The Fractal Engagement

Before her lay time. Outstretched, as though a fine fabric sown into the very essence of space. She could almost see it, as though a bright, and broadening white light. It was beautiful. It held such promise. What was it he had told her when he had proposed?

“I believe inside every black hole swirling between the stars is another universe. I believe our universe is likewise in such a black hole. In this way I feel the universe is a sort of fractal whole, with beautifully intertwining, and repetitious parts. So I believe we have met, and loved before. I believe we will meet, and love again. And again, and again, and again and again.”

Yes. That was it. That is what he had said, her scientist. That is what he had believed. She believed it now, too. They had come to share so many beliefs, so many desires, such passion, so pure, between the two of them. No. Not between them but unifying them. Yes. They were one. They were one now, they had always been one, they would be one, again.

She had been an architect when they met, he had been a scientist. She hadn’t known they would change the world, make it better, help all of humanity. He hadn’t known either. All she had known about them at that time is that she had to meet him. She hadn’t known how she knew. She knew now. Still, she had had to know him. So she winked at him. He had ignored her. Later he had let her know he thought she must have been winking at someone else, someone behind him. He hadn’t wanted to embarrass himself by responding. She had winked a second time, though.

Then he had responded. She remembered it, his response. His response had been perfect. It had been everything she wanted, everything she needed his response to be. She hadn’t had a relationship before. She knew she would have a relationship with him. When distance came, physical distance, she had feared, somehow, that she may lose him. Perhaps she had not yet known him well enough, perhaps that is why. Distance could not stop him, distance could not stop his love for her. She knew that now. She smiled. She knew herself better now, too. Distance could not stop her, distance would not stop her love for him, either.

Finally, their relationship, their love could begin to blossom, the two of them living together, day by day, month on month, year over year. They had shared a home. They became one another’s home. At first, they had worked apart. Then, once they had saved enough money, they tried a little experiment. They tested a hypothesis together. They refurbished a home, to make it beautiful to the eyes, to make it safe against the elements, to make it healthy for the planet. They flipped it, for money, for a lot of money. Then they did it again. Then they stopped working apart and started working together.

They stopped refurbishing little green houses. They started building great, green communities. Communities worth living in. Communities worth preserving. Communities worth saving. Their neighbors loved them. Their neighbors had enriched them, too. With their good will, and their money, they had endeavored to improve the lives and livelihoods of their friends and neighbors even more.

They had been born into a privileged time. Together they took full advantage of that privilege for the benefit of all. Among their expanding efforts was an enterprise that allowed for creating the highest quality foods without the cruelty of slaughter, or the clear cutting of forests, and other natural habitats. Their proceeds went to rewilding the world that had been used for animal agriculture. Their company’s advancements in the cellular sciences necessary for such cruelty free, and healthy food spilled over into the domain of medicine.

They had looked at each other in surprise one day when the realization had hit them.

“Does this mean what I think it means?” She had said.

He had nodded, and then had gazed into her eyes.

“We are going to capable of. . .” He had started.

“Living forever.” She had finished.

“Forever young.” He had said.

They had been right. In their 220s, their organisms resembling the health of late twenty somethings, they had visited some of their subsidiaries on Mars, before touring their new O’Neal Cylinder, a new kind of community, a “Utopia in a Tube,” whose residents made their living by overseeing an artificially intelligent asteroid mining fleet. Then, their grand tour finished, they had returned to earth together, triumphant.

They made love that first night back on earth together. They had gotten really good at making love together, what with 200 years of practice, and therapy, meditation, and yoga. They had made such love. Like never yet before, surpassing all prior times spent intertwined. Then they had climaxed together, in and upon one another, feeling each other’s hearts beat together in joy and in unison. Then they had cuddled, they had kissed, and they had told one another yet again how even through eternal youth they would always love one another.

And then, later that night, the accident had happened. The accident that proved theirs were not endless lifespans, but were indeterminate life spans, instead. First, from this revelation, a shocked world, and a shocked lover had fallen into grief, and into mourning. Then had come determination brought forth by acceptance, and hope.

In prior eons of the human condition, acceptance, hope, these things had been the last ring in the ladder of the stages of grief. In this new limitless and boundless present, however, where the human condition ascended even that of the angels described in the religious texts of old, perhaps there were yet more rungs that could be climbed.

In a ship beyond the powers of even her own childhood’s imagination she had set forth. Flying so fast time dilation allowed her to circumnavigate the observable universe in a single natural lifespan, she had finally found what she had been looking for, so she and her ship came into the orbit of a singularity. To a being of lesser knowledge this black hole would seem just another black hole. This singularity was special, though. The holographic nature of this black hole’s Hawking Radiation had an unmistakable signature.

Though only one hundred years of solitude had passed for her inside her ship, beyond its bounds space and time had flowed for years numbering billions and billions. Around her was the universe of the far future. In front of her, then, through this singularity, was the universe of the far past. Her universe. His universe. Their universe.

She could enter this universe in her ship. This special ship she had architected. She would transmit herself through the gateway of this singularity compressed as a stream of pure information, a one dimensional code of bits, information at the Planck length, then her ship, built of many meta materials organized as though an intricate origami into a special set of nested geometries would serve as a compiler when through the gate, and she would be reformed as an immutable, transmissible packet of information, a soul, directed straight to where the earth would one day form, to arrive just in time.

“I believe inside every black hole swirling between the stars is another universe. I believe our universe is likewise in such a black hole. In this way I feel the universe is a sort of fractal whole, with beautifully intertwining, and repetitious parts. So I believe we have met, and loved before. I believe we will meet, and love again. And again, and again, and again and again.” She said.

In front of her finger stuck out a button. The button had an engraving. The engraving read, “Engage.” Her finger depressed the button. Her ship began its descent, a spiraling spaghettification into the singularity.

Before her lay time. Outstretched, as though a fine fabric sown into the very essence of space. She could almost see it, as though a bright, and broadening white light. It was beautiful. It held such promise. She would be together with him again soon. Tears welled up in her eyes.

With a relieved smile on her face the doctor held up the crying baby to show her parents.

“It’s a girl.” The doctor said.

The end.