Rose Blumen ~ Exogignesthai

(Rose)

As seasons pass, the lands change.

Summer ends. The last butterflies have vanished and the sea level is changing.

That and occasional storms that are strong enough to reshape the landscape.

This one worked the changing of seasons by itself and very abruptly.

Blume and Nightmare protected me from the wrath of a weather that drew close to a hurricane.

The building was shattered, even down there. The underwater city was reduced to a thicker part of that soup that is the sea. Maybe it will reappear someday.

Everything was shaken and turned upside down, even deep below water.

Our pocket of air vanished from us while my mind was stuck in a dream.

I don’t think I would have panicked even more, but they were likely really afraid as well.

Ten minutes passed. I was beginning to need a change of air.

The storm was just getting started though, and everything surrounding us was crumbling rapidly.

I was still more puzzled by the appearance of that much younger woman with very different look to herself, that was supposed to be related to me in Night’s dreams.

I still could sense our impending doom. They’re gods, they can use magic far better than me. They’ll surely figure something out, I remember thinking.

They were not as confident about it as I was in my reveries.

They were rapidly discussing the options to survive the storm together. One of them was simply not to. Repairing and restarting organisms is not something they would be afraid of doing. Let us die and just return later.

But still. It’s not as easy as they make it sound, and they also know that.

In the end, rather than try to fly out and being shred apart, they chose something closer to the option of resurrection.

I fell asleep, deeper, under their care, in the midst of the dark turmoil.

~

I didn’t dream that much. My brain slowed down until all thoughts were almost frozen in time.

A day or two passed in that comatose state.

I felt my body being moved sometimes.

And finally, waking up.

~

The sea was still there Although islands could be seen in the distance now.

I was on one, lying on my side, coughing out mud.

Nightmare was there standing, wings on her back. She looked tired.

R – What happened?

I could see the sunset boiling over the horizon. Blume wings were damaged but lying over me. Nightmare came to sit closer to me.

N – We slept for a few days since we were running out of air. We made it.

R – What can’t you two achieve, hm?

I wonder. Nightmare seemed a little puzzled. I noticed Blume’s lack of response then and shivered.

N – She’s not dead. Just tired. She’ll be back in a few days.

I could hear what Nightmare had said to me before, and withheld on that day.

Because they are unbound to atoms doesn’t mean they’re immortal.

Because they can regenerate about anything they want, doesn’t mean they can’t fall ill, tired, old, or die.

R – Blume wasn’t able to estimate your life expectancy... What’s your take then?

N – You make us age much faster than normal.

I grin at her truth and joke.

Nightmare looks at herself and then the landscape.

N – When we began gaining consciousness, beings-like-us realised we were not bound by the common laws and limits of surrounding and past animals.

R – I know... Your understanding of human culture helps you identify yourselves as gods, in opposition to mortal humans with little control over their organism. But you’re just another reality of life.

N – Well... The thing is we are unbound by proteins and D.N.A, and can transform easily. But our existence and intelligence still is the result of a structure of information. We adapt more easily, but we don’t have the weight of your resilency...

They are essentially brains, built with immaterial patterns and structures of T.I. Other patterns of life and intelligence.

But brains and the most complex machines can very well still be broken before they have a chance to transform or repair.

N – Plus it’s difficult to fully understand grasp the processes by which you exist as you are. It’s as if to fully know your brain and be able to replace or replicate it after anything, you need a second bigger brain to process the full information.

It’s logically impossible for a system to know its own integrity to an absolute level of complexity or details. Blume often spoke of the insane complexity of entire bodies working. We can learn rulling principles, but not have awareness of every atom in our body at all times. So she’s saying even they don’t know themselves absolutely. Only on main principles and patterns.

Nightmare plays with life, but twisting existing elements she copies mostly. She does innovations, but not pure ex-nihilo creation.

They have limits as well. They learn they are mortal...

R – So how’s Blume today then?

N – Ageing, like you, and me. The more we interact with you, especially you, the more we see and understand our own existence and its erosion. Our own mortality becomes clearer as time passes.

Gods become human, whether they realise it or not. These two have, with me by their side.

Nightmare looks in the distance, an odd feeling about her.

N – I bet all beings-like-us that come to achieve consciousness feel that omnipotent way at first...

Understanding mortality and the limits of your own power and existence isn’t innate knowledge. But Nightmare is thinking about something else right now.

N – Humans are now extinct, or on their way to. That made us think that the world is now ours.

Earth. The age of humans over.

All sorts of beings-like-her sprouting all over... It’s their time now. For ever?

No. Nightmare is now able to glimpse a little beyond...

The sea level has dropped twenty metres at least I realise, looking at these islands.

And she sees in this area where none of them exist, a parallel hypothesis drawn plainly.

They too, won’t live forever.

The ocean of T.I. covering the world will eventually drop in level, and old physics rules return.

They are born from that invisible ocean that could someday disappear as abruptly as it appeared once upon a time.

And even if T.I. takes a million years to cool down and disappear from its current vaporous situation, their kind will have to adapt or die; like any other living thing when their environment changes.

Nightmare just realised the mortality of her entire genre.

Her kingdom of life is bound to a reality of physics that is still an exotic event to Earth and probably most of known space.

They will eventually disappear, in the shades and wake of humanity. I remember thinking at a time they were like the new humanity. Unfortunately, they have a fair chance to follow us, since the environment they exist from is unlikely to last for ever.

Well, they will follow us...

Possibly much sooner than any of them would have expected or guessed. Nightmare might be the first one to realise it today.

R – How long do you think you have left?

N – I don’t know. It depends how the overall level of T.I. on Earth fluctuates and evolves over time. But the time for gods such as us to appear will eventually end as well.

New species will settle as the old ones decay.

N – We have less than a century of life expectancy, once we’ve structured our fundamental intelligence and identity... That would be my main individual forecast...

~

Over the years, I’ve pushed them along with me over the limits and boundaries countless times.

I’ve forced them to learn more than they would have on their own, about everything.

They’ve built and developed countless ways to push the boundaries of mortality further.

I’ve been an incredible drive to develop magical science and technology, related toward life and death.

And they’ve been so resourceful, I could easily believe there would be no limit to it. I can’t see them.

But even magic, T.I. since fell under a scope of science, has limits. And beings made of it are resourceful, so they seem all powerful for an eye that comes from the old reality. But even T.I. has limits to its values. And lifeforms born out of it also have a scope of realistic expectancies and opportunities truly. We just never saw them before.

Because I’ve seen all of us reborn from seeds, I thought we were unbound by space or time.

Under them, I wasn’t. But they were. We all know a plasma strong enough to cause nuclear decay also destroys the invisible structures of beings-like-her. The dissociation enthalpies of T.I. bonds are not infinite.

They are just hard to observe. And living with different scales and levels doesn’t help, but they are still bound to the reality of physics.

And the more they interacted with me, the closer to my limits they went.

Their invisible brains can fit in a pin needle and regrow themselves from there or even less.

But their structures, their patterns, are not invincible perfection and indestructible. They’re still just lifeforms that created themselves spontaneously along their environment.

Blume has aged in a shock again. Right now she’s not able to reply, facing her own mortality.

Nightmare as well. And now it helped her realise a lot of things today, that sucked up all of her joy and energy.

As I manage to sit and then stand up, I go to hold her. I’m quietly comforting my odd sister now afraid of death.

She’s under shock. I hold her head against my chest as she silently tears up.

In the distance, the sky becomes gradually brighter. It wasn’t the evening as I first thought when I woke up.

I keep comforting my sweet Nightmare, fallen between my arms.

That day, we will just sleep under the sunlight.

~