The Nuniverse

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, but that really only applies to the old space. Humans said a lot of things before the end of the previous universe. I still remember the day; everyone does. Forgetfulness no longer exists. The sky rolled up and every eye saw the veil of the universe torn asunder. Previously, we all thought that what we saw at night was the unadulterated view of the universe; we were wrong. There were those of us who knew that this wasn’t entirely accurate, but there were powers at work who were vigilant in ensuring that the truth wasn’t widespread. Their reasoning was pretty complicated, but that’s neither here nor there. When the veil tore, what we saw was…well…everything. Not just the limited number of stars, but also the creatures that had been dwelling, or existing, up there in the cosmos. Things that had been keeping watchful eyes on us. Things so indescribably large that it would be impossible to hide from anyone who had ever escaped the veil of Earth’s atmosphere. We saw the darkness of the universe illuminated. It’s pretty hard to imagine the background of the universe in light when your entire existence has only every seen it in complete and utter darkness. The colors! Even now, there are no words for the colors that span the universe, nor is there any real way to explain the clarity that has replaced the darkness.

In the end of the universe, the Earth had gotten so hot that most the water and all the grass and most of the trees had burned up; few were still alive back then. The universe had basically reached its expansion limit. The force of the initial creation had finally extended as far as it could go, and because the brunt of that mass remained at the focal point of the creation, its gravitational force, though that’s grossly undercutting its category, caused the universe to finally start contracting. Time literally stood still, but what came next was the end. The contraction of the universe wasn’t complicated, but its effects were universally cataclysmic. As all things went from zero G, zero km/s to negative acceleration every magnetic pole flipped, every comet, asteroid, moon, white dwarf, quasar, planet, black hole, supermassive black hole, galaxy, and antimatter galaxy hurtled back towards the center of creation. Anything that had stabilized in the billions of years of creation, or more accurately, handful of millennia because of gravitational time dilation, had suddenly been pulled back from the ebb of creation to the flow of destruction. The heavy bombardment that ensued destroyed most of the universe, a third of Sol and Luna. We watched as the Earth was pulled towards the ball of light that was the center of all creation awaiting with paralyzed fascination the inevitable end of all things to come, but we didn’t die. At least not all of us died. Instead, we were all changed. Like all that was negative energy within us dissipated, or was consumed, or burned away and what was left was this; our nuniverse.

The title itself is a double entendre meaning new universe and negative universe, though it is devoid of negative energy. This is where those of us still around eventually figured out that our laws of thermal dynamics were on point. All people who ever lived were alive here. If that’s what we can call it. Their energy, the positive energy existed here. Parents, grandparents, greats, great greats, honestly, I’ve met a couple who I’m pretty sure are the original Adam and Eve. There is a grand force at the center of it all, and entity. It’s THE source of this positive energy but it doesn’t move about. It’s just there at the door of what was and what is. It allows us to be here. You might remember I mentioned an anti-galaxy earlier. That was the last discovery humanity made before the end. After enough galaxy clusters undergo galactic cannibalism, they become so massive that they undergo the same process as stars that exceed the 1.4 solar mass limit. They supernova and become black holes, but for galaxies that incomprehensibly exceed that mass limit, they simply invert. They become invisible galaxies. White holes were the closest explanations, though no one ever quite reached the conclusion of how a white hole might exist; this is how it happens. Physical Matter collides at such atomic speeds that they are transitioned into antimatter or anti-energy…dark energy. That was the big mystery. “Where’s all the matter? Why is it dark, what is this energy we can’t locate?” they’d say. Gravity wells remained in the space where the visible galaxy once was and in a sense still is, but it would never be seen again, short of negligible bursts of gamma radiation from antimatter collisions within its realm that escaped back into the realm of matter; that’s basically what happened to the universe. It was a matter universe, but now it’s an anti-matter universe; the old universe multiplied by negative one.

