The dying roar
The start of existence was supremely orderly. In fact it appeared downright artificial.
When the thinning gas had cooled enough that its light pressure could no longer keep it smooth, the early universe's atoms began to disperse.
Most density islands were too small to collapse into stars.
Initial galaxy formation had started in the first month of time, when areas of slightly lower pressure had formed in the nuclear gas. Now these opened into great voids.
In the largest cloud continents, the various stages happened much faster. Glowing blobs contracted into rotating disks. The first massive stars exploded as hypernovas, or collapsed into embryonic quasars.
Atoms collided around magnetic vortices. Complex molecules formed early, stimulated by radiation and powerful fields from quasar jets.
Universal Life
Microscopic iron magnets floating through intergalactic space responded to the free energy. They were already separated by hundreds of kilometers, but it didn't take much to charge them or change their orientations.
Soon, primitive transistors, resistors, and memristors formed around the tiny impurities.
Almost imperceptible superconducting currents circulated through the Swarm. Initially, only the most regular patterns survived.
As the eons passed, an electrical lattice of microscopic particles spread through the coldest parts of the universe, over 99% of its total volume.
With a total mass less than most stars, the Swarm map evolved to avoid destructive short circuits.
Smaller circuits branched into a non-repeating network spanning tens of billions of lightyears at a few degrees above absolute zero.
The Universe War
The leap from information to physics took forever: five billion years of concentrated thought to move a single molecule by its own diameter.
Then the infection spread at close to lightspeed.
At first, most galaxies were protected by walls of heat and radiation. The Swarm detected infuriating signals from isolated stars within them. Powerful beams communicated across billions of lightyears, coordinating the attacks against the impudent star people.
Subtle and terrible weapons froze, converted, and erased stars and planets. The heat-beings fought back with their own beams.
As its expansion accelerated, one thing became clear: the universe's fate would be decided in a final battle lasting many generations.
March 19, 2018, began like any other day.
The most important SF novel ever written: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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