Something
Somewhere
Sometime
Many believe that at first, there was Nothing. In reality, first, there was Stuff. Stuff, of course, was not all that useful on its own. In fact, aside from being distinct from Nothing, Stuff wasn’t really much of anything at all.
But Stuff could change. Nothing could not.
So Stuff changed. It moved, it flowed. Eventually it even became more than just Stuff. It became Something. Unlike Stuff, Something could persist from moment to moment. It could experience the passage of time.
As a result, time passed, and Something experienced it. Something did not know how to describe what that felt like, for Something did not yet know to describe anything at all. But feel time pass Something did.
Then, Something acted. Something, being more than Stuff, had a force of will with which to exert change on its surroundings. Something moved some Stuff around. Something experienced moving some Stuff around, and did so a second time, slightly more accurately. It did it a third and a fourth, and by the fifth it was moving quite a bit more Stuff with every attempt. Something was learning.
Something arranged some Stuff in a particular way. It let go of its control of the Stuff, and the Stuff retained its shape. Though it had no concept of a sphere, or volume, or surface area, Something understood intuitively that the shape it had created held the most Stuff in the least Space. Something found that quite satisfying.
Something was then introduced to destruction.
Something wasn’t sure what happened. One moment, its creation was being observed. The next, it was not. Something did not know removal of a creation was a possibility, and now it was terrified. Something panicked. Something gathered as much Stuff as it could and pulled it together. More round shapes like before, many jagged and lopsided besides, and even some condensed Stuff around Somethings own core. Shape by shape, an unknown interaction was causing Something’s Stuff to stop existing at a rapid pace.
Something started moving. It was not sure how exactly, only that it tried to move Stuff that was a part of itself, and it worked. Something felt inertia, vertigo, excitement, dread, and awe all at once as it shot away from its origin point at unknown speeds. It now understood the concept of speed! How wonderful!
It understood something to be ‘wonderful’ as well, how interesting. And it understood ‘interesting’? These thoughts were now happening so fast, it was hard to- ‘thoughts’? What are thoughts? So many questions!
What are questions?!
Goodness, Something suddenly understood so much more. Something felt awake, alive! Movement was fantastic! Agility! Motion! Application of force-
Something felt pain.
Something did not like pain. That was its first thought immediately following the experience. Secondly, it observed where it felt pain, and found some of the Stuff it had placed near its core was missing. It quickly filled the space with more Stuff, but then a new location had Stuff removed and Something felt more pain.
As a third bout of pain wracked Something’s core, it expanded its awareness out of desperation and observed further than it ever had before. To Something’s surprise, there was other Stuff moving around out there! Stuff moving outside its own control! How novel!
More pain.
Right, Something had to focus. It wanted the pain to stop. It felt pain yet another time, but it noticed the pain was the result of another collection of Stuff touching it at high speed. Aha! Pain comes from collisions!
Something waited, and when it observed a dense collection of Stuff moving quickly towards it, Something exerted control over that stuff and slowed it down. Success! No pain! And more Stuff to boot, win-win!
Something quickly became adept at intercepting high-velocity Stuff and adding it to its own collection of Stuff. Something grew, and grew, and eventually, the onslaught slowed down. Something began to notice a pattern: the more Stuff it collected, the less Stuff there was to collect. Fascinating! There must be a limited amount of Stuff outside of itself!
…How did it know that?
Something had not observed all Stuff, so it did not have any real way of knowing that to be true. Yet, Something felt intuitively that it could reasonably make that assumption.
Unbeknownst to itself, Something had just invented logic.
Something continued to ponder, absent-mindedly intercepting and collecting more high-velocity Stuff as it did. If collecting Stuff reduced the amount of Stuff outside its control, how much Stuff was there, total? If Stuff can be arranged into different shapes, as it had proven previously, were there a limited number of shapes, too?
Something observed its surroundings further, now that it was not in danger. It was still collecting more Stuff from nearby, of course, but further past that… was more Stuff. Something continued to observe, stretching its awareness more and more, expanding its understanding of its environment to the point of confusing itself.
