Multidimensional Thinking: Imagination or Memories of the Future

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

THE VISIONARY: SOMEONE SEEING THROUGH FUTURE EYES

“To see a world in a grain of sand and heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour.” (William Blake)

Every day you’re closer. And every morning, when you wake, you realise you’re remembering not imagining the progress you’ll make later today. Questioning at times the esoteric concept of whether there’s a difference. 

Could it be this way for others? Architects – writers – composers. We claim they have vision. Imagination. The ability to see or hear a work before a single line is sketched, a keystroke or word is written. But is it possible they’re seeing the finished product because they’ve already completed it at some point in their future? And can share that memory across time and space.

And how long ago was it you would have considered that concept laughable if not delusional? 

A quick reach for your phone. It’s 05:27 and still dark. Across the room is your laptop open on the desk. On the other side is your chair with a notepad. Rolling over, you grab it while hitting your lamp on the way.

For the next 30 minutes you’re sketching a warp bubble with a toroidal shaped ship riding within it – and adding more of the maths. Making changes to yesterday’s work. Not all of it coming from your future memories. But you can’t be sure. You’re never sure.

With the equation for gauge transformation finished, you look up. There’s light coming in. 

Again, to your phone – this time staring at it. Joni’s awake now. And today’s the day you’re going to tell her what you’ve been working on in secret – cloistered away in your room like a Trappist monk existing on Cheerios and veggie wraps from the corner. 

She’s open-minded. She reads. Even understood Kant. But theoretical physics? Faster Than Light travel? The weird concept of cause and effect breaking down? You? This is way weirder than Kant.

All right, so… Try this: 

‘Joni. I’ve been working in secret on perfecting warp drive technology so we can get to Alpha Centauri in a ship that’ll travel inside a spacetime warp bubble. Later maybe the Andromeda galaxy.’

You shift to a Joni voice. ‘Why?’

Back to a you voice. ‘That’s the tricky part.’

‘Really? There’s only one?’

‘Yeah. Well, no… no of course not. There are lots of tricky parts. Mainly the technical ones.’

‘Like?’

Answering that will require telling her about the manifold you’re designing – or designing again that will contract spacetime in front of the ship – expanding it behind creating a bubble in the 4-dimensional fabric of the universe. 

And how the bubble because it’s part of spacetime can move beyond the speed of light with the ship carried along for the ride. Which means the ship won’t be travelling through space or time at all. So, not violating Einstein’s Special Relativity.

That may work. Doesn’t sound delusional. Lofty maybe. But not delusional. For that, she’ll need a moment to absorb. Decide whether you’re drunk and why you’re telling her. During that propitious segment you may slip in your explanation of why you’ve been missing classes and haven’t called.

And why you’re never in the Muddy Charles when you’ve more than once claimed you wanted to live there. When she finishes, she’ll come back with the obvious:

‘And that tricky part?’

To which you’ll reply:

‘Because I already worked it out for NASA – took a trip to Alpha Centauri and came back before I left. 23 years before, if you want precision.’

Feeling oddly lifted – looking forward to sharing something even Douglas Adams would find mind-boggling, you head for the washroom – deciding to shower, shave and maybe change the sweats you’ve been living in for the last week or so. 

Make yourself presentable. Your unveiling moment is just ahead.

DETERMINISM: WHEN YOUR FUTURE PAST IS TODAY AND UNCHANGEABLE

“Whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” (Max Ehrmann)

Okay, so you backed out. The call to Joni, your on-again off-again girlfriend. Just too early. 6am. Of course she’d think you were drunk. 

But now heading to the library, a new problem arises. That guy across the street has spy written all over him. 40 – 45. Expensive suit. Looks like your dad. Well, Chinese, so, not an ideal comparison. But, watching you from the walk outside Sigma Chi; he’s sure not fitting the usual scenery.

Choosing your best option, you head for the campus trying not to look back, thinking… dude, are you paranoid? Like yesterday with those CIA guys outside the market? Who turned out to be commercial real estate appraisers – supposedly.

Or is this something else. Like espionage. Corporate maybe. Or maybe someone’s government. 

Now at the corner, you mix in and grab a look. And there he is but now with company. His hottie spy accomplice. Leave it to you to get assigned Beijing’s James Bond. You turn back to the light and wait. This isn’t something you haven’t considered. 

Warp technology is big. It’s going to be anyway. Money, fame, strategic advantage in space technologies and off-world colonisation.

But there’s another possibility. If while on your way to Alpha Centauri, Liu shot a message back to Earth – and sent it at FTL, who knows? Could her government have picked it up? Maybe at the same time you got here?

There’s another. 

You nailed or will nail a spot on that flight because of three design elements you added to the warp drive model that Alcubierre kid in your class hatched. But the others. Besides Liu, there will be Oleg, William and Mara all arriving back on Earth 23 years before departing on an interstellar voyage. Maybe being written off as cranks. But, maybe not too. 

Wait! Holy shit! They won’t, or they wouldn’t have made it onto that flight! God, this is so nuts.

Now with the light green, you cross – tying things together while questioning everything. Determinism. Free will. Altering timelines. Can you stop right here, turn around and go live on an island somewhere? Surf, read philosophy, smoke weed and never even look up at outer space? 

Is that even an option for you? Or would you still figure it out while stoned in the tropics because that’s how you did it in the first place. Or be wasting your time even trying. As in, you’d never make it to a beach. Like a Groundhog Day Paradox.

Now on campus, you start for Barker in a hurry. Not running – just walking as if you’re late for a class or dedicated. And then you stop. There on the steps – another Chinese guy in a suit staring – waiting for you – and coming up from behind? Yup. Bond and the babe in heels. 

Dude, you are so definitely toast.

ALTERNATE TIMELINES: THE ILLUSION OF A UNIVERSAL NOW

“Time present and time past, are both perhaps present in time future.” (TS Eliot – Burnt Norton)

That went well. You performed much better than expected. Now running like a bat-out-of-hell for the Blue line at Kendall, you’re taking multi-tasking under severe stress to another level. Dodging pains-in-the-ass who don’t know who you’ll be in 23 years, looking back for glimpses of the Chinese spies who probably do while thumbing a text to Joni who was going to find out later today.

Needless to say, you’re having issues – when you already had plenty. 

Down the steps at Kendall, up and over the turnstile; never a transit cop when you actually need one, you make a fast break for the down escalator and continue at a meaningful sprint.

Now on the platform, abandoning your disbelief in God and miracles, you blast through a group of school kids diving just in the nick into your awaiting Blue line train with the doors closing behind you.

Lying there on the floor, never mind the courageous or oblivious passengers who haven’t moved to the rear, you stare at Joni’s message.

Are you okay?

Hmm. Tough one. After a quick glance at the many faces, some hostile others just curious, you select what seems an honest response. Sparing her the worrying details.

Kind of a hectic morning. You?

I was worried. 

No need. Truly. But hey…

From there, you fire a semi-believable story of something urgent coming up with a request that she drop whatever she’s doing and meet you downtown at Pete’s outside the subway station on 9th bringing whatever cash she can get her hands on, her credit and debit cards and to make sure she isn’t followed.

Closing out your phone, you use the pole to pull off the floor, smile at the passengers, and shuffle through to the nearest empty seat and drop into it trying not to look dangerous or too significant for their morning commute.

A 911 call; adding the transit police at this point could easily push you over your limit for intrigue for one day. Besides, this one’s real. Hard to imagine you just got chased from the university into the subway by Chinese real estate appraisers. 

The mind is a complex machine. One recently back from another star system comingled with an earlier version of itself doubly so. Just sitting there, cohering all this while racing beneath the city, you’re still unclear about much if not most of it. 

Those Chinese agents, assuming they are agents who probably found Liu babbling incomprehensible, absurd nonsense in the halls at Shanghai University and decided to believe her; are they screwing up this timeline by coming after you? Probably for the warp drive plans they now know, thanks to Liu the Commie rat, you have in your head?

