grieve once more.

When he emerges from his exile, he vows to never again interfere with the development of sentient species, and again strives to remain aloof of the various life forms of the universe, both advanced and primitive, merely observing. He occasionally uses his powers to change his body's form and live quietly among the races, and other times uses his limited control of time to seclude himself when the universe becomes too dull to stand, and spends many billions of years in these fashions.

After immeasurable time has passed, Jonavon fears that the moment he has dreaded always-the inevitable time when he is the last living thing in the universe-has come. The cosmos is dark, and most of it has been consumed by long dead black holes. What is left is cold and empty and lonely. While forlornly exploring the guttering remains of one of the few remaining black holes, he finds the last organism-a small and spectacularly plain looking creature that feeds in gravity wells; the last of its species. He takes the supremely unremarkable creature, and finding absolutely nothing of note about it, decides to simply call it Worm. With the Worm on his body, he finds that objects and living things kept within a certain proximity of his body pick up some of the Machine's energy, making them also immune to entropy and immortal. It may be nothing but a Worm, but Jonavon is thankful that he won't be utterly alone. Eventually, the only matter remaining in the universe consists of a few micro-planetoids, Visser, the Worm, and a small bag he had with him containing a few items he eventually lost or discarded over the eons except for three wax candles.

Visser and the Worm spend hundreds of billions of years attempting to divert themselves in any form possible. At some point, even the few remains of planets are gone but for a single smallish chunk, in which Visser and the Worm find and live at the hollow center, his powers keeping the chunk together. Over time, the energy from Visser's machine alters the Worm's biology, and the creature becomes sentient. The time comes when Visser is able to determine that they are indeed the last things in the universe, and converts some of the chunk into oxygen-the first in aeons-and burn a candle to honor its passing, creating the first light since the stars went out.

Such time passes that neither are able to guess just how old they are or how long it has been since the universe died. Several trillion years after it gained sentience, the Worm tells Visser that it wishes to die, having grown weary of existence. Jonavon tries to dissuade the Worm, and it in turn urges Visser to end their lives together, but eventually Jonavon relents, unwilling to die just yet, and lets the Worm drift away from his life sustaining presence. In it's last moments, it uses the last vestiges of Visser's power it had in its body to transform into a pocket of oxygen, which Visser collects and uses to burn the second candle, mourning his friend, now utterly alone.

An unspecified, inconceivably long period of time later, Visser sits in the darkness, recalling his impossibly long life fondly, and pondering what death will mean for him. He has realized that he could not draw the full potential of the Machine without destroying himself and releasing a flood of energy that could have ended the universe, and considers what will happen when he does. Jonavon takes the last candle, and with calm serenity, lights it. He savors the warmth and the light and smell of smoke and melting wax. He watches in silence until it finally goes out. Even as that last light fades, he activates the Machine, fused with his heart, to it's full power. The resulting energy utterly annihilates Visser's body and reveals the source of its power: an entire Potential universe of compressed primordial energy is released, initiating a second big bang, birthing the successor universe.

Never got around to writing it of course. Pfft, too much work.


 

[Lady Ruliya]

That was... fucking beautiful C-B, wow...

Mine was just two goddesses who were together from more or less the birth of the universe sit and watch as the universe grows in size, in age and in disorder, right the way to the ending of the universe. When all the lights have gone out, they decided to travel to a new universe. Only to do that would take almost all their power combined. But they manage to do it, however, once in a new universe, one of the goddesses finds out that she is alone. Their power not being enough, and so her sister, in a last act of generosity gives herself wholly to the crossing, which ends up sapping all her energy and effectively killing her. The remaining sister then mourns the passing of the other.... and that was as far as I got planning wise xD

[GuardianAngel1911-Admin]

Really cool story Mugi.
Ditto Cosmic and Ruliya.

[CosmicBehemoth]

Thanks.

I think the lesson to be learned here is: Immortality sucks.

[Lady Ruliya]

I would still wish for Immortality if I only had one wish.

Hmm, I hope Mugi doesn't mind this bit of clogging... if you do sweetie, I'll make a new thread for "Story-related" Off-Topic or something.