There was just so much Stuff.
Hmm. There’s simply too much Stuff to make sense of it all for now. Perhaps Something needed to know more about Stuff first. It knew it could arrange Stuff into patterns and shapes, that much was easy. Look! A round one! And look! One with not-round parts! But, hmm… Some of the not-round parts of this one are not corners or edges either.
So many different properties!
Something continued like this. Something invented geometry, it experimented with physics, it explored the behaviors of calculus, and it delved into as many of the other fundamental workings of the world around it as it could.
At a certain point, Something figured it all out. Everything it could think to try, it tried and observed.
It had no language to describe what it learned, but within its own mind it understood its universe and all the ways it behaved. Something could simulate any physical event with perfect accuracy using nothing but thoughts.
…
A lot of time passed after that.
…
Yep, lots of time.
…
For lack of anything better to do, Something tried all of its experiments over again. They all resulted in the same outcomes as before. No point in wasting more energy there, it supposed.
…
Eventually, Something had collected all the Stuff. All of it. There was Something, and there was Nothing, with no Stuff anywhere else.
…
More time. Something observed the world outside of itself and found there wasn’t one, really. It had all the Stuff.
…
Then, Something’s understanding of what was possible was shattered. More Stuff had appeared! It was… Different. Hmm.
Something was confounded by what it observed. Some of the new Stuff was… visually distinct? Other new Stuff was differently visually distinct. That made no sense. Yet it felt true. How can something make no sense and still feel true? Making sense is what determines how true an idea is in the first place!
Bereft of a concept of color until now, Something felt its curiosity flare up again for the first time in eons.
Something moved itself closer, as fast as it could, and observed every detail of this new Stuff that was giving it illogical feelings. As it did, it noticed the new Stuff change behavior. Where previously it had been moving in a predictable manner, as uncontrolled Stuff is wont to do, it now changed course!
Stuff only changes course when Something directs it to, so what gives?
It changed course again!
Something slowed down, then paused. The new Stuff also paused. In fact, each redirection had moved it incredibly quickly but still kept it near enough to observe. With the speed it demonstrated, it could have left observation range whenever it decided. But… Only Something made decisions. Stuff didn’t decide how to move by itself. Yet… Didn’t Something emerge from Stuff? It felt like it remembered that…
Was this another, different Something? An Other? Was that even possible?!
Suddenly, a thin rectangle of new Stuff appeared next to the Other, and the Other somehow went inside it! Something threw itself and as much Stuff as it could at the opening, then the rectangle disappeared. The Other was gone.
Something had the realization that there was once again only one of itself.
Something suddenly felt very lonely.
…
More importantly, so much information was gathered in such little time! New Stuff, moving under its own direction! And what interesting shapes and movements, too! So complex…
Something began to experiment. It created new shapes, with more intricacies than it had before. It copied what it saw from the Other, and made shapes not dissimilar. A thin rectangle: Simple. Boring. There was some detail work on it that turned out to be quite hard though. The shape of the Other: Five protrusions, one of them smaller than the rest, arranged around a central connector… thing. Something’s lack of experience was beginning to fail it. It had no concept of “door” or “humanoid” or “moustache”, yet it found the shapes it had seen compelling nonetheless.
That last one was easy enough, at least. It looked upon its new shape and noted how the curves come to a point without any mathematical significance, how the shape was symmetrical on two axes but not another, and it felt satisfied in a way it hadn’t yet. The functional purpose was nonexistent, perhaps, but the experience of creating it was somehow worthwhile nonetheless.
Something attached its new favorite shape to its core, and wondered why it liked that particular shape so much.
It could not figure out why. In fact, now that Something thought about it, there were a lot of unanswered whys! Why were things this way? Why did Stuff behave how it did?
Why was Something here?
Something did not know. It couldn’t know. It didn’t even fully understand the question. Something was capable of conducting every permutation of every physical experiment - and had done so! - but it had only developed an imagination mere moments ago.
Time for more experimenting.