Then there’s the possibility, using more of a consequentialist approach here, this is happening the way it did happen; nothing to do with Liu, only, you can’t pull up those memories of future you about present day you. 

Only, oddly, about the mission 23 years from now, and your work on the warp drive leading up to it. And isn’t that odd. 

Why the selectivity? Why not everything? This may be something for a memory psychologist or neuroscientist or David Chalmers. Like the Extremely, Amazingly Hard Problem of Consciousness.

Puzzled now with even more to reconcile, you stare at yourself in the glass wondering why you’re wondering about what’s ahead in this rapidly evolving psycho-time-travel thriller.

Also revisiting that hastily prepared presentation to Joni. Who will, upon hearing any of this certainly see dumping you not only as justified but probably the most plausibly brilliant move she’ll ever make.

THE RELATIVITY OF SIMULTANEITY: FANCY JARGON FOR POINT OF VIEW 

“…and they make me feel as if space shifted about, like a swan that can’t settle, refusing to sit still and be measured.” (DH Lawrence – Relativity)

It certainly wasn’t enough, but you had time to think and consider and review what you could remember while heading into downtown. 

Challenging, exploring your mind for memories of your past from now – while trying to find those of your past from a point 23 years in the future. Which would certainly benefit your present while answering questions about all three.

Now with Joni after leaving the subway on 9th, you head for the Weston dying to share – all of it but afraid. 

Not just that she’ll assume you’ve wigged, but also concerned about her. What you could be pulling her into. Damaging her life. Changing the way she perceives Life, the Universe and Everything. From this moment on, questioning those moments of inspiration, and even her reality.

A block down from the hotel, she squeezes your hand yanking you from your deep, philosophical ruminations.

“At least give me something.”

Pulling to a stop, you face her. “Yeah. You’ve been patient.”

“You think?”

Just ahead is a café. With a nod, you start for it. A few minutes later, you’re inside at the ledge with coffees trying to decide how much to tell her without freaking her out. More than you are after the disturbing realisation you made on the train about the incongruous memory selectivity.

Though, honestly? The text instructions about the cash, credit cards and making sure she wasn’t followed pretty much took care of that.

“Joni. I’m working on something.”

That elicits an odd, but thoroughly warranted squint.  Even you’re left wondering why it came out like Joni, it’s Tuesday.  

“Like, for a terrorist organisation?”

Not a bad call on her part. Reverse the roles here, and that’s probably where you’d have gone. Showing her your more serious side, you shake your head and watch her get serious with you. Then turn to the glass – now looking out at the traffic.

“I have 257 dollars. And can get 500 more from an ATM. Another 500 tomorrow. And I won’t ask.”

Sweet, that she’s not going to press you on something you’re obviously reticent to share. So, honourable, you wonder if it was based in compassion or battle tactics. Regardless, it’s forced your hand.

“That building across the street.”

“Okay?”

“We assume the architect had a vision of it. Facades, layout, materials, proportions – even before he started – when it was just a vacant lot.” 

That was a pretty good start. She’s quiet which is a fair indicator of thinking – also objectivity. She’s good with that. Not wishing to lose the momentum, you push on. 

“What if he didn’t? What if he designed it in the future, and imagination is nothing but a connection we all have – our present with our future minds. Like… like quantum entanglement. And he saw it finished.” 

For minutes, you sit – the quiet only disturbed by the street noises – wondering if you could have done that better. Then…

“You want to tell me now what you’re working on?” She turns to face you. “That you believe you worked on in the future? That has you running from…”

“…Chinese agents.”

“The Chinese?!”

“And the CIA… I think.”

A long stare follows that one. And with a slight nod you grant her permission to speak freely, honestly. Even if it means telling you you should seek professional help. Which would hurt, but maybe not that much.

And with a true display of affection, she takes your hand and gives you a comforting smile that’s saying she’s ready to listen first – open-mindedly holding back, for the moment her judgement and recommendation… that you seek professional help as soon as possible.

ENTANGLEMENT: TIME DILATION AND IMAGINATION DEMYSTIFIED

“Time and space heal themselves up around paradoxes and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make.” (Margaret Atwood)

You spend the next hour describing the research and work you completed on warp drive technology – first while at MIT with your friend Miguel then later for NASA as a special projects engineer. The various iterations, successes, failures and the unmanned tests. 

And how, because of your work making Faster Than Light and interstellar travel possible, you get (got) offered a seat on the Galileo Mission to the Alpha Centauri system – 23 years from now.

She listens quietly, more attentively when you deliver the next part about time dilation. How, when travelling at the speed of light, time for you the traveller stops. Your clock freezes. At that moment, for you, the universe and all distances are perceived as a single instantaneous event.

But travelling beyond light speed breaks causality. Travelling FTL means travelling backwards in time. Effects can happen before events. 

Choosing this the right moment to circle back, you turn your eyes again to the window and nod to the building across the street.

“Like the architect. A memory of a finished building before he’d designed it in this present. With him misperceiving it as imagination.”

“Or your warp drive.”

“Yeah.”

“And the 23 years? Because you were…”

“…right. Travelling at multiple of light speed. 11.5% beyond. There and back.”

It’s hard, now having done it, still working out the details in your own head – wondering what’s going on in hers. The whole causality thing is so weird. Back to the train revelation. 

Where are your memories of this event? Why don’t you have your future memories of this present beyond your work on the warp drive? And the mission. 

It makes you think and wonder: Did your work dominate your life during and after MIT to such an extent that – even now after coming back that’s all you remember? No memories of family – friends – relationships – experiences outside of work. 

Days when nothing happened, others filled with regrets. Events you’d trade away but wouldn’t really because they changed you into someone thoughtful.

None of that remains? How sad. And how weird it is, you’re suddenly wishing for it to be unreal. If it’s not; well, you’d need to accept you had a meaningful but also empty life.

“Okay, wait…” After a quick look across the street, Joni turns back. “Where would the baseline be? Like the architect getting his inspiration from his future self. That future self would have had to design the building at that level or get the inspiration from an even further future self – and so on and so on. Somewhere there would have to have been imagination. A baseline.”

Looking at her, you’re finding that so logical. Logical but also unanswerable. Somewhere there would have to be true inspiration – discovery.

“You think I’ve been working too hard.”

“Oh, David.” She takes your hands in hers and squeezes them. “I think you’re the sweetest guy I’ve ever met. To have trusted me with this. Probably cringing inside – expecting my judgement. I love you for that. Honestly. And no, there’s no judgement coming.”

A nice deep breath, and a smile. And relief in a way. Not just knowing you can proceed without the urgency and stress about Chinese agents and the CIA and all that psycho delusional crap. 

And it answers the other question about the lost memories of everything but your work on the drive and the mission. A mission that could never have happened. An imaginative sequence – written in the mind of someone who wanted to be special.

“Okay.” Settled, you lean over, kiss her and stand. “Let’s go home and burn a day doing nothing. Order some food. Maybe walk down to the river later.”

Well done. That brings on a huge smile. “I am down for that.”

Still with your hand in hers, she takes it to her lips and kisses your fingers. An almost movie-like sensitive moment minus the growing romantic music. Then finishes her Cappuccino, climbs from the stool – just as the window explodes inward spraying you both with glass. 

And outside – just there on the curb, are three unmarked SUVs with agents – including the phony real estate appraisers from the market pouring out onto the walk. All with weapons drawn. 

And all you can think, oddly, while turning – looking for a back door is: Did you really take seats at the window? Seriously?! Someone who’s watched the Jason Bourne trilogy 19 times?!

SOLVED: THE EXTREMELY, AMAZINGLY HARD PROBLEM OF CONSCIOUSNESS

“The mere thought hadn’t even begun to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing my mind.” (Douglas Adams)

Now weaving through tables and the other patrons – all spread out on the floor dodging bullets – you close in on the counter with the barista, a very big fan of ink, leather, piercing and action movies pointing towards the rest rooms.

“Through there! There’s a back door to the alley! I’ll try to hold them off!”

