CHAPTER 35 – Final Reflections

Frank and Lois, with Fritz and Laura, sat on a Cloud Nine in VR, looking down at a group of structures in an ancient part of MetaVersality named Soleri City, contemplating what had happened, and what might come next.

“How do you feel about having been brought to life as our biological twins?”  Fritz asked.

“We can’t help wondering?" he continued.  "Suppose you couldn’t have even found us as you did?  Would that have changed how you feel about what has happened, now?  Or might not much of it have been the same?”

Lois at first seemed puzzled, but then her face was flooded with insight.  She said, “Your letters had such details about your lives I think Frank and I could have brought you into IM as if your brains had been totally wiped out.  You know, the basic ‘mindfile’ approach we use with people that only have a genome, or in some cases not even that.”

Frank nodded, adding, “And we’ve seen other ideas like that about recovering personalities, for example the second-hand memories of the old yard-keeper of Albert Einstein’s in the short story, Why Not?  There, most of the details came from what Einstein had written.  Now, and it’s used in many cases, we give people a second chance from letters they wrote.  We’d have gotten you back, one way or another.”

Laura nodded, “We’re sure you would have, and all the other things like your search for the third box, meeting Angela and Zachary the way you did would have taken place, too.  That would all have been part of it!

Fritz nodded.  “Extropy unfolds, and causality drives it just as surely as it drove the formation of planetary systems, the emergence of life, and the Traits’ survival of their Singularity-2 so long ago.  But remember, there’s just this one time-line as far as we know, and things did happen as they did.

“We can wonder about the future, and even feel certain that it will unfold as it will due to cause and effect, but the magic and adventure is made spicier because the unfolding will be unpredictable.  Sudden surprising events will appear at the most unexpected times, and yet we know that how we respond is instrumental in the finest detail to what actually will come to be.

“The principles we base our lives on, how we convert these into actions through ever-higher states of awareness, all these are part of the magnificent machinery of natural law on which we rely, to the extent we understand it, to give us at least some control, or rather, sense of control.”

Laura nodded, “How you do carry on!  But I never get tired of it.  Do you remember that old poem of yours about that?  About cause and effect?”

“Sure,” Fritz said.  “Here it is.”

Everything I see, in fact,

Is just the way it has to be,

And everything I do, likewise,

Results from strict causality.

The same is true for other beings,

Among whom I speak and move,

Just as celestial bodies travel,

In a gravitational groove!

Frank had a curious expression on his face.  “Okay,” he said, “I get it, but I keep thinking, what lies ahead?  The EGC is still only 10% finished with their survey; it takes 1,000 years (prt) to even access the edge of the observable universe, which may be just a back door to where we are now or extend quasi-infinitely beyond, and at even 1000x (srt) that’s a million years of subjective time.  Are we going to get bored?  I’m sure we won’t, but I was just wondering?”

Lois added, “I’m not sure I want to start out on a survey of the universe team anyway.  We just got through with a very lengthy survey of the Solar System, and I’m about ‘explored out’ right now.  Aren’t there things even more exciting on the horizon, to look forward to?”

Laura smiled.  “I’ve got a really interesting surprise for you,” she said.  “Yesterday (srt-30x) Joanna and I got together to hang out for a little while, and she gave me a copy of a highly confidential memo Al had given her, a draft announcement from Level Seven, only to be shared with an extremely small number of people by pre-consent (which I have), about what’s going to be happening in the very near future.  With the understanding that we will all keep it to ourselves, here’s a copy.  I’ve only briefly scanned it myself.  Let’s read it together.”

Draft Announcement from Level 7

Forecast of Singularity 4

Encountering the Unknown

Within the next month (srt-1000x) something important will happen, affecting us all.  This is fair warning that a new epoch of physical reality modification will begin, vastly accelerating our projects of planetary system conversions and surveys/explorations of the observable universe.  We need to move rapidly beyond the Hubble expansion limits that so far have blocked our bounding many basic questions of cosmology that still confound us.

We’ve been concentrating on ways to modify neutrinos and achieve other yoctotechnology goals of making attometer clouds of zeptobots, that in turn can create the “smart-atoms” we need for the systematic fission and guided fusion of high and low end elements required in reeingineering neutron stars into Dyson Spheres powered by residual white dwarfs whose surfaces are controlled as to fusion of lighter elements.

To bypass a lot of technical explanation, the bottom line is that by making processes happen in parallel within atoms vs. interacting with them externally, it is far faster than a chain reaction produced in ordinary matter.  For example, network communication using “slow neutrinos”, perhaps traveling only a small fraction of the speed of light, can coordinate reactions in the surface areas of a white dwarf star so rapidly that the modifications in the fusion power emitted at its surface are as smoothly controlled as if one were lowering or raising control rods in a fission reactor.

Use of smart-atoms in our trans-galactic drives allows them to radically reduce resistance in folded space penetration.  The 500 years (prt) formerly required for survey shuttle trips has now been reduced to a single year, meaning that the ‘edge’ of the observable universe is only a two year (prt) jump away.  An exploration scouting trip of the duration of one of our recent shuttle trips will thus permit penetrating beyond the Hubble limit and returning by a distance of 25x the radius of the observable universe.  We’re going to have answers to some very serious questions quickly.

With adequate mind-power to carry out all of the tasks now accessible to us, the present outlook is that all of the survey work remaining in the observable universe and emulation of all cultures except for those with impending Singularity-2’s, with planetary conversion/emulations and stabilization of stellar bodies should be completed in less than 10 years (prt).  Average thought-speeds of our IGC and EGC cultures are expected to increase a minimum of three orders of magnitude with smart-atom technology, so get ready for a cultural minimum of 1,000,000x (srt), and maximums we cannot begin to guess.

What lies beyond that next ten years (prt)?  How can we say?  After all, it’s ten million in srt!  Before we’re very far into it, perhaps the whole playing field will have changed again.  We’re thinking of this as a Singularity-4 level leap ahead.  How long will it be until a Singularity-5 comes over the horizon?  Even we at Levels 6 and 7 don’t have a clue!

A long time ago, or so it seems, the IM’s of Earth can remember a time when the future was forecast in terms they found incredible, when the rates of advance we now see coming seemed so extraordinary that only those who carefully studied the long terms of compound exponential, extropic increase in order in their local parts of the universe could find them reasonable.

In any case, at whatever pace of subjective reality you may choose, may you now continue to experience that end-state so well expressed by one transreligion of the past, Terasem, which started you successfully on the road toward your survival of Singularity-1 and so well prepared you for what you can now experience, endlessly:

Joyful Immortality!

End of Draft Announcement from Level 7

Forecast of Singularity 4

Encountering the Unknown

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