One of the last humans to escape into a synthetic universe of his own design, Ofrut had barely been immortal for three thousand years.
Everything he knew, all he had learned and accomplished in that time, filled the surface and interior of an island barely sixty kilometers wide (though it seemed larger) in an endless ocean. Other landmasses would eventually arise nearby.
As his opportunities increased, the number of decision points and dilemmas multiplied much faster. There were endless experiments, progress reports and impact studies to complete.
His universe's economic development had slowed to a crawl. The infrastructure plan had a half-century backlog, and some bottlenecks couldn't be resolved at all. It took forever to invent new manufacturing methods.
Ofrut had invited me to study his predicament. As a transcendent systems analyst, my job would be to listen and observe, at least at first. Before I could bestow the combined wisdom of posthumanity, I had to experience his reality from the inside.
Closed physics created a mathematical simulation which created a higher physics.
Entering this universe through a quantum storm, I felt reborn. The turbulence became a falling sensation as a distant wind began to howl. My arms and legs felt sluggish at first.
Reflected blue light filled the craft's cabin. Far below the ocean stretched forever, trillions of gleaming waves merging endlessly, site of unborn continents to come. A few clouds cast lonely shadows.
I glimpsed a resort complex on a smaller island. A beacon blinked on a remote reef. The final descent was frightfully fast.
When I entered the immense but empty arrivals terminal I was surrounded by a posse of security guards, as if there could be danger here.
The few domestic passengers had been cleared from the hall. Different races eyed me suspiciously from behind glass. Most still looked humanoid.
I had been on-scene for only five minutes, and already something was wrong.
Ofrut's universe operated under simplified physics. Anything created was almost indestructible. No one could die.
Why did I sense paranoia, fanaticism, fear?
He ruled over 1.1 million free citizens, all cloned onsite. They weren't slaves but highly dedicated volunteers, the only way new citizens could be created.
They represented different aspects of Ofrut's personality, with 50% random content from skill and interest libraries he had designed himself. When necessary, they reacted like he would in the same situation.
I met Ofrut in his Summer Palace, where we held our first interview in the throne room. Having just finalized his fifteenth divorce, he seemed in a good mood, ready to tackle new challenges. He invited few Outside visitors, preferring to design his own companions. He ruled an advanced society with monuments and dialects, rivalries and intrigues, art forms and dizzy hierarchies.
I learned most of his island remained pristine wilderness, resembling the lost jungles of Earth. Cities and industry were concentrated in the southern half, linked by highways. Tech levels were equivalent to Earth in the year 2070.
Unfortunately, part of his empire was haunted. At least 19% of his territory was a no-go zone: the undeveloped northern quarter, behind a central mountain range. He had wasted three hundred years building a little-used highway around the mountains, skirting the Forbidden Area, protected by immense fences and barriers.
It was time to confront his fears.
I stepped off the armored personnel carrier, and watched the troops disperse ahead of me. A sleek fighter that looked like it would fly in Earth's atmosphere zoomed past the trees. Most of Ofrut's armed forces were mobilized in support of this operation, with reserves called in from the cities.
There weren't supposed to be armed forces.
"I know you won't believe me, but I repeat there are aliens on my island," Ofrut said. "My universe was infected by an ancient intelligence before I could settle it. They're older than posthumanity. I'm the only thing stopping a wider invasion."
"Even if aliens exist, every universe is quarantined," I replied. "Nothing can get in or out."
I was only visiting Ofrut's world as an information pattern. After I left, my borrowed body would be recycled for the next visitor. Only my memories would be beamed back out.
As his troops deployed at the edge of the Forbidden Area, Ofrut talked non-stop. He never looked at the immense fence, but was clearly enjoying himself.
The fence was bordered by ditches and earthworks, where perimeter robots patrolled. A trail had been established through the Area at great risk.
It was rare for posthumans to invite Outsiders inside their core personality conflicts. I suspected whatever waited behind the gate represented a primitive portion of Ofrut's soul, a set of repressed fears and impulses. Perhaps he had been a serial killer on old Earth.
The armored transporters passed through fog, rocking occasionally as they hit uncharted wilderness obstacles. The fractal trees got stranger.
There were monsters here.
Ofrut sat in the captain's chair of the main transporter in the middle of the convoy. A large fraction of his island's power was being transmitted our way. We were shielded by energy spheres.
The attack was lightning fast but not unexpected.
There was a roar, and our transporter bounced wildly. Outside, a wall of darkness crawled closer. One of Ofrut's aides' head turned. There was no face there, only a black oval.
The failsafe kicked in with perfect timing: Deus Escape Mode. I was yanked back at the end of an endless thread.
I found myself sitting safely in my home office, back from visiting Ofrut's universe by remote control. In some other reality, my abandoned body had already been captured by the aliens.
Aliens were impossible of course. Nothing impossible could happen. Time to re-establish contact before I went insane.
A Level-1 emergency had been declared in Ofrut's universe. A quarantine was in effect. Transfer bandwidth was too low for me to return.
Even more unbelievable: Ofrut had vanished from his transporter. No one had ever died, or even been seriously inconvenienced, throughout posthuman history.
This was an unprecedented failure.
The next hour was hectic. I finally decided Ofrut had been captured by an unknown resistance movement, a secret army occupying the Forbidden Area. Somehow his island contained a second, hidden nation.
Also impossible, of course. I thought harder than ever.
The solution was a convoluted chain of deductions and interpolated half-truths, a logical monstrosity of the first order. It had to be true.
Ofrut's personality had never really split into a million subordinate citizens. Ofrut had been each citizen in turn.
He had already experienced most of his subjects' lives in full, for up to 3000 years each, before traveling back in time and starting over as the next citizen.
That explained his disappearance: when he was abducted, he had flashed back to start his next life, a few years after the start of his island empire.
I never suspected the depth of the deception. All his subjects vanished randomly over the millennia, their lost bodies replaced with newly generated citizens, some of them retreads, some brand-new.
I suspected the great cycle was ending. A few minds on his island had to be nearly three billion years old, possessing the memories of almost everyone else. Ofrut himself had probably been over two billion years old.
These ancient beings represented an immense amount of experience, intelligence, cunning, and perhaps wisdom. They had retreated into the forbidden north quarter to form a hidden elite.
That was why my presence had been kept secret, with no public appearances or press conferences: to prevent the most obvious temporal paradoxes. Even so, it could only work if everyone had partial amnesia.
No long-term memories could be lost under the rules of posthumanity. The citizens probably thought their immense accumulations of past lives were dreams.
Ofrut had to have known something would happen. He had already experienced his abduction many times before though the eyes of his aides and servants.
He had started at the bottom and slowly worked his way up, increasing in influence through the eons, at up to three-thousand-year intervals.
It had been time to move on to the other side.
I suspected he had gone back to become the Forbidden Area's founder, and their lowliest member as more experienced selves joined. He would return many more times.
They must have built quite an underground complex under the jungle.
For a moment I feared I too had been caught up in their crazy cycles. Were all of Ofrut's citizens my past lives? Had I finally escaped?
Was it time to start the next three thousand year cycle?
No, I had merely stabilized the flow of Ofrut's million selves, as I was destined to do.
I suspected the face-changing aide in the transporter had been their final citizen, ending the cycles.
It had penetrated all his security, effortlessly manipulating everyone else.
It would be interesting to see what a three billion year old intelligence decided to do next.
I would warn the Directorate to keep them under surveillance, but not to interfere.
I sat back and relaxed, at the center of my own island, as secure as I could hope to be.
All in all, it had been a rather simple first case.
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Infinite Thunder by Jack Arcalon.
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