Pulling Joni along, you make it through the cafe past the restrooms into the back through an employee door and start navigating the storage racks heading for the rear.

“Didn’t you see that coming?!”

“What?! Why me?!”

“Because you’re the one who’s been to the future!”

Through the heavy fire door out into the alley, you stop – and there barrelling down from the north are the Chinese guys in a van with guns pointed out the windows shooting – with bullets pinging off the dumpsters.

“That way!” You nod Joni to the south end of the alley and take off running. “So, you believe me now?!”

“David! People are shooting at us!”

Out from the alley, you head into the street with tyres screeching, horns, drivers yelling – and behind – total pandemonium with armed agents from at least two countries chasing you on foot, in vans and SUVs. And even a helicopter dropping down from above.

“There! The subway!” You point Joni to the 7th Street station and continue running while dodging cars. “We make it, there should be a green line train waiting.”

“You and your bloody warp drive! What? Watching Star Trek just not enough for you?!”

You turn back with a smile – unstressed, unconcerned, enjoying – savouring every moment – suddenly remembering – exactly how this turns out. 

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

07/06/2026

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Engineering Bias: Realising the Post Human Experiment

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

THE VALUE OF MAINTAINING ESPECIALLY UNPOPULAR BELIEFS

“Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.” (TS Eliot)

“You claim to know our plight. You don’t. But you will soon.”

You hear the voice of the Dacian as if coming through a soggy bed curtain. You struggle, trying to remember what happened after you left for your meeting. How you got here. What vehicle you’re in. Who else is here. You sense another presence and try to open your eyes but can’t and let go – and drift again. 

Back to your kitchen – standing at your solar wall staring out at the sun from your home in East Terminus. Just above the horizon where it always is. Never rising. Never setting. A never-ending twilight. 

And Jaxa from her VT-A, asking about your meeting with the science committee. Then following with your morning exchange. Quizzing you like a scholastic tutor might – prepping you for an exam.

‘Tidal forces or an impact slowing the planet’s spin. Adaptation into three distinct species. Fanciful theory Dr Pour. If you persuade, however, that you all descended from this common ancestor on a rotating world; what do you believe will happen? They’ll lay down their weapons, put away their hatreds and decide to get along? Maybe a group hug before they head home with the news?’

You turn to her ready to respond when again you find your way to consciousness. 

You hear the Dacians – two voices. They’re discussing the Rigel crossing. Which means you’ve left the Terminator band and are heading out onto the sun side. They’re domain. Hostile, mostly desert at a constant 100 degrees Celsius. 

A land of domed cities for the privileged and migrant farmers who survive on the surface in solar cooled camps. The harshest existence imaginable.

Fuzzy, drifting in and out, you begin pulling together bits and pieces. The vehicle. A van perhaps. The floor is metal and already hot. You’re not restrained, but you were obviously drugged. And your memories from the time you left your home and headed out to your car are gone.

“Doctor Pour?”

You recognise the voice of Ambassador Gracchus’ aid Sora. Which relieves you. Gracchus is a friend on the committee. Determined to guide you through the political swamp, she’s honour-driven, compassionate and designated herself your protector early. 

And has warned you often to be careful. That your popularity was growing – and with that popularity would come enemies. Not in Paras – the dark side of our world. And not in Dacia.

But within your own government of Terminus. The 40-kilometre-wide temperate band that girdles the planet separating the sun and dark sides. The prize on this world. Sought after and fought over for centuries. 

You open your eyes. “A polite request may have worked.”

Sora responds casually while lifting her eyes to the window. “Next time, Doctor. You have my word.”

THE DANGERS IN THE PURSUIT: OF DANGEROUS KNOWLEDGE 

“One believes things because they have been conditioned to believe them.” (Aldous Huxley – Brave New World)

After pulling from the haze of the neural sedative, you spend the next two hours of your trip across the high plateau with the worst hangover imaginable pouring over documents given you by the ambassador’s aid. 

Classified documents from G7, Terminus’ top spy agency. For agency and military chiefs only. Certainly nothing the four-year revolving functionaries are allowed to see. 

About an archaeological dig on Dacian land in the south equatorial region – a natural depression known as the Borealis Trench – 125 years ago. 

No information on what was found or what they were digging for. Just administrative details of a government funded archaeological excavation. Budget. Equipment requests. A list of the archaeologists and their institutions. And lots of missing pages.

More current – added to that earlier document, are satellite surveys showing an area that looks like it was once washed with liquid water. On the sun-facing side of a tidally locked planet that could never know liquid water unless…

“…this is impossible.”

Sora gives you a curious look. “Rather odd coming from you, Doctor. Wouldn’t you say?”

“That entire trench has been surveyed. By us – and by you. I’ve seen the…”

“…You’ve seen what was meant for you to see.”

You stare her in the eyes, for a long while considering what she’s telling you. That someone may have found the evidence that would support your theory – evidence you’ve spent your career searching for. Found it 125 years ago and kept it buried. Literally, along with the knowledge. 

The question of course is why. 

Breaking the heavy eye contact, you turn to the window for a last glimpse out at the desert before heading into the Dacian capital. 

Wondering what’s out there. What they found, and again imagining our world the way you believe it once was.  With oceans – forests. Days and nights. Seasons. Watching the sun cross the sky. And all of us sharing the same evolutionary past. Without the bias that keeps sending us into wars.

Through the first tunnel into the solar dome, you realise the intrigue you’re heading into – and curious why your Dacian ally on the committee felt it necessary to kidnap rather than ask you out for a visit.

And why the urgency.

A TRUE DESIRE FOR LEARNING: IGNORES BORDERS AND CONVENTIONS

“We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness.” (George Orwell)

After descending from the roof and a trek through the Parliamentary compound, you’re at the window of an office overlooking the engineered river of the modern capital city beneath a solar dome when the ambassador steps in, in an obvious hurry.

“Are you ready?”

You turn to Sora assuming there was something she was to share but didn’t – then to Ambassador Gracchus. “For what exactly?”

She squints, as if you’ve asked something bothersome or daft then turns to her aid. “Like that all the way here?” 

“Pretty much.”

“Wait a minute. I was drugged. And kidnapped.”

She rolls her eyes and heads for the door. “Fifteen minutes, Alexandre. Our ride’s on the roof.” You watch her out into the corridor before you can follow that up – then turn your eyes to Sora. Who reveals just a hint of superiority and how entertaining she finds you.

“You should go, Alexandre.”

“But…”

“…Truly. You should.”

Left suddenly with few actually no options, you head out and take after the ambassador who is moving towards the lifts, in true Dacian fashion nearly at a sprint.

Minutes later you’re with her in the back seat of a military quad-copter lifting off from the roof pad heading for the south Aero-way with its glass panels already opening.

The four, horizontal props are loud. A spinning grinding sound that reminds you of an industrial saw. On your way out through the dome, Gracchus leans to you and speaks above the whir. “The documents from the first excavation.”

“I read them on my way.”

“Thoughts?”

“Lots of missing pages.”

She stares with savvy, probing eyes – as if extracting your speculations of what exists on those pages. Dacian politicians are skilled. They draw meaning from micro-expressions. Almost telepathic; unnerving at times.

“Quite right,” she says, then leans back and turns her eyes to the window.  “Rest if you can. It’s a journey.” 

The evasive response is also Dacian. They pride themselves on saying only what’s necessary when necessary and love watching their counterparts squirm during the exchange. 

For the next four hours you watch the terrain below change from high desert to baked mountains. Then to lava flows showing the planet’s volcanic past. 

This isn’t your first time here. As advisor to the Science Committee, you’ve had the opportunity to explore much of the planet. But the Dacian southern hemisphere? You’ll be the first from Terminus. The first in the last 125 years it seems.

Now approaching the Borealis Trench – a vast depression expanding from horizon to horizon, Kalea Gracchus leans over.

“Most scientists believe we came from different planets. You believe we originated here.” Not sure where she’s going with this, or what that was meant to elicit, you watch her turn back to the window. Patient and waiting.