Turns out that’s where we go when we die, though we know now that death was a farce, just like reincarnation, multiverses. We are all alive…we are infinite because we are energy. The kicker is that we never quite answered how we became energy in the first place. How humanity came to be. I think we all know it had to have come from that force that sits at the door of matter and antimatter. Honestly, I could go on forever explaining all of the discoveries we’ve made since the return; that’s what we call it. In fact, I might have already wasted an eternity just explaining the simplest fact of existence; something that’s already second nature to everyone and that’s also the least significant curiosity in the nuniverse. I’m after something that might change everything; the sphinx. End of log C1551R16.

Alright. Time to get Anippe. The controls in the skimmer wrapped around my wrists as I hovered over the silver metallic disc. These were the first form of transportation we discovered here. Like flat puddles of mercury, these discs can be entered, or more accurately, stepped on, and they pair to the inhabitant. From there, it becomes a mind-creature connection and it moves where I want it to. More interestingly, it stretches to accommodate more people entering. “Anippe. Where are you?” I called in my mind. A moment later, the form of Anippe faded into appearance. Her beautiful caramel skin and silky black hair floated in the air of the low gravity atmosphere. Earth had changed a lot when it entered the door. Now there were living trees, talking animals, though they remain simple creatures even in conversation, visible wind, and trampoline-like earth. The atmosphere was gone entirely, but we didn’t need the oxygen to live. We still breathe, but what enters into our bodies and sustains our life force isn’t the elements; it’s the entity at the door; exuding life like air.

Anippe walked towards me and stepped onto the skimmer. She gave me a smile and a kiss; the feel of her soft lips on mine always made my cheeks flush with a sort of tangible energy. God I love her. We met maybe twenty thousand years ago; give or take a few thousand years. It’s hard to put a number to it. Time is more cyclical here than it was ever theorized on old Earth. Things happen and then they happen again before they happen the first time. Anippe existed in the ancient Egyptian times of old Earth. It occurs to me that people of the old universe would look at our connection and think that we are in a relationship or married or something like that, but that’s not quite how things work in the nuniverse. Love is universal, but it’s also not really the same kind of love that existed. Some parts are still the same like physical interactions, but there was a sort of toxic attachment that existed before that’s no longer present; it’s hard to explain. The best way I can is simply to say that here we neither marry nor are given in marriage. There’s a definite purity to our every touch and every touch is pure bliss far exceeding anything that existed before and some have entertained that bliss from the new beginning as their passion, though I prefer it in passive moments in between exploration.

The skimmer extended as Anippe sat on the air next to me. “Let’s hunt a sphinx!” she cheered raising a fist in excitement. The term sphinx was a misnomer. It wasn’t so much a sphinx as it was something whose appearance closest resembled old universe depictions of the sphinx. It was more like the beings that had appeared when the veil was torn, but the sphinx seemed more…feral. Anippe had even told me she had seen a whole swarm of live sphinxes in her time in the old universe. No one else here had an explanation for it, and most didn’t have much interest in finding out what it was. That’s one of the interesting things about this place. Left to their own devices without the threat of starvation or homelessness, people tend to pick up hobbies that suit their interests for a time before moving on to the next, and without the threat of mortality, sleep itself became a hobby for some and the constant pursuit of happiness became the reason for existence; everyone was an explorer in some fashion. Immortality was the defining feature of this new humanity. Because of this, however, it never felt quite right still calling ourselves humans with the memories of the old Earth that it entailed. For that reason, we dubbed ourselves Numans.

I had seen the sphinx. Initially, I thought of it as some kind of dragon, serpentine and gliding through the nuniverse. It was Anippe who had first called it a sphinx when we had met. We marveled at its majesty for decades before we decided to find a way to reach it; to communicate with it. Certainly, if every creature here so far had the ability to communicate, albeit simply, then the sphinx for sure was a creature that must hold some cosmic secret; we had to know. The skimmers were discovered by a man named Cephas. He had put a drop of the water flowing from the tree at the center of the garden into a pool of quicksilver near the chasm and created the skimmers. They since have move around the new Earth indiscriminately. Anippe and I found ours sometime after we’d decided to chase down the sphinx, however, since we made the plans, we haven’t seen so much as a glimpse of it.