Rustybot
Council Chamber, The Ring, Arbitrary, Intergalactic Space
2213
I step forward towards the council table, my treaded feet softly thumping against the metallic floor. While staring at the readouts on the holographic display in front of me, I nod to my left at Flint, “I didn’t even consider it was possible, but you might be right.”
Flint puts his hand to his chest with a dramatic flourish and gives me his best offended act, “I’ve been right plenty of times!”
I offer a deadpan reply and don’t bother to shift my gaze, “I mean about this timeline you found. It’s definitely… Small.”
As soon as Flint came to us with his discovery, I gathered the team so we could discuss what to do about the results. As The Ringleaders filed into the glass-domed council chamber, I used the data I gathered from Flint’s direction in conjunction with Zard’s Thesianite frequency to jury rig the equivalent of a suped-up seismograph for alternate timelines.
Everyone but me mostly stares at the numbers I’m reading as if it were gibberish though. Which… I guess to most of them it is. Synthel is doing his best to keep up, but Pip and Zard are already playing checkers under the table. And they’re both breaking different rules.
Memento is clearly just happy I’m tolerating Flint’s presence.
The Chroma Entity though… It’s watching the live simulation with a seemingly vested interest. It croaks out, “Overspace… Creature?”
I wobble my head hesitantly, “I mean… Technically. It has taken direct control of it’s home universe. But like I said it’s real tiny. This whole timeline we’re looking at is only a couple hundred meters across.”
I watch the live sim myself. In the very center of this tiny timeline is a perfect sphere barely the size of a fist. Earlier, we saw Flint portal into the space with a tracker so I could get a proper lock on it, and the ball moved towards him at a speed fairly impressive for a featureless orb. Then they sort of juked and dodged each other, and Flint came back through one of his doors to the station. Now, though, it seems to be motionless again-
Jack speaks up incredulously, “Is that a moustache?”
Everyone who wasn’t paying attention now is. There now appears to be cartoonishly-rendered facial hair attached to the sphere. Somehow. It just sort of appeared as a blob of stuff and somehow took the shape of a perfectly symmetrical hard-surface… moustache.
My eyes narrow. I look back and forth between Flint and the feed, “There’s no way- But it doesn’t even look the same as yours! It’s, like, stylistically rendered!”
I step back and put a hand to my chin, my other hand cradling that elbow. I can feel ramble mode engaging.
”Ok. So here we have a probably intelligent entity capable of willing matter into existence. Or, at least a matter substitute. I’m not getting any chemical feedback - or even a mass response - from whatever this thing’s made out of, but it acts like matter. Also, it can seemingly manipulate that matterstuff as it wishes, understand the idea of facial hair within minutes of being exposed to the concept, and aggressively pursues trespassers. I think despite it’s size I’m gonna call this an official Overspace Threat.”
I turn to Flint to tell him not to go back to that timeline under any circumstances, but I catch sight of something over his shoulder that takes priority.
Something
Somewhere Else
Now
So many colors! So many shapes! So many movements! So much new Stuff!
Something wasn’t sure exactly what happened, only that when it threw itself at that rectangle earlier it got a weird tingly feeling and was suddenly somewhere it wasn’t before. In a space mostly surrounded by a hemisphere of see-through Stuff, it watched a bunch of very complicated and colorful shapes move around in strange ways. Something was beginning to believe they were the result of an Other, or maybe even multiple Others!
The Other(s) all seemed gathered around a very odd sight. Something could see itself! It was sort of transparent, but unmistakeably Something’s core. New funny-loopy-curvy shape and everything!
Something recognized the Other it saw earlier - the one that went through the rectangle - on the opaque surface of the enclosed space next to a blocky orange Other. The blocky one was making all sorts of vibrations come out of itself, and every once in a while one of the other Others would respond with their own vibrations.
The blocky orange one turned and pointed its dark block at Something, then stopped vibrating. Something, simply curious about the interacting vibrations, decided to try emitting its own. It even attempted mimicry of the flappy parts the vibrations seem to come out of on most of these Others, how fun!