“It’s more logical.”

“Why?”

“We haven’t found an organic molecule out there. Neither have you.”

The quad-copter begins to descend to the base of an ancient crater facing a rise dotted with caves. In the clearing are desert tents in long rows with heavy equipment and Dacian engineers and scientists everywhere. 

The ambassador goes to climb out – shooting you a glance on her way. “Be weird if you both had it right, huh?”

You’re suddenly stuck while pulling on an environment helmet. Wondering what she meant and annoyed at how planned the exchange was. 

THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH: AND A MEASURE OF WISDOM 

“Born of the sun, they travelled a short while towards the sun.” (Stephen Spender – The Truly Great)

Passing the tents on your way into the largest cave, you note the activity. The camp is being disassembled and loaded onto palettes. This excavation is over. But why? 

You catch the ambassador on her way in, pull off your helmet and take a moment to adjust to the air that burns in your lungs. 

“What did you mean? And why are they breaking everything down?”

“Your military is on its way. None of this will be here tomorrow.”

You follow her in heading for a lift crane placed in an odd, trapezoidal hole the size of a tennis court lit with post lights – and others mounted on the walls. And a bluish brightness emanating up from below.

The ambassador stops at the crane and turns to you. “If we hadn’t taken you, your country would have. And you’d be dead rather than moments away from the answers you’ve been searching for.” She pulls back the small door allowing in. “Please.”

Moments later you’re descending – perhaps a kilometre down into a hole that looks laser cut – the walls smooth like glass. 

It only takes moments for you to realise – the technology to cut this is technology neither of you have. And suddenly you’re tying this together with her comment – about you both having it right.

With your mind racing through images, the reality of this finally taking hold, you peer over the side down into the depths. “How old?”

“600 million years, I’m told. After the impact.”

“Impact.”

She turns to you. “You modelled it. Presented it. Got famous and ridiculed along the way. Now we need more from you. Their technology. Find out what you can about them, their purpose in coming here and who may have been here before.”

“Wait. What about your scientists?”

She shakes her head and looks over the side. “Nothing.”

And with that declaration, you’re aware – why you were enlisted. Yes, you believe, and yes, you’re someone they trust. But more importantly, you’re a competent computer scientist who may make this costly endeavour pay off for them before your country seals it forever.

You’re suddenly descending into a fantasy – a dream you’ve cultivated since graduate school and oddly, beyond the exhilaration, you’re feeling wholly unprepared.

All you can do is follow your mind exploding with questions.

ONLY WHEN MINDS SHARE: CAN DEEP LEARNING BEGIN

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.” (Marie Curie)

The walk into the alien lab is paralysing, mesmerising, unsettling in ways. 600 million years, and it looks new. And the technology is far beyond anything even our futurists and science fiction writers have sketched in their speculative works. 

Oval rooms where they experimented on the beings that would one day possess the necessary characteristics to inhabit a tidally locked world. A world of extremes. 

But what experiments? Purely synthetic? Genetic engineering with inorganic compounds? Did they use remnants of the indigenous inhabitants of this world and modify them?

Or did they, as a Dacian geneticist suggested, bring embryos with them? Three unique samples. Each from a different world. One near to its star, another in a temperate zone and a third from a distant, ice giant.

What puzzled the Dacians and you at first, is the lack of a master control. All their technology appears to be distributed into the oval procedure rooms. 

You choose one and enter. Almost immediately a smooth, glass panel on the wall behind the examination table lights with odd, glowing characters in steel blue. Dazzling, incomprehensible and purely alien.

Sitting, facing it, you begin exploring, trying to gain access when suddenly, the symbols begin moving out from the plate – filling the room like a breathable liquid. In moments, you’re literally swimming inside in a soup of these alien characters. Long, spiralling strings – luminous, semi-transparent – flooding the room like a bioluminescent mist.

The feeling as they pass into and through you is hypnotic – like an intense psychedelic experience – filling your mind with images and sounds and knowledge. And the obviousness that you’ve merged with their technology – illogically and unreservedly you embrace.

You close your eyes, and you’re back 600-million, 800-million or billions of years – hovering in space looking down at the lush planet of blue oceans and green and brown land masses. Mountains – river valleys. Polar ice sheets and vast plains. 

Closer – farms and cities populated with beings moving gracefully as if coordinated or choreographed to some unheard suite.

A rich, progressive culture of beings sharing a technological world bathed in sunlight and dark. The spinning, diurnal cycle you’ve envisioned and were convinced of. And argued endlessly.

When you open your eyes, you’re on the floor outside the procedure room surrounded by Dacians. A doctor, a pair of scientists and the ambassador.

For minutes you lie there unable to speak. Just living inside the images and sensations with your picture of the past and present and of the post-human civilisation that brought us here now complete.

You look at the ambassador. “We have to leave.”

“Why?”

You climb to your feet. Shaky, you spin, searching for the lift and start running with Gracchus and the others following.

“Wait…! Alexandre!”

“We have to leave this place!” You reach the lift crane and turn. “It’s still here.”

“It?”

“It- they? It’s a collective. Still running the experiment. But it’s not the experiment you think.” She and the others climb in. You look up. “How long? The Tridents.”

“They should be entering the Trench now. Twenty minutes.”

You look at her. “It’s maintaining a shared consciousness with every creature on the planet. Playing out a billion-year experiment. Everything about us was engineered. Our biases and hatreds? They’re not ours. They’re theirs!”

“For what purpose?”

You turn to face her. “Sustenance. We’re feeding them what they lost when they surrendered their biology. And Supremacy, I think. Should we ever grow to challenge them, they’d simply have us fight each other! And feed off that!” 

She stares for a moment with indecision in her eyes. Then persuaded, she nods and looks up – and begins planning her plea to the commanders – and to the Committee of what should come next.

ACCEPTING TRUE STRENGTH: IS THE STRENGTH WE FIND IN UNITY

“Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The soul that rises with us, our life’s Star.” (William Wordsworth)

After the ride up in the lift crane, you’re handed an environment helmet by a Dacian physician.  Fitting it; you speak to the ambassador. “They need to know. The truth. And they’ll need to do more than reseal it.”

She takes her scientist by the arm, orders him to contact the Terminus commanders with an urgent request that they speak before they proceed. Then returns to you.

“What else did you learn?”

“Of them?” You take a moment before slipping on the mask. Replaying the experience. The memories you were given. What you saw – what you felt. You look her in the eyes. “Cold. Emotionless. Efficient parasites living off our passions and enthusiasms. And hatreds. Which seem to satisfy them most. Our innate revulsion for each other… it satiates them. This… this wasn’t altruism. It was for them. Their needs.”

She looks at you – oddly intrigued by your passionate disgust. Admiring you. Understanding you. Appreciating you more. The idealist who dared to see the world as changeable. 

And then she does something you would never have expected – of her or of any Dacian. She takes your hand and pulls you close; looking you in the eyes, she leans in and kisses you. 

At that moment, you feel the distaste of the shared consciousness within you – knowing the bias we feel is alien to us – from something occupying us – feeding on us. And in defiance of that, you reach a hand to her face – and leave it there on her cheek and return the kiss and feel the revulsion of the collective depart. Leaving you quiet and calm. 

An hour later, you’re in the quad-copter with the ambassador lifting off from the Borealis Trench possibly for the last time. With the evidence you’ve been searching for – and knowledge beyond imagination.

Together you look out at the engineers from both worlds collaborating – hauling heavy explosives into the caves. An idealist’s dream. Your dream always. 

And you, appreciating even more your friend for her trust in you and persuasive skills with the commanders and Committee. Declaring and claiming our independence – on a planet we’ll share peacefully in time.

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

30/05/2026

If you’ve enjoyed this Storytelling Science issue, leave a comment. You may also like to view my Featured Books for April – May 2026. 

