(2019)
(Part of A Matter of Time)
5000 years hence
Some worlds were stranger than others.
Girdled by the orbit of three icy moons, Rama shone yellow and green on the emptiness of space. Over a thousand years before, its colonial population had stood at the crossroads between changing their world for themselves and changing themselves for their world, as any other; they had reached their domain crossing asteroids stained with the blood of civilizations torn apart by violence.
A philosopher of the yellow plains had reached an astounding yet obvious conclusion: as the protists rolling in the primaeval chaos of the Archaean lagoons had associated into multicellular bodies that transcended the abilities of each single cell, and survived to bring about their plans even when all their component cells had died and been replaced, thus would have to do the seeds of humankind to ensure their survival.
There was arguing and there was fighting, for fifty generations. Churches and heresies grew around this principle or its refutations, alliances and conspiracies, the history of Rama, as vast and complex as that of Earth, though with quite a different culmination. All the spectrum of human emotion, from the most heavenly transport to the deepest, darkest loathing, churned and twisted the planet's surface, as that of a growing embryo whose tissues shift and fold, or are cut by apoptosis.
It had been a kind civilization, that of Rama. Out of love they burnt cities; out of mercy they crushed nations. Blood and tears swelled and flowed for the sake of compassion. The vision of the philosopher emerged clearer after every slaughter, as the only that could bring a lasting end to the wars waged for peace, and to the tyrannies built for freedom.
The inhabitants of Rama joined into a single being, one vast and diffused body that reached every highland and every depression of the planet, all its cities, its fields, its submarine oases, its orbital arks. Energy and information streamed uninterrupted from a sub-body to another, so that the splendor of a mountain dawn could be seen in the deepest galleries, and the warmth of the galleries could give comfort on the frozen peaks.
The members of Ananta were not meant to die for the all, but to live for it, for each thought, each suggestion, each experience and impression down to a single pinprick or a flash of color in the corner of an eye was replicated and distributed among twenty billion brains, and later greater numbers, so that it would forever survive the death of one. Sometimes, Ananta thought of the countless lives wasted in now unimaginable loneliness, and of the countless minds irreparably sunk into darkness; and then a sob would constrict twenty billion throats, and burning tears would flow from forty billion eyes.
So It turned Its thoughts to the blessing that was Its existence, and joy and laughter would cover for a while the pain of the ages; embraces and nectar and pleasure beyond the understanding of a mortal individual, as the pleasures of a symphony or athletics are beyond the understanding of a single neuron. And yet, the tragedy of finiteness, and the swallowing oblivion that lurked beneath all, as if every sip of a fine wine had been corrupted by a drop of bitter gall.
Not satisfied with preservation, Ananta would turn to creation; It would declare a crusade against extinction. Its powers were not much greater than they had been at the first joining: Its cycles of elation and anguish were poorly conductive to progress, of which Ananta saw no need on the peaks of euphoria, and no possibility in the depths of despair.
Nevertheless It learnt to shepherd life for its flourishing; and later to draw life out of matter, and thought out of life. Experiments were made in hollowed mountain plateaux that gave It a deep understanding of all manifestations of existence, or at least their mechanisms.
If Ananta had united, Its work fragmented. On the rocky ridges and in the subterranean hollows of Rama, translucent spheres and polyhedra hosted miniature ecosystems, like clods of forests or droplets of ocean, each with its own flora and fauna, its browsers and hunters, its grazers and scavengers, its farmers and parasites. Often Ananta checked the well-being of this planets within a planet, deity of minuscule worlds, and sometimes It harvested Its share of resources. With these It would fuel the next endeavour.
Eventually Ananta once again looked up, Its countless little tendrils caressing the clouds and grasping at the stars. A million sparks of fire broke through the pale atmosphere of Rama and dove into the sideral vacuum, as a fungus scattering its spores to the wind.
Ananta would have great success, in Its future. Propagules still wired into the universal mind would detach from the yellow world to annex more. And perhaps, at the age of many million years, Ananta would still live among the stars; but having modified Its sub-bodies for the necessities of different planets – into burrowing, swimming, floating forms – It would also be unrecognizable to other inheritors of the human species that would meet It.
Why did not Ananta end its days ruling the galaxies? Why did It, ultimately, fail? Perhaps Its colonies, mercilessly kept apart by the limit of the speed of light, had simply drifted out of each other's understanding, and recognized each other as competitors to destroy, returning thus to the ancient division. Perhaps, some would suggest, It had been driven mad with grief at the impossibility of a true victory against the forces of unmaking.
Once Ananta sought to bring the surrounding worlds within Its fold, to save the fractured humankinds from the indignity of oblivion. It dreamt of a galaxy turned into a garden of mind, where each tomb of civilization would be surrounded by loving caretakers, and each scrap of extinguished cultures gathered by zealous collectors. No more would a child of Earth weep at the side of a grave.
Yet in Its zeal and Its love Ananta found incomprehensible resistance. A neuron cannot understand the concerns of a brain, nor can a brain understand those of a neuron. The separate worlds fought bitterly to retain their own precariousness, and those taken by force would sooner dash their own head upon the stones than be brought into Ananta's embrace. Maybe it was many centuries of such rejection that finally broke Ananta's spirit; or more prosaically some of the taken were able to fight it from within, growing their movement on the bounty of all, cancer of the stars.
Rama's yellow surface, despoiled of its wealth, plated in crumbling cities, remained, a head shaved in contrition. New wonders would spring among its ruins, but they would mostly be of the old animal and vegetal order, for the great part descended from the experiments that Ananta had conducted in the bowels of the planet, a few from the abandoned sub-bodies.
By the time the great unification of the galaxy came, Rama and its surrounding shell of worlds had returned to their primal state, as they were long before they had ever fallen under the shadow of Man.