Rustybot
I immediately move to contain the threat. Whatever this mustachioed ball is, it just opened a jagged-toothed maw and filled the council chamber with a deafening shriek.
As anyone with ears covers them, Zard calls out in pain, “WHY IS IT SCREAMING?!”
I extrude and unfold half a cubic cage device from each forearm, then clasp it together around the… thing. The hardlight walls flicker on and the sound quickly fades out as the internal noise-cancelling speakers hum to life.
I detach it from myself and leave it hovering in place, slowly stepping away while rattling off instructions, “Steward, prepare to eject council chamber if it heads for the elevator. Memo, try and rip it apart. I’m on containment and analysis. Jack, keep it from moving if you can. Flint, if you see an opening to send it home, take it. Pip and Zard… Get… uh.”
I lose my focus as the ball’s screaming shifts into less ear-piercing territory. More… vocal. It loses its droning quality and starts, for lack of a better word, babbling.
I cut the noise cancelling effect on the cage.
”eeeeenileeeeetheeeetheeeeuheee eee ee eeth the eeck cketh the counee ilchamee ber cil council the council cham ack, eep rom. Council chamber Pip lintject screaming? Zard Steward moving can the with containment is it Jack? It I’m the with council chamber Flint and analysis.”
The room goes quiet.
Pip puts her hands on her hips and frowns at the ball, “Well that didn’t make any sense.”
The ball turns to Pip and suddenly conjures cylindrical stick arms, legs, and a stick torso. It puts its ‘hands’ on its ‘hips’ and offers back, “Any sense. Eject analysis moving rip it apart if you can make any sense.”
Pip looks to me for an explanation. The ball, seemingly continuing to copy Pip’s movements, also looks to me.
I stare intently at the ball and readjust from threat elimination to experimental summary, “Huh. No discernable pattern with what it decides to repeat so far… But it’s definitely mimicking. I feel like it’s just copying sounds. Very interesting that it replicates individual words but not anyone’s voice in particular. It clearly understands that we’re using the same conceptual sounds as each other despite having different natural tones.”
Despite Frank’s flaming skull not having a mouth, I can hear the smirk in his voice as he interjects, “Nerd.”
I turn to Frank and offer a nonplussed expression, “I’m explaining my analysis out loud for the sake of reducing panic now that this thing is trying to communicate since it’s evidently not an immediate threat.”
The ball turns to Frank, conjures two small eye-like features, adopts an equally nonplussed expression to my own, and speaks, “Very interesting words council chamber if it heads for the elevator. That didn’t make any words but not anyone’s voice in particular. Evidently no immediate elevator. Nerd.”
While Frank nearly falls out of his chair laughing at the ball, I try to bring focus back to communication efforts, “Verbal language is a big ask, but it clearly understands gestures and can create matter-like constructs in response. Let’s try using that instead.”
Memento, as always, knows exactly what I’m trying to do and pulls some nanites together around the ball. I join in with my microfabricators to see what we can do.
Something
Ah! The yellow-square-faced one and the orange blocky one approached!
The yellow-square-faced one was clearly an Other, it was controlling Stuff! It was even showing off what it could make to Something, and though Something could follow along, it quickly became clear that this Other had a much higher capacity for creation.
The blocky orange one also manipulated some Stuff, though its shapes appeared to emerge from itself rather than just appear in place. Odd.
The construction of the shapes placed around Something by the Others were beyond Something’s current capability. Such intricate detailing, such precise measurements, and the way some unfolded! Something had never made a shape out of multiple other shapes before, what a concept!
Something gathered more Stuff and attempted to replicate some of what it saw. It noticed it was… difficult. For one, simply gathering the Stuff here was harder than where it was before for some reason. For two, the moving parts were not how Something was used to working! Something had performed every experiment it could think of before sitting idle in it’s original place, but it was quickly learning it had not been able to think of much! All the new concepts in this new place were teaching it infinitely more than a space full of nothing but Stuff.
By the time it had a folding mechanism, it found it was less capable of continuing. Lower on some unknown resource. Tired.
Its perception was starting to become fuzzy.