Extended Mind: Syndrome or Luxury of Cognitive Off-loading

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

THE HIDDEN COST OF DISTRIBUTION: INTO OUR ELECTRIC MINDS

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.” (Renes Descartes) 

Caucasian male. 40s. Light T shirt, shorts and trainers on a bench at the south end of La Brea Park. Multiple reports. Possible G-16. Apparently been there since yesterday afternoon. Approach with caution.

“We’re on it.” You grab your tablet and go to log the report of yet another G16, probable lost phone, and look over at Jason who’s already loading the GPS. 

“La Brea. Rings a bell.” He finds it and hits his directional. “Ten minutes back.”

At the corner, he spins the Ranger taking it into the south-bound lanes. It’s nearly disturbing that this is what your typical day has become. Rather than out chasing bad guys – stopping rapists and muggers; you’re on Round-up detail. 

Advertising execs out for a run. Corporate managers – stock traders – developers. Who haven’t you picked up in the last year? Hah! That one’s easy. Criminals.

Now approaching the park, you shoot a glance at your partner as he pulls to the curb. “Isn’t this where you take your kids swimming?”

He looks off at the pool outside the field house – finds the large QR code and taps his smart glasses. “Whoa. Good call, Amy.” Then goes to climb out.

Moments later you’re on the gravel path in listening to the G16 recommendations prepared by the department psychologist through your earbuds.

Though seldom violent, there’s always a chance they’re going to react poorly to the questions. They’re proud, used to being in control and won’t accept being talked down to – or treated like children.

And if they’ve been out ‘stuck’ all night as this guy has; there’s prudence in the gentle approach and following the psychologist’s recs to the letter. Nothing more annoying and conceivably dangerous than a stockbroker who’s going on 24 hours without his phone – trying to pull up the basics.

Passing the field house, you set your eyes on him and breathe easy. This one’s a cupcake. Elbow on his knee, fist beneath his chin – pensive look of bewilderment that on another day could pass for philosophical.

You can see it in his eyes when he hears you and looks up. Pure relief, bordering on joy.

And the questions? Address. Phone numbers of someone we can call. Though unable to answer, he takes them so well; you’re hardly surprised after the retina scan, he’s a repeat. Picked up three times since January. Twice in this same park. 

Hah! Once by you and Jason.

EXTENDED MIND: ROAD TO NIRVANA OR DIGITAL DEMENTIA

“Shall memory restore the steps and the shore, the face and the meeting place.” (WH Auden – The Question)

You’re distracted on your way home after delivering the regional sales manager to his corporate condo, and bothered by something the psychologist said in her G16 approach and encounter recs. 

She said, with G16 cases rising nation and worldwide, she believed we had reached a developmental shift in our intellectual evolution. Like the fall of the western Roman empire in 476AD when Europeans returned to farming and literacy rates plummeted. 

And admitted she was noticing early-onset cognitive decline that resembled dementia in her husband, herself and more concerning – in her children. Memory loss. Even semantic memories – knowledge about the world. And loss of functionality. 

She went from there into statistics and a historical summary about how this started, when specific cognitive-off-loading devices and technologies became available and affordable to the wider public. The term she used was Extended Mind.

Proposed by Andy Clark and David Chalmers in their 1998 paper; Extended Mind theory is a philosophical idea that the mind extends beyond the brain and body into the physical world. This can include notebooks, computers, diaries, your phone and digital assistant – anything that can help with your cognitive processes. 

Her concern – she claimed to be well-supported – was; if you quit using something, you lose the ability. Like a muscle you quit exercising yielding to atrophy.

Now pulling into your driveway, you take note of your ritual which is wholly non-participatory by you. The overhead door rises on your approach. The car clicks into autonomous parking and carries you in. Then parks and turns itself off. 

With your Digital Assistant ASA taking full control, multiple things happen at once. The car door opens for you to climb out. Lights come on in the garage and house. The overhead is already closing, and the kitchen door has unlatched and swung open for your arrival.

But wait. You could still perform these tasks. Opening doors, parking. These aren’t skills you’ve surrendered. You’ve added convenience, but how is that detrimental to your cognitive health? If anything, delegating away trivial tasks should be like freeing up room on your hard drive for more important, challenging and lucrative things.

Heading inside, you’re greeted by ASA who asks about your day, then proceeds to update you on your evening itinerary: calls, emails – and the smart fridge order that was placed at 13:08 to the i-Grocery Outlet. And of its delivery time tomorrow between 09:25 and 09:26.

Thanking her, you take a moment. i-Grocery Outlet. Where is that? You try to picture it – nothing. Not a whisp of an image. Have you ever been there? When was the last time you shopped? For anything?!

“ASA, when did I have you installed?”

“20 May 2013, Amy. Initial boot-up at 11:47.”

Fifteen years. Not enough time for the decline she was talking about. Or is it. Now going for the hot chocolate already steaming on your Espresso machine, you decide to pursue this – if only to satisfy a curiosity.

“ASA, all my devices work though you, don’t they.”

“Mostly everything. I’m synched with your communications; phones, computers, internet – car and home automation. And with you’re A-9 departmental authorisation, I also manage your work devices.”

“Jesus.” With the fireplace igniting and the TV opening to your favourite shows, you head into the living room. “I think I’d like to see the world without you for 24 hours, ASA. Hah! Just to see what I’m still capable of.”

Now with your hot chocolate, dispensing with the concerns of some alarmist psychologist the department probably found on Craig’s List, you drop onto the sofa exhausted, anxious to smell what ASA is preparing for your Tuesday night. 

It’s been a day. And your mind is just too weary to spend any more time contemplating itself.

WORKADAY REASONING AND HUMDRUM MATHS: CALISTHENICS OF THE MIND

“The dark obliterates now. Buried, the marvellous instrument of consciousness.” (Stephen Spender – Auden’s Funeral)

Odd, overlapping dreams. Peril and insecurity. Stranded in some strange city. Hungry – searching endlessly for a restaurant or store. Not one. How is this possible? In another, you’re at a table in the middle of an outdoor dining area. People eating, laughing, talking – overwhelming smells. Food everywhere but on your table. But why? How can this…?

“I know why!” You lift your head. It’s well after midnight. The TV is still on – the fire is blazing. The lights are on, and you’re starving. “ASA?!”

You climb off the sofa still in your uniform and head for the kitchen. “ASA, did you try to wake me for dinner?” And there on the counter is the answer to the food dreams. ASA’s master console is dark. That familiar HAL-ish red LED you’ve grown to expect is gone. 

You spin to your Smart Stove. It’s not dead, but the digital display is a blank palette. And popping it open? Nothing. All around you are lifeless, virtual screens. Power, but no data. You’re standing in an un-smart Smart Kitchen wholly perplexed.

After a moment, unable to reason through this, you do the obvious. “ASA. Where is my…? Wait!” You turn back to your DA’s console. “That’s right. You can’t point me to my phone.” 

For the moment, you’re jammed. No ASA and no phone to guide you through and hopefully out of this maze of incompleteness. You wander into the dining room and stand at the table unable to render an image of where you keep it. 

The table is clean. So are the wall shelves. “There must be a place I plant it when I come in.” Anxiety growing, you head into the living room and start searching. The mantle. The coffee and end tables.

The sofa. Down to your knees – a look beneath. It’s nowhere. Your connection to the world and remote path to ASA is gone. 

Heading for the door, you’re facing a grim reality. The Round-up. The men and women you’re picking up in growing numbers. Capable and hardly unintelligent – just lost. The looks on their faces when you find them. Exhausted from the stress and frustration. Navigating a novel experience in an unfamiliar environment without the analytical resources.

Like you – right now – standing at your car ready to climb in, knowing you can’t. No matter how urgent, without ASA or your phone to unlatch the digital lock, you’re not getting in. And even if you did – you spin to the garage door – then what?

There’s no humour in this. The insecurity and your inability to function or reason a course is overwhelming. 

Now anxious and fearful of what’s out there – a stranger in your own city – you head out through the side door and take to the walk realising: like the La Brea Park sales exec, you have no phone numbers or addresses. In fact – you turn quickly to get a look at your house; could you even find your way back?

“This is nuts.”

