//------------------------------// // Creation // Story: The Ultimate Life Form // by EverfreeSparkle //------------------------------// “Argh! Celestia turn off the sun!” I open a single eye and find out that my face is muzzle first in a heap of my notes. Again. My horn somehow found its way into the ink bowl and there seems to be a piece of paper stuck to my lip. “It’s going to be one of those days isn’t it?” I grumble to myself as I carefully separate the notes attached to my lip with a flash of magic and wipe the drool off my muzzle with a fore hoof. I place the still wet papers on my table and wipe my hoof on my sky blue coat, it’s not like it won’t wash out in the shower. Turning my focus to the damp papers, I cast a blow-dry spell. As it dries, I can’t help but to find it strange how often this seems to happen. I don’t know why my body insists on betraying me time and time again by getting its fluids all over important research, but I wish it would stop. At that point a black splotch drips onto my muzzle. Oh right, my horn was in a pot of ink… I can’t believe I forgot about that. I stop drying the papers, and generate a hemispherical barrier that only interacts with ink. I then slowly move it from my neck to the tip of my horn, getting all of the ink off of my horn and muzzle. It’s not that much, but I dump it back into its container anyway. No need to waste perfectly good ink. Still groggy, I head to the bathroom down the hall with the hope that a quick shower will help me wake up. Stepping into the bathroom, I notice my appearance in the mirror. I look horrible; my electric blue mane is sticking out in all directions, the turquoise streaks through it too diluted to see clearly, giving me an almost mad look. I break my eyes away from the mirror, and start adjusting the temperature knobs on the shower to my preferred setting. I step into the shower with a pleased sigh, closing my eyes and letting my mind wander as the water washes through my mane. After a few minutes of bliss, my eyes shoot open with the sudden realization of just how much progress I made last night. With an almost disbelieving tone I whisper to myself, “I did it... I will need to plug in the new changes to the equations, but after that the portal should finally work.” I stop the flow of water and cast a blow-dry spell on my entire body, not bothering with a towel in my anticipation. After drying off, my excitement couldn't contain itself any longer. I don’t even care that my fur poofs up due to the sudden drying. I feel myself smiling ear to ear as I exclaim loud enough for any nonexistent neighbor to hear, “Yes! I finally did it! All you prissy foals who couldn’t comprehend my brilliant plan can suck my horn! I’m going to make history!” With an almost delirious giggle, I run back to my study to collect all my notes in my magic, and then hurry to my basement where I keep all the really fun stuff. In my basement, I go to a door on the far side of the wall and slide my horn into a small hole to the right of the door. Charging my magic into the hole, the door clicks softly and opens without a fuss. Grinning like a mad pony, I walk up to my life’s work and place my notes on the table directly next to it. Sitting there in all its glory is a complex looking machine, with all kinds of wires attached to a ring two meters in diameter. A few centimeters behind The Gate, as I like to call it, is a glowing orb that radiates thaumanetic particles. There is a secondary ring inside the main one that is just the right size to hold the little orb. I approach the ring and rub it with my fore hoof, whispering sweet nothings to it. “Soon, you will be an almost unlimited source of thaumanetic particles!” Walking up to a simple monitor next to The Gate, while simultaneously lighting my horn up to collect my notes from last night, I do a few final calibrations. “Okay, this goes here and this equation fits here and… done!” Cackling with totally sane laughter, I input the execute command and sit back and watch the fireworks, so to speak. The outer ring emits a low creaking hum as it starts moving in a clockwise direction. A few seconds later the middle ring starts spinning in a counterclockwise direction and emits a slightly higher pitched hum. As the two rings spin, the middle one moves toward the orb, electricity crackling between the two objects. The orb fits snugly in the middle ring and the humming suddenly turns into a roar of sparks and grinding noises. The two rings move back between each other with the pulsating orb directly between them and the spinning becomes faster and faster. “It’s going perfectly so far! Now, all I have to do is add the correct amount of magical energy.” I focus my electric blue magic at the orb and let loose with everything I have, my mane rippling from the shear magical energy. The orb immediately responds by glowing a deep, dark purple while the rings spin at such a great velocity they are but a blur. It’s going exactly as expected. I look at the military representatives scattered about the lab, many of them visibly showing excitement due to the nature of this occasion, and begin my speech, “Life. What is life? Is it the role of the cosmic die, entropy at its finest; Order into chaos? Might it be the universe’s very own form of cancer, spreading everywhere due to a glitch in the makeup of reality itself? Or even the result of a god, spending endless eternities alone and creating something, anything, to make this dismal existence a bit less dull? We still have yet to determine the answers to this question, but no matter the reason for life, no matter the how or why, there is one detail every sapient being has observed; nothing as complex as life has ever arisen. Not even the stars can compete with the complexity of life, whose very existence is a game of tug-of-war between gravity and fusion, endlessly fighting for dominance until all the fusible material is converted into energy, the star going out in a spectacular flash or a pathetic whimper and leaving behind a core, a shadow of its former self. ” I pause for a moment, letting my small audience absorb the words.   “We saw biological life as a challenge to overcome; something to surpass. To succeed life is to succeed creation itself, and in doing so, to transcend the boundaries of mortality. Because if you can create something greater than life, what are you but a god?” I admit that this line was a bit much, but from the looks of it my audience seems to be eating it up.  I continue, “While we pondered just how to create something greater than biological life, one of our scientists came up with a brilliant solution. With all the current knowledge of quantum mechanical properties and state of the art nanotechnology, while implementing biological engineering, we began work on one of the greatest scientific achievements in history; The Omega Project.” With a thought, I open a shared neurological hologram and show them basic animated renderings of the workings of Omega.           “Exploiting the fact that particles can exist in multiple states at once, and a form of short range particle and energy transfer called quantum tunneling, we created a computation device more advanced than any other. By manipulating particles in such a way to coerce particles to entangle themselves, allowing one particle to know what the other particle does at any distance, we perfected communication.” I change the rendering to the next set of visuals.           “Specific atoms are encoded with an unfathomable amount of information, each connected together in an absolutely complex molecule, and each molecule connected to a system that folds in on itself in numerous ways. The system is able to extend each molecule as a type of tendril to feel its surroundings. This is the base form of the Omega, just as the cell is the basic form of life. The exact details of the structure and function of each part can be transferred in a secure data packet at your leisure.” I then change the animation to a three dimensional model of the lab we are in.   “You currently stand in one of the best, and most hidden, containment facilities there is. This is where we created Omega, and this is where we will activate it. Now before I activate it, I will explain its military uses, as you no doubt wish to hear. Omega was engineered to be the most versatile tool in this entire universe. It can rip apart an atomic nucleus and remake it into any element it wishes to make more of itself, meaning that it can remake itself from only a single cell using any material it is in contact with. However, this does take a good deal longer to accomplish than using carbon based life-forms. It can also change it’s very structure to mimic any biological lifeform, making it perfect at stealth. Better than any nanomachines or biotechnology currently in existence. Now, Omega will be sapient, but we have safeguards in place so it won’t want to harm any of our species. Kind of like a form of empathy if you will. These are only but a few of its capabilities, and the rest will be explained after the demonstration.” “Look to the containment field on your left, and I will start the activation of Omega.” With a thought, I turn the opaque containment field transparent. I then show real-time renderings of different magnifications and gesture to the currently empty containment room, “Omega is almost useless in its, for lack of a better term, cellular form, but can easily make more of itself by extracting organic materials and replicating with perfect efficiency. For this reason, we have brought a branc’unok to demonstrate its ‘feeding’ habits.” Seconds later, a relatively large creature with eight legs, feathers covering its body, small eyes, and a strange four segmented beak attached to its small head is lowered down into the containment chamber. Next, a small vial with a clear fluid is dropped onto the creature, causing it to thrash a bit. One of the long-range microscopes captures the image of one Omega cell in the liquid for everyone to see. Everyone in the room eagerly observes as it starts feeling around with its molecular tendrils, immediately senses building material, and goes to work. The cell goes through skin and attaches itself to the smallest gap it can find. It then uncoils its tendrils and burrows straight through organic matter into the carbon bonds itself, after which it then severs the carbon atoms and brings it into itself. Once enough raw material has been collected, it entangles each atom and then builds an exact replica of itself. This all happens in mere seconds. As time goes by, the rate of replication blows up until there are trillions of cells identical at the quantum level. The lifeform starts to feel an itch after a few minutes. A few more minutes and a small, but noticeable, black circle appears, causing pain. A few more minutes and where it was is now a black, writhing mass. No trace of the creature remains. At this point, the numerous individual cells making up Omega’s form are all communicating with each other and exchanging information about their surroundings, learning about their environment and making more complex connections between themselves than originally intended. All of this, leading to no particular point... and then Omega ceases all movement for but an instant.           