“Where should we start, Anippe?” I said, turning to her. “The whispers of the sun,” she said. I nodded. The skimmer lifted silently into the air and floated up towards the stars leaving the ground of new Earth far behind. It briefly reminded me of my first attempts at riding the skimmer. I had flown high up and was learning how to maneuver it, but my connection with the skimmer wasn’t strong, so it changed direction and left me falling back towards Earth. I remember the tickling feeling, like somersaulting through the air laughing the whole way down. I logged that in M46. I watched the Earth become smaller as we left the atmosphere; the life tree in the distance. Eventually, the sun peeked out behind the Earth bright and beautiful. The skimmer curved and slid through space towards it. 222 days later, we reached the sun. It’s coronal mass ejections blasted out from sunspots. They reached out from the sun like molten galactic snakes reaching to the ends of the universe.

“The whispers!” Anippe whispered in excitement. I didn’t respond, but stared at them in awe. This was my first time being to the sun. The sun is a guide to illuminate your path, so to speak. I had spent a lot of time exploring the hidden places of the Earth, but there were so many unique stars, planets, galaxies out here. It would take an eternity to explore and I couldn’t wait. I guided the skimmer towards one of the darkest sun spots nearest to us. If we could position ourselves just above it, when the plasma ejection occurred, we’d hear the whisper of the sun. These whispers would give us a clue about what we sought. We followed the sun spot for the next 11 years until, like a railgun, it shot out plasma engulfing us in an instant. The golden light shimmered around us. I reached out a hand feeling the particles vibrating through me, and then I heard the voice. “It cannot be found, only sought. It’s perpetually out of sight of those who seek it, but if you follow its voice, it will guide you to its secret stores of wisdom.” As the words finished, so did the burst shooting off into the nuniverse. We sat there for some time considering the words. How could we listen for a voice we’d never heard? After some discussion, we determined that meditation might be the best way. To sit in the silence of the universe and simply listen; hoping to hear something anything, that might be the voice of the sphinx. The skimmer adjusted to our thoughts and turned us towards one another. I held my hands out and Anippe placed hers in mine.

The next few centuries passed in relative silence and darkness. Our eyes closed, the only sounds came from the vibrations of nearby CMEs. My mind wandered occasionally to the image of the sphinx’s face in the times before I sought after it. I wondered if it had been looking at me specifically. I wondered if it knew I would be seeking it and had been observing my thoughts. The thought would fade and for some years I would be preoccupied with the subtle, yet tangible feeling of acceptance radiating from Anippe’s hands to mine. I considered opening my eyes once or twice, but I didn’t. Even though my eyes were closed, I could see her there in front of me; clear as if I had been staring the entire time. I could see her hair slowly bouncing in space; her head slightly lowered, eyes closed; not a crease on her smooth poreless face, her hands extended to mine, and, perhaps, a reciprocal experience.

We sat and listened to the silent reverberations of the nuniverse until one day, like a wisp of wind, a still quiet voice floated by. “If you could tell your past self anything, what would you have learned?” it asked. I opened my eyes, though I knew it wasn’t Anippe’s voice. Her eyes were opened as well. We looked around, but didn’t see anything. “You answer” she said. “I thought about the answer for a long while. At first I considered telling myself about the nuniverse, but I realized that all that would do is present myself with anguish for the difficulties of life and cause me to become recluse while waiting for the end to come. I then thought about telling myself simply that everything would be ok. That seemed for the moment like a reasonable response, but when I thought deeper about it, I realized that rather than giving hope, it would likely have the opposite effect. I would then see every struggle as a ticking clock; wondering from tragedy to tragedy when it would finally be OK. The truth still would be that for as long as I lived in the universe, there would be pain and suffering in varying amounts. I would be in despair to the end and short of revealing the truth of the end, I wouldn’t be able to console myself. After the consideration had passed I realized what my answer would be.

