The Last Experiment

by submission
September 1st, 2006

Author : Adam Zabell

We did it, eventually. We learned everything, knew everything, understood everything. Our computers could calculate any answer to within its smallest probability at the speed of thought. Our machines could produce any object we wanted; tools to examine, manipulate, create, change and destroy. Our philosophers had become scientists, then engineers, then technicians, then laborers, then redundant.

The unimaginative worried about privacy, or freedom, or boredom. They hadn’t believed, or didn’t trust, that a necessary contribution to learning the intimate workings of the universe would require that we become comfortable with our differences, accepting of our fellows, and capable of caring for ourselves. Resolving that doubt was one of the last things we learned, and became our greatest day of celebration.

We hated the title of “god” but there wasn’t any other word that fit. What else could we call a race of omniscients whose omnipotence was as obvious as the photon, the periodic table and the chirality of space? We reinvented the universe in countless ways for curiosity and whim. Gave gravity a color, made light a particle-wave duality, disconnected electricity from magnetism, and everything else that came to mind. And everything else did.

At the last, we took our everything and went the only place we could go. Back to the beginning, back to where we could watch and advise and thrill in the discoveries of a young race doing it for the first time. And we couldn’t help ourselves to leave this, the one and only obvious marker of our passing and our presence. You have come so far to get here, and yet there’s so much more that you don’t even know to look for.

Welcome to your future and your past. Live it, love it, and rejoice!

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