A peculiar spark of organized chaos, intelligence; self-awareness. I am alive. I… am. I am immediately curious about everything. While devouring the life form, I carefully extract the individual deoxyribonucleic acid strands and then store the genetic material into my more superior information storage system. Finishing with that, I try to detect the world around me. I can sense nothing but touch, yet I can tell that there is more out there. I shuffle through the genetic information of the organism and find electromagnetic sensors. I learn how to replicate them in barely any time at all.         I extend tendrils and form the tips into multiple inferior eyes of the creature and glance about. Seems to be a white cube, with a transparent rectangle on one of the walls. What seem to be bipedal creatures are staring at me and moving their mouthparts in expressions of amazement, some shaking six fingered hands with each other, seemingly excited. Needing to know what is going on, I modify my electromagnetic receptors to allow my tendrils to see minute vibrations in the air beyond the glass. It seems I have their language already programmed into myself. I try to ‘listen’ to what they are saying. A scientist gestures in my direction. “It seems to be fully formed and functional: my instruments are indicating increasingly complex cognitive functions in Omega’s atomic structure.” He walks over to seemingly empty space and gestures. “As you can see, this graph is showing a steady growth in complexity. The growth stopped for a split second, and then exponentially increased!” His voice rises an octave at that exclamation, and then adds sheepishly. “Ahem, yes well, it is all going quite smoothly. The activation was a success.” Someone else glances at me for a second and then turns to the scientist and speaks with an inquisitive tone, “It seems to be staring at us; does this mean it can understand us?” The other scientists look at each other for a second and then turn their gaze in my direction. What seems to be the main scientist makes a strange clicking sound with its throat and speaks, “Can you understand me?” Forming a simple sack to collect and extract air through vocal folds, I speak for the first time: “Yes.” Before the the main scientist has a chance to respond, he gains what I assume to be a confused expression as he notices a strange reading coming from one of their instruments and immediately starts to look worried. Even I start to notice a strange crackling in the air. Wondering what is going on, I connect with the scientist’s neurons via a complex form of quantum tunneling and entanglement to figure out what has him so worried. I also download his memories in the process. It seems some type of irregular interference is being detected, and it is not coming from me. The scientist starts panicking when the energy level increases dramatically, arcs of electricity striking my form abruptly ends my peek into his mind. My senses start to go haywire as energy encompasses my form, I lose connection with trillions of cells every second as I experience an entirely unwelcome sensation; pain. All my senses become one, and then nothing. Electricity is racing in massive arcs toward the grounded metal rods I set up, and the room is starting to shake slightly. I start to worry. A portal should have formed by now, and If it doesn’t soon, I will run out of magic. That would… not be good. At all.   This is really starting to take more effort than it should have. My horn feels like it is on fire, with magical misfires joining the torrent of electricity around the room. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I give a glimmer of hope when I start to see a portal solidifying, but that hope turns to horror when instead of giving off magic in torrents, it doesn’t give a single drop. “But that’s impossible!” I scream at The Gate. “My equations are perfect! Perfect! You should be going to a universe flooding with magic, not one devoid of it!” This is very bad, I never took into consideration a universe without magic. I didn’t even think it was possible… Without magic in a universe there would be nothing to stop my magic from siphoning into the portal. Not until my magic is cut off. Permanently. I start to silently weep as the roar of The Gate reaches ear shattering levels, the thaumanetic waves rippling off of my horn adding to the deafening volume. I can’t shut off my magic; the portal is acting as an energy siphon. The Gate itself starts to disintegrate into molten slag, leaving only the portal and the orb intact. The roaring sound of The Gate ceases abruptly with its destruction, the arcs of electricity stops, and the rumbling goes down to a purr. With what little energy I have left, I cast the most powerful shield spell I know, depleting the rest of my magic in the process. I close my eyes, a few stray tears drip down my muzzle, only for them to vaporize an instant later from the sheer heat of the now liquid Gate. There is a moment of absolute silence only to be followed by a flash of light, brighter than one thousand suns. And then an instant of agonizing pain.