“I would say nothing. That is the best gift I could give to my past self.” I waited in the silence of space. There was no response. I looked at Anippe, who simply smiled and closed her eyes again. Following her lead, I did the same. Eventually, perhaps a decade or so, another response came. “Why do you believe that is the best gift you could give yourself?” This time, I kept my eyes closed. Anippe didn’t move either. I explained my reasoning for the first two options I came up with, and then continued my justification. “If I could encounter my past self, knowing how eager and full of stress and pain I would be to hear some wisdom that would make my life easier, I know that any context of this time would be too much to bear. I would simply sit with my past self and embrace him. I would put my arm around his shoulders and hold him in the most loving embrace I could manage and simply just be there with him without a single word. When the time came for me to fade from his existence, as it must happen, I know he would first consider why I had no words for him of encouragement, but after pondering his experience with his future self, he would come to the simplest realization. I was there. I was there and I was with him. Even if he could not hear me, he would know that I cared because I held him and he would know that because I held him that I had love and peace in my heart; and if I had love and peace in the future, then that was his future as well. He would then continue through his life, through the trials and tribulations with a single truth in his heart. He would tell himself ‘I am here’ and that would be enough.”

“Beautifully spoken,” the voice came immediately. I opened my eyes again and looked around, but still didn’t see any being other than myself and Anippe. “This truth you have uncovered because you have been returned to the former light of the one who was and is and has come. All who are now have the light, and yet, you are the first to seek what it reveals. However, the truths you seek to know are at depth which has never been traversed. Their consequence transcends this existence and affects the universe past in ways even an eternity would not suffice to reveal to you. Tell me children. Will you continue to seek this knowledge?”

We’ve been asking ourselves one question in particular since the Sphinx made its offer. How can knowledge transcend existence and time? In our discussions we’ve only been able to theorize two hypotheses. The first is that somehow we are able to change the past by learning about this future, but that brought up all sorts of continuity issues that we couldn’t quite resolve. The second hypothesis was that our journey would eventually lead us into the past where we will have to be very careful about how we interact with humanity, but that too had its continuity issues. The Sphinx didn’t give us more than that on the matter and told us to search for the edge of the nuniverse as our next task. It’s been thousands of years since then and we have seen many different galaxies. Some of them looked like the ones we had seen in distant images in the old world, but many of them take on significantly different shapes here. There are spherical galaxies, liquid galaxies, mirror galaxies, which are the closest thing to a real multiverse than anything ever speculated by the brightest minds of old Earth; this reality would make them feel quite dim. We stopped to observe one for a good while, admiring its symmetry, and discovered that what we saw at one end of the galaxy was also “coming out” on the other half of the galaxy, though it wasn’t there before. This became apparent to Anippe when she spotted a hypernova that occurred on both ends of the galaxy simultaneously to identical stars. End of log J267.

“Children, what have you discovered in this galaxy?” the Sphinx asked. “This galaxy has a mirrored dimension. Everything that happens on one side also happens on the other,” Anippe answered. “What does that mean for those who live there?” the Sphinx asked. “I think,” I began “that those who live there are perhaps unaware that they exist in two spaces at the same time. That what they do is affected by and connected to what the other version of themselves is also doing; that they are incapable of doing anything different than what the other does.” “And what if someone who has observed this truth, like yourselves, chose to live in that galaxy?” asked the Sphinx. We looked back up at the galaxy. “We might be able to change the existence of the other in some way, causing a different chain of events,” Anippe responded. “We would break the mirror,” I said. “No,” Anippe objected. “Not break it. We would fold it over both dimensions infinitely; we would combine both spaces into one. Coexistence.” “Keep going children, the edge awaits you,” the Sphinx said.

