“Some altered their forms so that they could live on worlds that would kill ordinary human beings,” Anya said. “Others decided to remain aboard their habitats and make them their permanent abodes.”
Yet no matter which path they chose, each group of star-seekers faced the same ultimate questions: Are we still human? Do we want to remain human? The hard radiation of deep space and the strange environments of alien worlds were sources of mutations beyond their control.
They needed a baseline, a “standard model” Earth-normal human genotype against which they could compare themselves and make their decisions. They needed a link with Earth.
On Earth, meanwhile, generation after generation of dogged researchers were probing deeply into the ultimate nature of life. Seeking nothing less than true immortality, they seized the reins of their own evolution and began a series of mutations that ultimately led to beings who could interchange matter and energy at will, transform their own bodies into globes of pure energy that lived on the radiation of sunlight.
“The Creators,” I said.
Anya nodded gravely but said, “Not yet Creators, Orion, for we had created nothing. We were merely the ultimate result of a quest that had begun, I suppose, when the earliest hominids first realized that they had no way to avoid death.”
They had not become truly immortal. They could be killed. I got the feeling that they had even committed murder among themselves, long ages past. Yet they were immortal enough. They could live indefinitely, as long as they had a source of energy. To such creatures time is meaningless. But to immortal creatures descended from curious apes, with all of eternity at their disposal, time is a challenge.
“We learned to manipulate time, to translate ourselves back and forth almost as easily as we walk across a meadow.”
And found, to their horror, that theirs is not the only universe in the continuum of spacetime.
“The universes seem infinite, constantly branching, constantly impinging on one another,” Anya said. “Aten—the Golden One—discovered that there was a universe in which the Neanderthals became the dominant species of Earth and our own type of human never came into being.”
“The Neanderthals were beautifully adapted to their environment,” I recalled. “They had no need to develop high technology or science.”
“That universe encroached on our own,” Anya said, her silver-gray eyes looking back to those days. “The overlap was so severe that Aten feared our universe would ultimately be engulfed and we would be doomed to nonexistence.”
For creatures who had only newly achieved immortality, this discovery raised panic and terror. What good to be immortal if your entire universe will be snuffed out in the cosmic workings of quantized spacetime?
“That is when we became Creators,” said Anya.
“The Golden One created me.”
“And five hundred others.”
“To exterminate the Neanderthals,” I remembered.
“To make this universe safe for our own kind,” Anya corrected gently.
The Golden One, puffed up by his (my) success over the Neanderthals, began to examine other nexuses in spacetime where he felt he could change the natural order of the continuum to the benefit of his own inflated ego. Using me as his tool, he began to tamper with the continuum, time and again.
He found, to his shock and the anger of the other Creators, that once you have tampered with the fabric of spacetime myriads of geodesic world lines begin unraveling. The more you try to knit everything up into a neat package, the more the continuum warps and alters. You have no choice but to continue to try to manipulate the continuum to your own purposes; you can never allow the fabric of spacetime to unfold along its natural lines again.
Yes, I heard Set hissing within me, the pompous ape rushes to and fro, scattering his energies, distracted as easily as a chattering monkey. I will end his dilemma. Forever.
I strained to tell Anya that there were others who could manipulate spacetime. But not even that much could get past Set’s control over me. I felt perspiration breaking out across my forehead, my upper lip beading, so hard was I trying. But Anya did not seem to notice.