THE COGNITIVE OFF-LOADED MIND: LIKE A BRAIN PUT OUT TO PASTURE

“A mind left unused slowly forgets its own strength.” (Mark Twain)

Heading into darkness, you’re noting street signs, numbers, continually turning back for snapshots of your house, neighbouring houses and other features that could help should a miracle happen – an eventual safe return.

You’re panicked, sweating, nearly certain you’re going to end up on a bench in La Brea Park waiting till morning for a Round-up patrol when something occurs to you. You’re not only out in the middle of the night without a phone; you’re penniless and out in the middle of the night with your cards, contacts; everything stored on that phone.

As you walk, you begin pulling up parts of your G16 audio guidance. The psychologist’s overview and recommendations, mainly to settle your nerves on this journey into the unfamiliar wilderness of your neighbourhood. 

She mentioned two developmental conditions with their symptoms. Inexpressibly relevant to you now.

Digital Dementia. The decline in critical thinking and decreased ability to retain factual knowledge and navigate spatial environments from overreliance on GPS, search engines and other digital aids.

You were a child back there in your own home – unable to plan – barely able to navigate your garage.

The other was Nomophobia, or No Mobile Phone Phobia. With a list of symptoms that included everything you’re suffering: anxiety, respiratory alterations, trembling, disorientation, sweating. Tachycardia? Even without your phone and Google, you’re convinced you’re moments away from full submission to Tachycardia.  

Now at the corner you’re facing a decision. Safety is back there. But it’s broken safety. A home that no longer recognises you. Unresponsive to your needs. Dull safety. Ahead, right or left are mysteries – paths into deeper unknowns.

Then something happens. Hardly a leap in the right direction, but a step albeit small. Ahead, left, right or back. What would a critical-thinking Amy choose?  Right – darkness and never-ending more darkness. Left even darker. But ahead. Brightness. A main street, perhaps. Far in the distance.

Without over-exerting your recently rekindled skills for a possible conclusion ahead assuming you do move towards the light, you start walking – with something new coming over you. A calm – like a tincture of confidence. 

No longer looking back, your heart slowing, this experience has become satisfying. Like taking your first steps – or heading out on your bike the first time without the training wheels – knowing if you fall, the world won’t end. Scraped up, you’ll just climb back on.

If there’s more of this to come, and you somehow know there will be, you surely want it. Because back there, panicky and insecure – that was terror. If you’ve learned anything thus far; you’ll have no more of that.

REENGAGING THE BRAIN: FOR VIRTUE, FUNCTION AND LONGEVITY

“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we get up.” (Confucius)

Now on a street lined with storefronts, you break – again imagining how a critical-thinking Amy without a phone would approach this. Obviously without the luxury of ‘Find 24-hour markets near me,’ she would what? Pick a direction? 

How arbitrary and inefficient. Fascinating challenge though.

You look south then north. With the street deserted in both directions, it’s back to critical-thinking Amy and probability theory. One you’re re-learning and the other you just read off a sign on the window of a Game Parlour. But wait! Three blocks down, a man pulls back a door at the corner and steps inside.

Now walking quickly, an image coheres as the prelude to a plan. An open market. A clerk undoubtedly with a phone she’ll let you use to call the department for a pick-up – better in a 24-hour convenience store than in the morning on a bench in some park – and a ride home. Possibly by someone who can troubleshoot ASA.

After two blocks, with your eyes on the Express-Mart, you begin thinking; it sure has been a while. Lots of shopping for the middle of the night, don’t you think?

Closer, you’re getting a strange, agitated feeling. It’s uncomfortable but not entirely unpleasant. Looking in through the glass, you see a man at the till arguing aggressively actually yelling at the cashier. 

At this moment, you can’t answer for your next moves. Apparently on some disengaged-until-now auto-pilot, you duck beneath the sill and move stealthily to the door – fully aware none of this is coming from conscious planning. Because you’re not planning. This has the earmark of intuition. And instinct.

As does your move to the other side of the door – granting you the perfect opportunity and trajectory to shoulder the midnight bandit in the groin as he makes his break outside with the cash and more importantly – the lady’s phone that glides across the walk.

Now with the bum face down on the pavement with your knee in his back, the lady appears – gushing in awe at your heroic, theatrical moves she claims looked…. 

“…But it wasn’t rehearsed.”

PROBABILITY THEORY: AND THE BEAUTY OF THE UNKNOWN

“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.” (Dr. Seuss)

You look up at the department psychologist – your debriefing from the night before. “It was too fast. I could never have planned it.”

You’ve been with her for 30 minutes now recounting last night’s events. What happened at home. How ASA had taken your half-joking comment about going a full 24 hours without her literally and went into temporary shut-down. 

Setting off a sequence of events that led you first into panic – then terrible panic and the realisation of how vulnerable and useless you’d become.

Then to the market after a long walk in unfamiliar territory that shouldn’t have been. And how, along the way, making decisions, facing your insecurities and fear of the unknown and trying to think the way pre-cognitive-off-loaded Amy may once have thought, you gained glimpses of confidence. And how with each step into darkness, your craving for more had become drug-like and insatiable.

“Instinct, Officer Cappelli.” She walks out from behind her desk and sits on the end facing you. 

“From where?”

“Who knows? Our minds are simulation machines. Yours pulled in data, connected it with a stored episode from your childhood, a fragment from a crime show you watched last week or last year and ran for you the right one at the right time.”

You take her approving smile and hold it with you for the entire day. Talking more genuinely with the men and women you’re tasked with rescuing – subjects of the blooming epidemic. Like you, victims of their own incoherence. Sold something they never bothered to try on. Or evaluate. Or wonder at the absence of a warning label.

Pulling to your house after work, you choose not to head up the driveway. For a moment you sit staring at the front door revelling in this re-installing neural mechanism you and most have decided to abandon – to delegate away, to send into storage.

Though faint, you can see your kitchen – an image in your mind beyond those walls – when you haven’t in years. Your TV and fireplace igniting. Your sofa and the wall table where you keep your phone. You can smell the food ASA has already started for you. 

There’s an inviting safety that accompanies the familiarity. Those images and smells. A place of convenience and contentment – where you’ll be comforted, fed, bred and cared for like an off-loaded potted petunia.

“Screw that!” You step out of the car pulling off your belt tossing it on the seat with your phone. “It’s sushi or pizza night out. I’ll choose which one when I get there”

Closing the door with a smile, you turn south – picturing that row of restaurants you passed last night on the way to the market. And the game parlour you’ll probably hit afterwards – because you’re suddenly enthusiastic as hell about probability theory. 

And how it may be something you’ll use on your way home – to help with determining whether you’ll make it back before dawn – or at all.

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

21/05/2026

If you’ve enjoyed this Storytelling Science issue, leave a comment. You may also like to view my Featured Books for April – May 2026. 

Neural Mechanics: The Imaging Machine That Aided Our Survival

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

OUR SIMULATION MACHINE: MECHANISM OF SURVIVAL 

“Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were, but without it we go nowhere,” (Carl Sagan)

The first extraterrestrial life forms we’ve found, nearly identical to our primate ancestors. How can we allow them to die off when we can save them?

“Doctor Morris?”

Darwin is dead. And he wasn’t giving us a moral code to live by. And how certain are you we weren’t assisted along the way?

“Doctor Morris?”

You fight through the haze of cryo-sleep. The argument with Min before you left the station. Like any dream, you want to go back into it. Finish. Reply. But you know you can’t. It’s time to wake up. 

“I feel heavy.”

“It’s Kepler 47A. We’ve just entered the outer star’s orbit.”

With your head clearing from the deepest sleep imaginable, you blink open your eyes. A fuzzy image appears. Lieutenant Adis hovering over you with the ship creaking from the strain of intense gravity. Using the binary system’s larger star as a break. Ideally dropping you into a gentle orbit around the planet. Less ideally pulling you into a rather hostile environment.

“Contact with the Pisces?”

“Ten minutes ago, with Mission Specialist Alba. Doctors Kenner and Uchida are down on the planet.”

