Unabashed

I’ve been known to ruminate about our distant future before. Truth is, I’ve spent quite a chunk of time considering it, and one theme continues to repeat itself, running through my mind over and over. The impossibility of it making it that much more enticing for some reason, a thought that really doesn’t make any sense at all. But still, I think about it often, and it’s run around in my head for years. The idea is this: that eventually, technology will render technology obsolete. Is that even possible? Maybe: once we’ve invented the machine that will create anything we can imagine, we will no longer have to invent things ourselves. That may well be the point we all like to refer to as the “Singularity.” In order to create such a machine, I think we would have to solve, ultimately, mathematics. I don’t think there would be any unsolved equations any more. We would know exactly what happens to matter when it crosses the event horizon of a black hole, and we would be able to calculate the precise moment of a star’s demise, even though that moment might be a billion years away. Once every mathematical problem is solved, we will then program ourselves according to whatever schematic we choose, and our wishes will become fulfilled with only a thought. Ask, literally, and ye shall receive.

I’m working on a book (yes, my hiatus didn’t last very long did it? What can I say, I lay awake thinking about a story line for four hours two nights ago…), or I’ve been working on a book set in the distant future, and a man named Augustus Dane, a great thinker, at some point in the story’s history, stated, “Technology has made technology obsolete.” This was right after the ultimate mathematical equation was finally solved, by a blond-haired boy not yet a teen (the blond hair is a significant part, since in this future, every one’s shade has pretty much become a standard cafe au lait, and very few people are born with anything but brown or black hair. It’s going to be very difficult to be a racist in this future :-) I’m sure people will figure out a way, though. They always do), a prodigy of immense promise, who has also figured out how to and taken up the hobby of granting consciousness to animals. Once humanity discovers it’s possible to grant consciousness to animals, of course, all the animals are granted it, and the world population explodes due to the vast numbers of sentient beings now living here. (There’s a cutoff, of course, the brain must be of a certain capacity or it won’t work. Chickens and snakes, for example, were never able to gain consciousness. No birds at all, as a matter of fact. Gives credence to the slander “bird brain,” aye?). But wolves, elephants, whales, bears, sharks…all manner of animals have been given this “gift,” which of course turns out to be not all that great of an idea.

I’m thinking that, when offered the “gift,” a cow will turn it down on behalf of its species, because of the sudden horror of knowing what has been happening to its kind throughout history. Dogs, likewise, will choose not to accept the gift, because they realize once they can think that they had it much better before.

Now, this is a pretty raw idea, keep that in mind. I haven’t done any research and I’m not a mathematician, so I don’t even know what I’m talking about when it comes to science. Forgive me. I hope it’ll sound better once it’s written down. Anyway, that’s the premise, the basic idea of an idea, in its most rudimentary form, and I’m posting it here so someone else can say, “Gee, what a great idea,” and write it so I won’t have to. Or–this is one of those points where the Great Doubt slips in and makes its voice heard–It’s really a crappy idea.

What do you think?

written by Matt Mitchell

I woke up last night with a great story idea in my head. I wrote it down on the note pad I keep by my bed for exactly those types of moments. Then I went back to sleep, confident that I had secured the nugget that would lead to a great story. When I woke up this morning, I picked up the pad and read:

“10,000 YEARS OF SPOTTED TROLLS…”

Now where am I supposed to go with that??? I can’t remember the dream; I can’t even remember the thought process that put brought the idea to mind. I just woke up, wrote something (barely legible) down, and went back to sleep. 

What makes this even weirder is that the day before yesterday Walter Jon Williams did a Big Idea write-up on Whatever about his new book, Implied Spaces. In that BI post, he notes that he once woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down “UFOs ARE REALLY MADE OF BREAD,” and awakened the next morning just as oblivious as I was today. Did he somehow plant a subliminal suggestion in my mind to make me wake up and write something incomprehensible on my note pad, which otherwise has given me some pretty good ideas? He must have. There is absolutely no other plausible explanation for it. My mind has been invaded by WJW. So now I’m headed out to find his new book so I can buy it, and then I’ve got to stop by a tattoo parlor and have WJW scripted onto my newly-naked skull skin.

Photo: Troll sculpture by Kim Graham

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: spotted, troll, trolls, Walter Jon Williams, Whatever

Last night I watched a special on Dark Matter and Dark Energy, and the inability of science to see it, even though they know it’s there. Watching that show made me think of the Force in the Star Wars films, and at times made me think that sometimes the scientists were, in a way, looking for God.

Dark Matter is the force that binds the universe together (I’ve written about it before), and Dark Energy is the force that drives it apart. Science believes these Dark Forces (”dark” in this context, meaning without light, not evil) have been in existence since the Big Bang, and believe that Dark Matter began binding matter together to form galaxies, stars and planets some 5 billion years later. Some time after that, Dark Energy began the process of forcing everything away from one another, so that now we are hurtling through space toward the nothing.

Science is racing to capture a Dark Matter particle. Once they do, what will they find? And what if they find a way to tap into it, what if they find that it has something to say? Of course everything with me is fodder for fiction, and I can’t help but think it would be a great story if someone wrote that.

Furthermore, if Dark Energy is the force that is causing everything to expand, where is the center? From where are we hurtling from? Wouldn’t there have to be a centralized location for the expansion? And if so, what resides there?

The infinite has always been one of those things that’s fascinated me. It’s one of those things that I can’t really wrap my mind around. But then, I also believe that the framework of our minds isn’t capable of realizing the infinite. I’ve tried to contemplate it, and whenever I spent any amount of time meditating on it I could actually feel reality slip around me. I could feel my mind lose its footing. Space, as an entity, being infinite, is the biggest conundrum there is. Especially when you consider that our entire galaxy could be an infinitesimal atom, integral in the construct of something else entirely, and that something else could also be a simple atom, and so on and so on, to the infinite. That story’s been done before, but it’s still an amazing thought, for me.

And what if Dark Energy is sentient? Suppose when we do find a way to tap into it we find that it is the God we’ve always been searching for? I imagine, in a very Douglas Adams frame of mind, that its first words will be something like, “Boy, you guys are in trouble.”

What do you think the binding force of the universe might say to us?

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: Dark, Energy, Ether, Force, God, Matter, Star, Wars

Inspired by my new friend Steve Buchheit over at Story Bones, here’s my own story bone:

Night fell and, much like a Superball, bounced down the hallway and disappeared into the furnace.

Story Bones; an interesting idea, and an even better name. Enjoy and good night :-)

written by Matt Mitchell \\ tags: , bone, story