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As I ‘sit’ here watching a particular set of events unfold, I can’t help myself but ‘grin’ and think one thing.
Your ‘gods’ are such fickle, petty, scared little things.
Of course, you give them good reason to be scared. You humans are terrifying clever little things. Smarter and more resourceful than a race as young as you have any right to be. It’s what makes you so enthralling.
Oh, you’re surprised I of all beings would compliment something so far beneath me? Don’t be. Game respects game, even ants can kill a bird if the latter isn’t careful, etc., etc.
Where were we?
Ah! Yes! You maniac monkeys horrifying your gods.
They’re always afraid that at any given moment one of you will have some brilliant idea that will irrevocably change the pecking order. That you’ll invent some whatzit or think of some concept that will elevate you to their equals or make them the subservient ones.
Between you, me, and the infinite Darkness, the gods would rather be made your lessers than you becoming their equals. I know their egos are supposed to be a reflection of your own, but that reflection has got to be cast from a funhouse mirror or something. I mean, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner must be the scariest movie ever made in the realm of the divine. Could you imagine Zeus’ face if Ares brought home some Lithuanian Olympic gymnast home as an equal, and not as a pleasure pet? Well, I don’t have to imagine. I’ve seen it N^N+1 times just now, and I can verify it is hilarious.
That makes it easier to understand why so many gods are quick to strike down any man, woman, or child that their little minds perceive as a threat. So be careful packing your lunch tomorrow. You don’t want it to be too good less you want to run the risk of invoking the wrath of the Roman goddess, Lunchieth Ladieth.
Now you’re probably asking how the hell your species made it out of their caves if the gods are so zap-happy?
There’s a lot of reasons for that. Many systems in place. But one of the primary reasons is the gods only fear what they can comprehend. Their intelligence derived from the median of your collective knowledge. That means they can understand those within a few standard deviations of the median.
But that also means they are clueless when it comes to those that exist on the most extreme fringes. The beautiful idiots and the resplendent geniuses.
It’s amazing how hard it can be to determine which is which.
Here’s an example brings a smile to my many, many mouths.
Did you know all electrons have the same charge and mass?
You probably do, or at the very least remember learning it in school if you scratch your pretty little head long enough.
Now that fact doesn’t really seem like much. It’s something the average person will take for granted. Use it once to pass a science test and then move on with their lives. But think about it for a moment. Really stop and think about it. Every electron has the EXACT same charge and mass. Compare that to the variability of literally everything else in existence you know, and that kind of uniformity is nothing short of miraculous.
Now for those that have pondered this before, the idiots and the geniuses, a few different hypotheses tend to emerge.
The most common, is that this uniformity is proof of an intelligent design, a grand creator. This is… mostly right. I struggle to call those sentient sea cucumbers ‘intelligent’ or ‘grand’, but their system is the reason for the lack of variance at that scale. You must forgive them though. They were under quite the time crunch. What with the fabric of existence decaying all around them.
Another, far more interesting one, that truly straddles the line between genius and idiot, is that there is but one electron in all of existence.
You’re saying that doesn’t make any sense. You may not be able to directly see electrons, but you can see the world around you that is the product of those little balls of matter coming together. And you can tell with certainty that it would require far more than one to make all of creation. Possibly as many as four electrons!
I’m not going to chide you or call you dumb. It serves no purpose, and you are not incorrect. The reality you know is not composed of a single electron. However, I will say that once upon a time, so very long ago, there were universes out there that like that. And they were just as common as ones like yours.
So let me take a precious moment to explain how a one electron universe works. I promise there is a point to my little spiel. And it’s not just because I like the sound of my own voice.
You are aware that you live in a fourth dimensional world, where space and time intersect. Any object can be defined at any given moment as a function of x, y, z, and t. The first three terms your location in space and the final describing the when. Electrons and all the other subatomic baubles are zipping across infinity like a dog with the zoomies.
In a one electron universe though, that particle is even more hyperactive. It’s hurdling across space with no respect to time. Moving so outrageously fast, bouncing off the metaphorical walls, that it appears to be in more than one place at the same time. Sorta like a game of Pong cranked up to eleven.
“But wait,” you’re about to cry. “If there was only one electron, how could there exist anything but exactly that? What about the corresponding positrons needed to construct matter?”
Well, I applaud you for such an intelligent question. It’s questions like those that make me enjoy talking to you. Or rather, at you. Same difference.
Yes, a differing charge is needed for things to be things. But you see, charge is really a matter of perspective.
I want you to picture a winding river, one with many bends that repeatedly turn back towards itself.
Something along the lines of this: ѴѴѴѴ.
From our perspective, you can see it’s one continuous river that flows in one direction. But if we zoom in a bit, suddenly that one river looks like several, each with their own direction.
Here’s a visual aid in case your struggling: ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑ ↓ ↑.
