Author: Mike Davis
In the beginning, a virgin void gave birth to the Big Bang. A fleeting light ran from one end of a growing existence to the other, illuminating and sterilizing all to make way for what was to come.
Oceans stretched across the crust of a maturing world. The fluid medium allowed for atoms, molecules, and compounds to dance unlike those trapped in a solid, or lonely in a gas. These particles of matter brushed with or bonded to neighbors. Simple amino-acids unintentionally emerged from this tight ballet, creating a soup of building blocks for something special. The physical laws of the universe and this soup of building blocks constructed simple programs that oscillated or glided through their perfect medium. But with the ever present interactions of radical particles, these oscillators and gliders were destroyed soon after conception. Then began countless cycles of creation and destruction before yet another program emerged from the chaos. An accidentally perfect bonding, or programming, configuration told this program not to oscillate or glide, but to self-replicate. This new self-replicating entity combated destruction from radicals by naturally producing clone backups to continue the replication process.
First it was the northern seas, then too the southern seas that became infested with the self-replicators. They were pioneers of their world as they were of the nebulous line between living and nonliving. Those that were unintentionally mutated, or coded, by cosmic radiation to acquire beneficial features simply outlasted their peers by the means of an organic term: Evolution. It was only soon before life had emerged.
As time went on, fortunate self-replicators became cells by acquiring protective, lipid shells, allowing them to efficiently filter in or out beneficial or harmful materials. From these cells evolved the multicellular creatures, of which roamed about with their perfectly evolved appendages. Tribes, civilizations, and cosmic colonies then happened in what seemed like a blur. This life made it far in its universe.
Though deceivingly familiar, the oceanic planet that harbored this life was not Earth. It was an alien world that orbited an alien sun. The streak of light splitting the night sky was not that of the Milky Way. Neighboring star clusters and galaxies were also foreign. Despite being billions of lightyears from humanity’s home, the night sky and–in some cases–the life below it was almost indistinguishable. No matter where an observer was, and no matter the scale, the universe was remarkably uniform. So for the motivated Earthling pioneers of a far future, they will discover their universe to be disappointingly monotonous.