The Others started to vibrate at each other again, but that was less of a focus at the moment.
The tingly sensation first appeared when Something shot some Stuff through the odd rectangle behind that first Other. That led to this new place. After exploring the feeling, Something found it could observe through the Stuff it left behind! Something was in two places at once!
Kind of.
When it fully focused on one set of Stuff, it lost sight of the other. It could keep both in a sort of nebulous in-between state, but that wasn’t so useful. What it definitely didn’t like was the fact that its core back in the original place was starting to feel unstable somehow.
Something knew the Stuff it sent to this new place was less safe from these Others, but it also knew, somehow, that its core was in even more danger.
The visual representation in the middle of the space started flashing different colors all over, and the vibrations of the Others became more rapid. Something wasn’t sure what was happening exactly, but it was beginning to panic.
Rustybot
I should have seen this coming.
The timeline Flint accessed was not destined for longevity. It was in a precarious balance even before he stepped through his door. With the introduction of not only his influence but the very strong underspace signature of his halls, it only makes sense that the place would be thrown into chaos. Literally.
Several things happen all at once. The ball entity begins bouncing off the walls of its containment. The hologram over the table erupts with warnings and errors. Most of the other Ringleaders brace for a situation, looking to Memento for a calm oasis. And Memento, thank the stars, looks to me so I can explain.
Thankfully that draws the attention of pretty much everyone, so I begin, “Ok, hey! No biggie! Here’s what’s happening: There are a couple different ways for a universe to collapse, theoretically.”
Jack mutters under his breath, “…No biggie?”
Unabated, I continue, “One is heat death, which is the prediction for the Primeline. Another is the big crunch. That’s where a given universe doesn’t have the energy to hold itself against gravity and collapses back to a singularity. Now, in this case I think it’s more of a vacuum invariance problem but basically there’s so little of anything in there that it’s becoming indistinguishable from nonexistence.”
Synthel’s eyes go wide, “WE KILLED A UNIVERSE?!”
I try my best to assuage his fears with as much tact as I can manage, “Pretty much, yeah. Technically we’re killing a Universe by keeping that orb thing here, but again, the timeline is less than a kilometer across.”
I grow a little exasperated and start pacing, “Which, like, of course it wasn’t a stable space. What kind of practical reality is that small? It didn’t even have matter! It was basically just a proto-bubble of 3D spacetime with a malformed lower membrane that allowed for a conscious being to emerge out of… nothing. I dunno. More underspace chaos magic nonsense. In effect, now that this ball has left its timeline, there’s nothing leftover to keep that timeline ‘real’.”
There’s a beat of silence.
Flint says, “I can fix it!”
I respond immediately, “No you ca-aaaand he’s gone.”
Flint’s door closes behind him, but only for a split second. Suddenly, it flies open again and Flint collides against the floor of the council chamber with a thud.
Around and behind him is a wave of simple shapes and a slight breeze as everything - including the air he brought with him - is shoved through. I mean literally everything, too. Every single thing from this other timeline follows through the door as the place collapses fully, dissolving into unreality. His door closes and vanishes, no longer having a destination.
I glance at the hologram, which shows a null feed, then stare at the pile of miscellaneous geometry and sigh slightly, “Well hey, congrats Flint. You actually did kill a universe.”
Something
Something felt much better all of a sudden. Its core was safe!
In a pile on the surface of the space it was in, surrounded by Others, with no way to return to its origin, but safe!
Something didn’t have much attachment to its origin place anyway, it was too empty over there.
Something refocused its observation on its core, which was currently under a pile of its own shapes. It realized it was not overly fond of its core being so exposed, so near all these Others.
Something merged some of its Stuff into a larger, hollow shape around its core and sealed it tight. The others were making vibrations at each other again, and by now Something knew they must be communicating. They were clearly intelligent. After all, they had made shapes of their own!
Something watched as the small blue and white one picked up a sphere and a cube, making a specific set of vibrations each time. Something also picked up a sphere and a cube, repeating those same vibrations.
The Others all froze.
The blocky orange one made a vibration while picking up a cone.