The time that past from then felt itself like an eternity. Anippe and I observed peculiarities throughout the nuniverse. There were stars of all colors, there were binary, trinary, and even septenary star systems. There were galaxy sized planets and things that didn’t really seem like planets which moved like ebbing globules through space, except they had people inhabiting it. We also encountered various creatures; what seemed to be snakes that simply slithered though space as if they were swimming, entities that literally held a world in their hands and observed it as it rotated silently in space, and perhaps the most interesting creature we saw, or didn’t see, was a transparent entity whose eyes were heterochromatic novae. Its form was numanoid, but it was hard to tell as its limbs were galactic star forming clouds. It had followed us for some time before we realized that there was a galaxy trailing us. As it turned out, it was just curious what we were. It hadn’t seen other sentient creatures before and nearly mistook us for debris before it realized that we were making conscious decisions to move in specific directions. We guided it back in the direction of the new Earth to find more beings like us. That’s how we realized that we must have been getting close to the edge of the nuniverse; Every place we had encountered prior to that had numans. Here, everything we saw was not only unique, it was also uninhabited. End of log KJV100.

Soon galaxies, beings, and even space debris became scarce until eventually we were just traveling in the skimmer through an empty space. Nothing from horizon to horizon in any orientation that could give us a sense of scale, direction, or velocity. Even with an eternity to ponder existence, this emptiness was becoming daunting; the sheer enormity of it all made us both feel less significant. We considered together how best to pass the time. In the end, we decided to dream together. While dreaming was a hobby of some in the nuniverse, we decided to use it as a sort of meditation. We embraced; the warmth of Anippe’s body gave me a sense of calm and peacefulness that quelled the encroaching feeling of nothingness. In our dreams, we met in a park. It was a simple park. It had the bright skies of the nuniverse, a water fountain with a beautiful statue, and clean stone pathways that snaked around patches of perfect green grass. In this place, we sat on a bench and talked about moments during our time as humans when we felt moments like the loneliness and insignificance we felt outside of the dream. We talked about what got us through those moments, what kind of thoughts we shared with ourselves, and what kind of support we received from other people. We focused on this positivity talking through each moment of our lives until we had both gone through our existence multiple times. End of Log PHI48.

“Welcome, children, to the end of the nuniverse, and yet, the beginning of the same,” the Sphinx spoke as its galaxy sized body suddenly faded into existence against the transparent yet shimmering backdrop of the wall which held the end of the nuniverse. It didn’t look far away at first, but when I reached out thinking it was close enough to touch and my hand floated through empty space, I realized the enormity of its scale and distance. “Have you discovered the meaning of your existence?” At first thought, we didn’t understand the question, but the moment the question was asked, we looked at each other and there, gazing into each other’s eyes, we understood. We each turned to the Sphinx and nodded. “We are the conscience,” I said. “We must guide ourselves in the universe. If we choose to simply indulge in what made us happy here, then we would have had a much more difficult journey reaching the nuniverse,” Anippe said.

The Sphinx continued. “Even now, knowing the tiniest portion of the truth, you are the first to reach this conclusion. You must not only guide yourselves, but you must reach others as well. It is the hope of this place that none should fail to arrive, but as it is guarded, to keep the negative energy from entering, it is only possible for those here to interact with those outside through the silent positive energy; conscience. As I have guided you here, you must now head back to the new Earth and teach others to see more than themselves. Did you know that the universe and the nuniverse are like the opposite ends of an elastic band?” “How so?” Anippe asked. “Their center; the center of creation exists at the same point. It was created and then catalyzed, and the result is the force of creation pushes it outward, but the center of creation remains the greatest gravitation force; nothing can escape its reach and all things gravitate towards the it. Once the force reaches the end of its orbit, time stops and everything rushes back with the same ferocity to the door.”

“Does that mean that the nuniverse will come to an end?” I asked. “No,” said the Sphinx. “This place has no end and no beginning, but as I told you this is one such mystery that you will never fully understand,” the Sphinx said staring down at us. I nodded in silence pondering this exchange. “How do you plan to connect to your counterparts?” the Sphinx asked as he finished explaining our reason for existence. I felt Anippe take my hand. I looked at her as she turned towards the center of creation. I considered the question for the coming eons as I stared from the opposite end of infinity. “We already have.”

End of log COR1547