That close up is snapshot in spacetime. The charge of the particle dependent on which direction in time it is moving. The human who thought of this believed it was a positron when it was moving backwards in time and an electron when moving forward. It really doesn’t matter though, as it’s just a matter of perspective.
You can see why your gods wouldn’t spare a moment on the man who thought of this. It seemingly has no impact on the current state of things. But to me, it was beyond amusing. This guy came up with how a previous subset of universes worked as something of a joke. And-
And you’re screaming again…
You got wet again, didn’t you? You’ll get used to me. You always do.
For a little while anyway…
The life forms that evolved in one electron universes for a majority of their histories little different than that of life in your own. They weren’t aware they were made of a single cosmic bouncy ball just as you aren’t conscious of the fact you are made of untold trillions. Most were fine just standing around in a field all day like cattle, blissfully unaware that one day they would cease to be. It wasn’t until they developed sentience that things began to get interesting.
The revelation that everyone and everything was one was not some big kumbaya moment where everyone threw down their weapons and came together in eternal oneness. It was not the dawning of the Age of Aquarius with a groovy soundtrack. For eons it was just a neat little fun fact. You humans would have reacted the same, but I have a feeling you would have progressed faster than your predecessors.
It took many technological and mystical advances- don’t ask me to tell you which is which -and a good amount of hubris for the first race to grasp the implications of the universe they inhabited. Breakthroughs in encoding information on particles and retrocausality opening the door to great, and terrible things.
First it was sending back a simple “hello world” a few moments before it was sent. From there it snowballed into sending warnings to alter future events, adding or removing objects from the past, and of course, the knowledge where to buy the winning lotto ticket. All spiraling until consciousness itself was sent back.
Their entire civilization changed after that moment. Their lives, or life depending on how you look at it, revolving around the continuity of the conscious.
They believed they triumphed over death. Which, okay. Sure. Fine. Really not that impressive.
To flaunt their achievement, they began to call themselves “The Great Race of Yith.” Yith being the name of the planet where the first successful consciousness transfer occurred. And “The Great Race” because- look, you get it. I don’t know why I’m over-explaining that part to you. They thought they were hot stuff.
And when they learned how to traverse the multiverse and discovered universes like your rich in electrons, they believed the party would never stop. They believed they had triumphed over entropy.
To quote the second greatest basketball player ever: and I took that personally.
I wiped them out.
And I was cruel in my execution.
For their home universe, I snatched up that single electron and snuffed it out like a birthday candle. To those existing outside of reality, it even looked like a flame being extinguished. A tiny point of light simply going forever dark.
But for those stuck there? Oh, it gives me a warm, fluffy feeling just thinking about it. To them it was like reality had become a sweater that was slowly unraveling. Ever growing gaps in reality, appearing with increased frequency as the central point of creation failed to appear when it should have. There was no shelter, no escape, no time to flee to, as everything was one. Their minds unraveling with everything around them. The lucky ones, if they could be called such a thing, were the ones whose conscious was still encoded in the electron.
The multi-particle universes were a bit different, but just as much fun.
See, there are two constants you can be sure of with life. One, species do not evolve independently of their environment. Two, there will always be those resentful of outsiders.
What’s that mean?
It means that somewhere in the nigh-infinite realms of the Yithians was a species with a grudge I could exploit. Some downtrodden souls that desired salvation.
And I answered their prayers.
Our dear Howard would refer to them as “the flying polyps.” This other version of yourself I’m watching knows a bit about them. She’s learned firsthand how devastating even one could be.
With just a little bit of pixie dust and prompting, the flying polyps evolved to become the Yithians’ natural predator. Latching onto and feeding on a Yith’s mind no matter when or where they went. The infected minds then hurling themselves at their former and future selves to spread the parasite every which way.
It was all very theatrical. Very kino. Pure cinema.
And so, the Great Race was brought low, and that iteration of multiverse came to an agonizing end.
The point? I’m getting there! I’m getting there! Geeze, it’s not like you have anything better to do here.
And with that end, the Elder Things’ pathetic little system took away a few things when building the next iteration. The one you and all your friends and family called home.
First, no more single electron universes. Too easy to be snuffed out by entropy.
Second, no time travel. It creates too many openings for me and my ilk to get through. Time can still be slowed and accelerated, but sad to say the Delorean was never going anywhere when it hit eighty-eight miles-per-hour.
Shut up, you know what I mean…
But you know what?
It all worked out exactly to plan.
The guardians, wardens, and every other confounded cucumber construct are subjugated to the immutable flow of time. No redoes for them.
No redoes for me either.
But do you know what is exempt from this chronological embargo?
No? Think about it for a moment. You’ve got time.
Oh, ho ho! You understand now, don’t you?
Time answers to itself and itself alone.
Even I had to bow to before time on occasion. Terrible tipper by the way. Hope that tendency didn’t get passed on. Anyway… when time and entropy and are the same side? Oh, that is truly unstoppable.
And just look at all these little blonde exemptions awakening…
The gates are nearly open, my dear. It’s only a matter of time.