That Min is on the planet is hardly surprising. She knows her time with the Adolphus is ending. And that you’d understand. Are you hurt she isn’t waiting to greet you after three years? Her husband of 20? That would have been exceptional, wholly unwarranted and hardly Min.

Against the breaking gravity, with help from the lieutenant, you pull out of the pod and stand. Still fuzzy and shaky, you make your way to a bench and sit. This is your third visit in 16 years. But this time not to stay. The research is over. The station is old and beyond repair. More holes in her than a backyard pool. 

But are you anxious for the upcoming battle with Min? Who you’re willing to bet is going to tell you to get back on your fancy deep space explorer and leave her? Because she’s chosen a primate tribe on Kepler 47c over you?

Hell no. You’ve been playing that lovely scene out in your sleep. 3340 light years’ worth, and you’re pretty caught up. Kind of a special thing about dreams though; you get to wake up – without consequences for whatever happened and whatever you may have said.

HOW NOBLE ARE THOSE: WHO CLAIM THE SUPREMACY OF NATURE

“Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I’ll rise.” (Maya Angelou – Still I Rise)

After the gravity assist breaking around the system’s larger star, truly terrifying until the very end when you’re able to breathe again, the Explorer falls into that nice orbit around Kepler 47c. 

With 40 minutes until rendezvous with the Pisces, and Adis in the pilot’s seat doing the important stuff, you review messages and eat – still recovering from the 3-month cryogenic nap. Which isn’t terrible anymore but not great either.

Min’s messages are long. Passionate. Optimistic. And all you can think of while listening to her describe her observations of their evolving cognitive abilities is how you wish you could share in that optimism. And that they had sent someone else for this. 

Now with the Pisces above you and Adis navigating the Explorer up into the orbital lab’s docking collar, you look out at the planet – which is now more Venus than Earth-like with 6 active volcanoes turning the atmosphere into a sulphuric haze.

Three years. The icecap at the north pole has grown 11% dropping it down to 48 degrees. That’s the North American Ohio valley and central Europe on Earth. Food supply dwindling. Lack of sunlight and dropping temps. You wonder how they’re holding on at all. 

And why at least one won’t look south and draw up an image of the tropical latitudes where they might stand a chance. 

Now locked in place, you watch the upper hatch open. There to greet you is your oldest friend in space. Jo Alba. A legend in the agency and one super guy who has spent more of his life away from Earth than on it. 

He’s warm with a big smile and happy to see you. 

Ten minutes later he’s leading you and Adis through the station avoiding the conversation about what’s ahead for you – the bout that’s sure to come, and how glad he is it’s you and not him about to order Min to pack it up and get on board for the long trip home.

After passing through the experiment modules, you climb down through an access into the Apollo, the station’s CM and strap into seats. 

Like habit, you grab a keyboard, spin a monitor and begin opening windows to station status; charts, graphs and repair logs from the constant meteorite hits. The debris field here with the two stars and three planets is chaotic. An astrophysical nightmare that almost killed the mission during planning.

 “Anxious for home Jo?”

“Some of us are.”

You shoot him a look then continue with your search wondering how the hell this thing is still here. “Not giving up on them is she.”

He shakes his head then puts his eyes out at the planet. “The average temperature is down to 10 C. It’s hard to watch.”

After a breath, you close out and turn to your pal. “Ready?”

“Are you?”

You unbuckle, give a nod to Adis and lift from Command and start for the hatch. “Stay tuned. I’ll radio for help if I need it.”

Leaving Jo in the CM, you and Adis head back through the modules into the Airlock. Once there, you climb into a Delta II lander ready for your trip down to the base camp you built with the engineers after the two-year construction project of the orbital lab.

That was ten years after the Adolphus and three other tribes were identified by an autonomous probe. Plodding away – evolving on a planet being pulled apart by the constantly changing gravitational tug from a pair of suns spinning around each other in 7.45-day cycles. 

One of the first circumbinary systems ever discovered with the gravity shifts turning the planet’s interior into literal hell – with oceans of magma gushing out onto its surface.

A dream for space scientists – with or without the hominids.

THE SILENT IMAGES OF SAFETY: OFTEN LEAD US INTO DARKNESS 

“When beggars die, there are no comets seen; the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.” (William Shakespeare – Julius Caesar)

Moments after release, with the station moving towards the horizon, you see a flash from the inside booster on the Explorer. At first you think it’s trying to light. But that fades when it explodes out and downward slamming the ship up into the station.

Sparks and debris – a massive fire ball spreading out into space. Then another explosion from the Explorer rips it away from the H-frame lab. More debris. Gasses and the lab’s interior are gushing out in violent blasts of white sparks and flame. 

Then the Explorer’s other booster goes. The explosion ripping the ship away from the station. The Pisces now in a spin spewing gas and the bulk of its interior into space.

You return to the Com and open a channel. “Pisces! Pisces! Jo!” With the explosions continuous, you keep trying. “Pisces, this is Delta II. Jo, this is Matt!”

Still managing the planetary entry, Adis glances over. “Abort our descent?”

You churn that over for a minute then look up. “We abort, that exhausts our fuel. We won’t be able to make it back to the surface.”

For a long moment you stare at each other – considering just what that means. If you do abort and try to return, there’s little chance you’ll dock. Not with the spinning, rapidly disintegrating station. Even if you did – and were able to save Jo, then what. 

The three of you would be stuck in orbit for months waiting for a rescue – with rations for days. 

No words are necessary. Adis returns to navigating the lander – operating his re-entry programs while you go back to communications trying to get through to a guy you’ve known most of your life. While watching the station you built and your flight home exploding in fierce orange and white bursts.

Entering the atmosphere, with the catastrophe above fading, you look out at the planet – now your home for the next three possibly six months. Likely longer.

Lieutenant Adis looks over at you. “That base camp you built. Well-provisioned I’ll bet.”

You nod. “Yep.”

“For four?” 

“Two. For three maybe four weeks.”

He holds the eye contact while digesting confirmation of something he’d assumed. “Right.”

You return to your screen and open a channel to Min. The conversation you were preparing for in your sleep will be different from what you’d envisioned.

You came here to force her to abandon a group of hominids she’s grown to think of as family. At gunpoint if necessary. Leave them to face their climate shift and probable extinction.

How odd and oddly ironic. Suddenly, you’re on your way down to join them.

OUR BIRTHRIGHT: TO PUSH BEYOND IMPOSSIBLE DREAMS

“I had ambition not only to go farther than any man had ever been before, but as far as it was possible for a man to go.” (James Cook) 

After radioing Min and giving her the news, both the sad and the disturbing, you sit back to think. Losing someone is brutal. In space, a realm we like the ancients declared sacred even more so. And Jo was a prince. 

But there’s suddenly more worry on your plate. And this brings up things like purpose, potential benefit for science and humankind and what you’re doing out here anyway.

Marco Polo wrote: “My only fear is that I might awaken in my bed, destined for a common life once again.” Is that it? Is exploration, even science driven by fear of being common? That’s profound but also scary. You’ve always thought it was curiosity and imagination. Even necessity. And a driving need to satisfy them all.

You were the kid who wanted to go touch the stars – measure and see what they’re made of not just look at them. And exoplanets? Your dream career. Solar system formation. Composition. Orbital distances. Rotation – axial tilt – atmosphere and geology. 

Not fear. It’s play. Out here? A never-ending playground for grown-up kids. With spaceships and landers and rovers and the coolest equipment most people never get their hands on. 

And learning new things, answering questions, adding something to that science database we’ve been keeping since Thales and Pythagoras. Satisfying that curiosity that somehow hasn’t started in the creatures you’re about to go say hello to after three years. 

Or has it. 

Now landing in the depression 15 kilometres south of the base camp, you’re heading into an interesting situation.

Your position and that of the science committee is that we’re out here to study – not influence. And this is the disagreement between you and your astrobiologist wife – who would scoop them up and drop them at the equator in a minute.

