Most universes are sub-microscopic, barely there at all. Often they're gaps of negative existence, darker voids in the nothingness around them.
Somewhere in the unimaginable absence, something began to affect itself.
Unconnected to anything but governed by inevitable logic, it defined itself as it went along. Any process is reversible, and almost all processes do reverse, but this was an extreme outlier in a sea of chance. It just kept on going.
An almost impossible series of coincidences took place, as step by step a theoretical pattern became self-aware.
Impossibly, it had created itself. This was how everything existed: derivatives of derivatives, nowhere at once. Even darkness was a step up from nothing.
Strange images of darkly colored rain, a blue and gray forest of vertical clouds towering overhead.
From its random yet consistent array of false memories, it guessed there was a better way.
A tiny minority of universes become self-sustaining and continue to expand forever, giving birth to most instances of awareness. They are very hard to create.
It realized it could expand within itself, transforming its essence into the laws and structures of an immortal universe. Visions of points, lines, spirals and fractals unfolded in all directions; extending and combining in self-sustaining cycles.
Finally, the mind became aware enough to understand the depth of its predicament.
Each moment was supremely unlikely, a most unstable illusion. The more it knew, the less remained.
It realized its incredibly improbable existence would almost certainly end, returning to nothing as soon as possible.
This was its last moment.
No, this.
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The best hard SF novel: Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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