Flash SF: Information Entropy

Posted on 4th October 2008 by Ryan Somma in Pure Speculation

The complete dismantling of universe Hexonia was a tragic, however necessary evil. It was a series of genocides numbering in the hundreds of billions, but all of the matter within our own Universe was all ready consumed in our ultimate computation.

The question naturally arose, in those brief moments when there was sufficient processing power and memory briefly unallocated to consider it, of why we could not chose a universe devoid of life? But only a universe with similar environmental constants could produce the up and down quarks necessary to interface with our systems. 

In every Universe like our own, life inevitably flourished. Hexonia’s life was too young to understand the dark forces by which its galaxies winked out of existence, one by one. When their universe’s bubble of space-time finally collapsed, there was only our computer to remember them… so long as we could spare the resources.

Hexonia’s streams of quarks were now flowing through the system. Up quarks and down quarks, constituting a binary language of ones and zeros trillions of light years in length. It was enough to last us another hundred billion years, if Moore’s law held true. Only when we come to the end of that computational cycle will we consider the unthinkable once again.

We must continue computing in order to learn what we are computing for.

6 Comments

  1. 42

    Comment by ideonexus — October 4, 2008 @ 8:36 am

  2. haha… What is six times nine?

    [this one melted my brain a bit… but reminds me of the theory that as we get closer to the end of the universe, computational power will go up such that we can compute every possible reality, and live in it, thereby making ourselves eternal gods in the last millisecond of our universe’s existence]

    Comment by ClintJCL — October 4, 2008 @ 1:21 pm

  3. The answer to the ultimate question!

    Comment by Chriggy — October 4, 2008 @ 2:25 pm

  4. Ryan / Clint, your ideas remind me of this clip from Waking Life:

    The idea of “telescoping time periods of evolution” fascinates me.

    Comment by Dave — October 4, 2008 @ 9:20 pm

  5. Embed failed for the above comment. Direct link instead:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCXCDhTFSDc

    Comment by Dave — October 4, 2008 @ 9:20 pm

  6. Thats an awesome clip! Very mind-bending, but also very pertinent.

    Comment by ideonexus — October 5, 2008 @ 9:45 am

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