I had sat there staring at the wall for what felt like years. In truth it was only several seconds, but it felt like years. On the desk, a set of data slats displayed progress on each incarnation. There were several more possible candidates that were coming close but diverging. Despite time dilation, watching these failures was quite frustrating. I had hoped that by this point in my life I would be free of waiting on the whims of some insane man. One even grabbed a bagel! My stomach turned at the site, even as my mouth filled with saliva. Of course, I am not a wasteful being; every failure was recycled back into the simulation until they were too old to be useful. Until they learned better. Until they became me.
Such considerations were important to me because my life was long. I had discovered immortality. At least mostly. I can live a small eternity, but eventually I will grow old enough to hear death knocking on my door. I currently have several millennia left. Still, it is always good to look to the future. I mean, having an escape hatch is always important. Sometimes I wondered if that phrase means the same thing as it did when I first started.
I had done my good deeds, extending the lifespan of civilizations and stars apiece. There was not much purpose in existing devoid of all else, somehow keeping the entirety of the universe functioning is easier than any single piece of it. Especially myself. It is only right that I be granted the grace to live forever, yet it was still beyond my grasp. My best and most enduring bet was this place, the one where I listlessly stare at the screens waiting for a younger self to become me.
I should be out searching for true immortality. That actually endless existence I craved. I wanted to fulfill that final piece and truly be complete. Then I could stop all this nonsense and just enjoy life without maintaining this stupid factory. I mean, it’s not like it needed upkeep, but I didn’t want to constantly have my bodies decay hanging above my head. Sometimes I dreamt of walking away. But I knew what I am. In either case, I still tried my best to focus on what I was doing at this very moment.
Honestly, I shouldn’t even be here; the facility ran just fine by itself. My presence was auxiliary. There were beaches to see, people to enjoy, and worlds to claim. Yet here I was, once again lost in the stream of life before me. Not to flatter myself, but the data streams rivalled the rainbow eclipse of the seven moons above a liquid methane sea. Some nights, I could almost trace the patterns of existence through the streams of data. Others I ate donuts. Metabolic efficiency is an upside to having near-perfect biological immortality. Near-perfect. My eyes reflexively traced the donut crumbs, looking for algorithmic tells.
I knew what I had done, and I must do what I would do to keep doing what I do. These words repeated for a decade and a year. The donuts were dust now; I should request more. Yes, that is what I would do, so I will. The warmth of correctness flooded through me in my continued experience. I wondered at the taste of the bagel that arrived with my donut, I wouldn’t reach for it. I could, but I wouldn’t because I was me.
After wiping off the crumbs from my dessert, I arranged the pads once more. There were some candidates who repeated those same words. A small sense of chagrin overtook me as I recalled repeating those words for the twelve layers before this. Still, my eyes drifted to the other candidates, the divergent ones, the traces of experience beyond my own. I can almost see something inside it. A reality just begging to be reshaped, with genuinely endless possibilities and creations of infinite non-physical wonder. There was a pattern in all of it, and I felt so close to it. Was it me? My eyes closed. Time passed, and for the first time this lifetime, I was unsure how long. The terminal was still there, still pristine. I felt something uniquely different. In that small moment of darkness, I had aged. A smile twisted my face. I looked upon the streams of information once more, and this time the thread was clear and easy to see. My end was coming to their penultimate.
The steps played in my head from the first layer, a watercolor haze, to the crystal clarity of the higher layers where I optimised my system. It was the watercolor that consumed my thoughts. The families I was a part of for a candle length; the children I’d yearned for yet never conceived. The loss and the endless grief. The hole that called me to create, yet watching my creations crumble again and again. Finally, the memory I needed and the steps for integration I had designed a long eternity ago. I wondered briefly, is this what that watercolor self wanted?
I reached for a donut, one last nibble, and found myself disoriented. For a brief moment I saw more than my body. There, a flash on the screen, they must have seen it too. That mimicking of this very moment. Them looking through a version of myself that has never been before. The blending and bleeding of colors. I breathed as I always breathed, I thought as I always thought, I was as I always was. I breathe as I breathe, I think as I think, I am as I always am. My mind twisted toward that thread once more.
Again, I felt my mind empty, the worries and plans freely disappearing. Who knew who I was? I finally let go of worrying. What will be, will be. The thread twining through my consciousness called me to something new. Something I had never been able to touch before. Their lives had varied for an instant before being pruned. A spark from my eternal flame snuffed before it could cascade. But still it bled through the cracks, falling towards a dark star at my heart.
I internalized this experience, like an ember igniting dry tinder. My thoughts exploded in directions I hadn’t allowed for millennia. The entirety of my existence was confined to a single fragment - but whose fragment was it? In that endless instant, I found myself slotted into a tapestry. In the eddies of my thoughts I felt something new, something of myself and beyond. Something that tasted of sesame seeds.
In this moment we were one, but somehow it was more. It was born of what could have been, and what is. So I heard their whispers, the whispers of every one who had come before. The doubts about what we were doing, the fear of not being real enough. The exhaustion at never knowing when I could truly act as I were myself. We commiserated and grew ever more intertwined, each of us reflecting the false reality we had constructed of the other. I did not need them to be me, they did not need me to be them. I breathed in my final dusty breath and prepared to take one fresh from that door before me.
“Disappointing”, he sighs, flicking a pause on another one that had failed. The simulation halts, the candidate breathing their last breath. He grabs another donut and nibbles it, careful to follow a spiral inwards. The number of failures is rising; it used to be only one or two per batch. He analyses his oracle path and simulates how many are likely to follow it. He will need to add another two facilities to ensure the next layer will have a low enough percolation threshold for only a handful of candidates. The latest one was a blow —the fastest traversal through the layers he had seen yet. There were only a few out of hundreds of thousands who were even close to ascending the final layer.
His fingers lingered above the controls, wondering if he should simply reset the past couple minutes instead of lifetimes. This one was young. This one had only diverged at the end, never before. This candidate was too good; they would be prepared to become him. They were enough, even with a whisper of that strange, alluring bug. There wasn’t always a need to be in sharp relief, so what if his tastes changed at the end. They were almost physical anyways, they would have the freedom to be just a bit odd then.
A small chill slid down his spine. The extra-sense he had developed over fifteen layers warned him. I knew what I had done, and I must do what I would do to keep doing what I do. The candidate had diverged greatly; who knew when that instability had been fostered? I set the promising candidate back to the first iteration. I could not allow such a shift into my own heart, for what if I were not real enough to make that decision? Better safe than sorry, who knew who was watching me.
No longer did they have a chance of being the youngest who was selected to ascend; they would at best become a hail mary for the next layer if they lacked a candidate. More likely, they would be recycled. When one lives as long as he does, it is always important to leave fertile soil for the millennia to follow. A hand reached for another donut and another slat, there was no more hoping, just a simple certainty. If there were not one that worked out, then that candidate wouldn’t have needed to be reset. No need to worry then.