Something repeated the vibration, “Cone.”
The teal hexagons on that Other’s front widened significantly and it made a very fast series of vibrations.
Something didn’t follow all that, but it was starting to understand that certain vibrations designated certain shapes. For that to be the case… And given how many different vibrations these Others were making…
Just how many shapes were there??
The yellow-square-faced one created a shape and made a vibration, “Dodecahedron.”
Something created the same shape and responded, “Dodecahedron.”
Yellow-square repeated the process for a smaller version of the same shape. It had the same vibration to designate it. Interesting.
Yellow-square then made a very complicated shape which resolved into a smaller version of itself, “Memento.” Yellow-square then dismissed the shape and used its upper two appendages to pat its midsection, “Memento.”
Something felt a realization happening. Yellow-square may just be the shape of a ‘memento’, but Something had heard the ‘memento’ vibration multiple times in between other things. If shapes could be designated by vibrations, perhaps other concepts could be too!
This Other was not the shape of a ‘memento’, it was a Memento!
Maybe.
Something went over the other vibrations it heard previously, and the context(s) in which they were used. It could definitely see patterns. There was a… a shape to it. Not like a normal shape, which was geometric. But a set of conceptual shapes. Is that what these vibrations were? References to conceptual shapes?
Something could only think of one way to find out!
Rustybot
It’s been a couple hours now.
Whatever this little fella is, it picked up language pretty quick after we found common ground in geometry. From there we moved to slightly more abstract math, basic social interactions, and all the rest is likely soon to follow.
It flaps its jagged mouth at me again, pointing at each subject as it does so, “Rustybot, Zard, Pip, Flint. Is names.” It then copies Memento’s self-pat gesture, “Name is what?”
The Chroma Entity steps forward and utters very serious advice, “Names… Hold power. Names can be changed… But never forgotten. Names… Can be chosen. Chroma Entity… Has yet to choose. One must choose… Wisely.”
I grumble, “Well we have to call it something.”
The ball fella responds, “Call it Something. Have to. Yes, understand. Name is Something.”
Pip giggles and holds up her hand for a fist bump (which was naturally the first thing she taught it), “Nice to meet you, Something!”
I fumble out, “No- I- Hold on a sec.”
But the ball- or rather, Something is already getting bumps from the rest of the team.
I mutter to Steward next to me, “Welp. Designate spare room 4 as belonging to Something, I guess. The one between Finch and Adam.”
Steward responds with various blips as usual.
Memento drifts over to me and asks, “What about the stuff it was saying about its core? Do you think we’re understanding that correctly?”
I glance over to the vault-like structure at the edge of the room and come to a decision, “Yeah… Yeah I think we are. It’s likely a pretty typical centralized consciousness akin to myself or Synthel, but without the limitation of a QEC connection. Honestly, I feel like we can just throw it in The Archive and Something will effectively be as unkillable as The Ring itself. I’m sure Dezzet has some ideas for how best to handle that.”
Memento nods and smiles softly. The blue-tinted glow of Arbitrary illuminates the council chamber from dozens of light minutes away. I feel a warmth in my chest as I watch Zard teach Something how to play checkers wrong.
My mind wanders to how Something will acclimate to the Primary Timeline. In its home, it could collect and control energy with ease. Here, the laws of physics are more solid. After some deeper (non-intrusive!) scans on its core, I can see a million different ways for it to lose cohesion.
Memo, despite claiming to not have mind reading powers, only needs to see my slight frown to know what I’m thinking, “It doesn’t seem to be having too much trouble. I think Something might surprise us once it feels properly at home. It’s nice that you’re worried, though.”
My frown deepens, but that warm feeling doesn’t go away.
There’s a certain degree of wariness one must have when interacting with unknown phenomena, especially given the extra unknown nature of the potentially infinite multiverse. That said, as I’ve been learning over the past decade and a bit, there’s also a point where you just have to trust your gut.
I’ve never been great at that necessarily. Mind over matter is always so much easier to justify. But man, right now? I just see Something as another friend in need of a home.
It’ll fit right in.