Failure: I huddle up and make myself as small as I can. I squat and hug my knees to reduce my contact with the environment as much as possible. The fire on the piece of debris has turned into a smoldering. I take another look around me. I moved from from one piece of debris to the next for hours. Because the smaller fires further outwards burned slower and longer, Ive been making my way further and further away from the site. Now the dark is setting in and Im miles away from any shelter. I should have thought about this, but I didnt want to think about anything, least of all about what comes next, because I know whats coming next. I just held on to any tiniest comfort I could find in the moment, trying not to think about my certain death.In the setting dark I take another last look around me for any last fire. This time I waited for as long as I could to look around, because the last time I looked it looked like this was the only fire left. I didnt look longer than I needed to. I wanted to leave at least a shred of uncertainty as to whether there were any other fires left. I was pretty sure as it is, but in the face of death we cant help but always feel some hope of survival. I held on to that hope as I held on to the fire, for it was the last comfort I have off to stave off the sheer terror of death. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to erase the thought once again, but its too late. As the last few sparks get blown away, I realize that Ill soon be left in utter darkness.In a sudden panic I stand up, exposing myself to the cold wind, and look around. Still Im hoping to see the reprieve of one last fire, but no more little lights show up against the rocks.Ill never make it back to the ruins, nor will it make any difference. They can hardly even be called ruins. Its mostly debris. Except for the frame, nothing is left standing except some segments of walls on one side, and they will hardly give me the shelter I need to survive the night. Now and then, I hear fragments of collapse into smaller ones. But it gives me one last thing to hope for. In my desperate state, I suddenly turn everything into a possible way to save myself.I eventually succeed in denying that I should never have moved away from the ruins at all. Maybe I wasnt so much trying to save myself when I went out as I was trying to get away from the place where things went wrong, a typical fear reaction. I succeed in convincing myself that I was being irrational then, and am being rational now. I just made a mistake, but its not too late to remedy it, and everything will be fine when I get back. There should be something left in the ruins that I can use, a tool, a vehicle, anything.I start walking back towards the ruins, if only to have one last way to keep myself warm, or perhaps just to have something work off my nerves on. Soon I start running, hoping to make myself numb with exhaustion, only to realize when I finally stop that Ive somehow managed to break a sweat in spite of the cold, which redoubles as I slow down again.The longer I walk, the slower I walk, and the more painful each step becomes as my body cramps up like a clump of ice. Im eventually no longer sure if it wouldnt be less painful to just lay down than to keep walking. But Im not ready to die yet. Something inside me presses me onwards to live. All the while I walk I am acutely aware of the absurdity of what Im doing, something Id managed to force out of my mind until I turned around. There is nothing inside the ruins, and there was nothing outside of it either. There isnt anything because the arcology was the only thing there was on this planet.I know this, but I dont feel it yet. On the outside I just feel tired. Inside I dont feel anything. But it doesnt feel empty as much as overfull, as if my brain is pushing with all its might against my skull. It feels as if my pulse is hammering against the walls of my being in despair. It wants to break out before the ship sinks, but the only way out is through the deep when it bursts into my hull. The sea of cold seeps ever deeper into my bones.At last I come to a standstill, wobbling on my feet. I still find enough energy to lift my head and stare ahead, still hoping that my change in angle might have uncovered some fire from behind a piece of rubble. My eyes drift off into the night. But now that it is entirely dark, I imagine that I still see a faint glow amidst the phosphene on my retinas. When I move my eyes it stays in the same place, in the midst of the mountain of rubble, though I dont know if I just imagine it. I find the strength left in me to walk on.In the darkness I have nothing left to focus my eyes on, and my thoughts drift off into my memory. I think about my family, and what I would say to them. I feel so distant from myself that it feels as if it is my life that is the memory, and in my daydream Im not saying farewell, but recounting the memory. As the glow comes close enough that I can tell its real, I tell them about the light, and about how it saved my life. My recounting becomes excited as I climb the debris on all fours. I cant move my hands, so I move my fingers against the pieces of debris to close them into a fist, and use them for support.From this close I can see some larger fragments that were obscured by the of the debris before, some still several stories high. They look like they could collapse at any moment. If all else fails, I can still choose between getting crushed and getting frozen. I dont have the breath to laugh at my strange self-irony, but I manage something of a smile.When I get onto the ridge, warmth washes over me as I look into the light. It comes from the center of a crater. I look at the ruins around me, not understanding what could have done this. The thought that an asteroid would have done this is too absurd to occur to me. Wed have known it was coming.The outsides of the crater are still covered with debris, but further towards the inside they seem to have molten into the ground. Smoke rises from the sizzling fragments. When I walk further into the crater, I see the hole in the center and move closer. The closer I come to the hole the warmer the air gets. I feel a sticky sensation from my feet and see that my boots have melted. When I get near the hole, the warm air rising from within flows over me. The air feels far too hot to walk into. I crouch to investigate when I find my entire body has begun to tingle, and I realize that Ive heated up far too quickly. My entire body feels like its on fire. It feels so painful that I fear it might kill me. For only a moment I glance into the hole, only to see nothing but a glowing tunnel, going straight down as far as the eye can see.The only thing that could have done this is a micro black hole. What are the odds of the first such impact known to humanity to hit the only humanmade structure in the cluster? As I look into the sky, I can see from the frames still standing that the hole was right in the center of the arcology.The black hole hit the arcology right into the axis, or else it came from somewhere along the axis. I sit down as I remember suddenly what happened before the event. All this time I hadnt been thinking about what happened that day before the event. They became suddenly irrelevant next to the present concern of survival. And yet I had left the arcology before it happened, just as if I knew what was going to happen. Did I do this?In the last light of the sun I can see the solar veil light up across the stratosphere, torn into giant luminescent tatters where the black hole entered. They flutter in the high-speed winds like an aurora, lighting up the sky as a serenade to my life. With any luck, in the morning the veil will have burnt up in the atmosphere and the sun will shine again. Itll probably come far too late for me, but at least the planet will heat up again, and what little biosphere it has will recover. Im sure the slime molds will thank me.Another experiment thats been a failure. At least Ill be the only one to die. I ousted every other researcher in the arcology when their services were no longer needed, to use the space they occupied for batteries, and for years I stockpiled the energy of the solar system. Whether because of some error in my calculations or some parameter I just dont know about, the energy proved to be more than I could control.I take another glance at the hole. Theres nothing that can stop a black hole with that much energy. Anything it does collide into it will just make it grow, but its so small that it most certainly came back out again on the other side of the planet. If the black hole had released all its energy on impact like an asteroid, the planet would have been vaporized.But it must have released most of its energy in the much denser core. The heat it left behind might actually be enough to revive the planets plate tectonics. Maybe the planet might someday have a chance for complex life after all. It will be of no significance to humanity, but long after humanity is gone, it could actually make a difference. I couldnt have achieved something like this if I tried. Perhaps when humans come to this place again theyll be able to deduce the process and find a use for it. I cast one last look at the hole. In a few hours this place would be a supervolcano, and I know better by now to think this is the end. When it comes all of this, my last link to civilization on this planet, will be gone forever. Before I leave I take one last look around the ruins, but its no use. Everything has been destroyed by the rubble. I move on in tears, knowing that if I do survive until sunrise, it will only be to die a slow death instead. Only once I get to the edge of the ruins do I find an engine thats still intact. infinitarianism.blogspot/2014/06/failure.html
Posted on: Sat, 19 Jul 2014 10:34:37 +0000
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