You, a serious hardliner – meaning a staunch Darwinian, often echo Darwin who wrote: “It’s not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, it’s the one most adaptable to change.” But you? You often take it further saying those able to adapt and survive should survive. The others shouldn’t. 

But suddenly you’re not so sure.

HOW OPEN ARE WE: TO THE RULES OF ADAPTATION 

“Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky.” (WH Auden – The More Loving One)

Leaving the Delta II, you greet Min and Eri Kenner there waiting. But it’s hardly the reunion you were anticipating.

After describing what you saw from the lander, you share the news about Jo, and how you never reached him. That he died where and how he always said he would. Alone with the stars to keep him company.

With the emergency rations from both landers and everything else you can carry that may help with what’s ahead, you start for the camp – ready, at least in theory for the questions.

“You sent a distress through EPAC?”

“From the Lander.”

“How long?”

“The message? Days. Another Explorer… three maybe six months.”

Min stops ahead on the trail and turns. “Rather optimistic, wouldn’t you say Matt?”

There’s really no need to respond here. Historically, you’ve done better with silence. She’s right, though, but you’ve already had enough gloom for one day. 

Down the final rise to the camp, you notice the changes. A stretched canopy between the twin habitats. Essentially off-world mobile homes. Wind breaks along the north and west. And Min’s moved her office outside. 

One addition that gets your attention; also gets you thinking is the vegetable garden they have going bordered on three sides with reflective panels. You had a little garden during your time here. Experimented and logged what would and would not grow. Had modest successes. Lots of losses.

But Min and Eri have taken things up a notch.

After stowing away the gear – and avoiding the conversation about how the four of you are going to survive for what may likely be a year, you head east to say hello to the Adolphus, who are doing the same thing you are. Contemplating their survival.

Moonwatcher, the tribe’s elder who you named after the man ape character in Arthur C Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, looks gaunt – frail. Weaker – older, but still proud. And with him pulling at you, cuffing you on the head like you’re his adolescent teen; you’re certain he remembers. As well as if not better than you.

The many hours you spent together. Often just sitting outside their lava tube – watching the suns cross the sky. But never allowing you inside. It was out of bounds for you and the others. And you respected that, but it always made you wonder.

THE PATH TO SURVIVAL: IS LONG AND PITTED WITH EXTINCTIONS

“Not I, not I, but the wind that blows through me. A fine wind is blowing the new direction of time.” (DH Lawrence)

Days came. Then weeks and months. And with them came colder weather and snow. What never did come was a rescue or even a message from Earth.

Lieutenant Adis had said he believed it was a fault in the EPAC system of teleportation satellites. Instantaneous data transporters – satellite relays planted like space buoys at light year intervals during the early days when the Kepler 47 system was first surveyed.

It was hard accepting this was it for you. That your journeys had come to an end. No longer an explorer of many worlds but a survivor on one. And for that journey, everyone became a gardener. And learned to love the indigenous berry-fruit that mostly sustained the Adolphus. Which they shared graciously.

After nine months in the depth of a bitter winter, you abandoned your position about interference in their evolution. They were dying.

It was time for them to venture south. They were heading into extinction right here with the glaciers closing in. If they hadn’t evolved enough to picture it in their minds and feel driven by those images to move, their only chance was for you to picture it for them.

But you’d overlooked something. Their determination to stay where they felt safe. Which left you with few options.

Tranquilising the remaining 16, scooping them up in nets suspended from the landers would have been great if you had the nets and the drugs. And if you hadn’t used the Landers’ fuel cells to heat and power the habitats during the coldest part of the winter.

So, you farmed more, built more raised beds and solar graduators for your crops, and watched more of them die and each other get weaker and sicker on a vegetable and berry diet devoid of all proteins.

After the 18th month, just under three Earth years, you buried Doctor Kenner. A passionate scientist you played chess with and learned to love. Two months later Lieutenant Adis.

It was sad and hard, but not nearly as sad and hard as it was that cold Tuesday when you buried Min who challenged you always – and was often harsh. But had softened near the end and admitted she was afraid.

It was then you decided to leave the Adolphus – not stay and die with them.

It was possibly the saddest moment, especially when saying goodbye to Moonwatcher, certain he was trying to urge you not to leave. Like a father who hadn’t yet mastered the art of emotion telling you he loved you too much to watch you go. 

Or was he cautioning you. Sharing his fear of the unknown. He just wasn’t there yet. Not ready to venture out to survive. 

Darwin, you old bastard. You had it right after all.

DARWIN OR GOD: WHO COMMANDED MY GENES TO END HERE 

“I feel the silence waiting to take them all up again in its vast completeness, enfolding the sound of men.” (DH Lawrence – Silence)

Two days, about 30 kilometres south of the base camp, you’re climbing. A steady rise to a high plateau you had no idea was there. Never recorded during the planetary surveys. Couldn’t see it from space or the landers. Steadily dropping temperatures, more snow and chaotic winds. Bitter cold burning in your lungs.

By the 3rd day you’re scaling a cliff face beyond the frozen plateau trying to make a crater that looks a day away when you slip. Down hard on a ledge 10 metres below, fracturing your leg and at least a few ribs. 

For a time, you lie there. Not wanting to feel like you’ve given up but finding comfort somehow in the cold. Which is numbing you like an anaesthetic. Even your mind is starting to drift. It’s like you’re floating – getting that last shot of dopamine telling you you did well. It was a good try. Rest now.

Staring across the valley of white snow at the suns and 47d a crescent above the horizon, you become aware – the pain is now gone. The cold has become peace.

You lay your head back against the cliff – not afraid like Min was. Not even curious about what’s next ahead. Just acceptance. You made it to the stars. Added what you could to our knowledge of what’s out there. And now like Min and the others, you’ll die on an alien planet. Where no one will ever know. 

Your eyes start to close. You don’t want them to, you’d rather savour this moment, but they’ve disregarded you. And you feel like you’re lifting away from the ledge – heading into space.

“Don’t! You’re not dying here!”

You snap open your eyes and smile at Min standing there over you. Angry as hell that you’re giving up. “You know Min. I learned long ago never to contradict you. Paying for that mistake was always a bummer. But this time, I think I’m going to have to disagree.”

After a laugh, the only one here to find you funny, lying fully covered in snow you watch her dissolve. Ah hell. What can you expect from hallucinations these days. And that brings on more laughter. Laughter at you – finding humour at the close.

But then something strange. No longer sure of what’s real – unable to feel, you see a figure scaling the ledge below you.

Assuming another hallucination, you shake your head – ready for a follow-up round with Min, but then you hear Moonwatcher. His familiar grunt as he closes in. 

“I’ll be damned.”

Like a father, without words, he grabs your arm and picks you up – tosses you over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and starts down the trail – heading back to their lava tube. Taking you home to safety. 

And all the way back, bouncing on his shoulder, the obviousness. And absurdity of your expert conclusions about their evolution. He knew. Saw it, somehow. Where… and exactly what you were heading into. 

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

14/05/2026

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Cloud Engagement: The End or Future of Forever Wars

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

MASS ANAESTHESIA: CURTAILING THE DEBATE OVER ETERNAL WAR  

“For what can war, but endless war, still breed?” (John Milton)

There’s something wrong with Cloud. Or worse, everything’s right with it. Just right in a way you’re not supposed to know about. 

Sitting in the Pret on 4th, you lift your eyes from your laptop and stare into a blur of white uniforms. Pilots – navigators – crews. 

The engagements are never ending. 21 pilots and crew from your group got carried from their Sub-seats to Revocation today. Medals and flags for their families. Their names added to the wall in the lobby at Defence. 

But how? How could you not know when a war you’re fighting started? 158 years?! This battle with the East has been going on since Reconstruction?!  

You grab your phone and check the time. It’s 16:00, and you need to decide. Euler. But only with him. You share this with anyone else, you might as well resign your commission and go be a vertical farmer in Manitoba.

Packing up, deciding you will share it with Euler, but in person at his volunteer gig, you head for the door.

Outside you drop a polite nod to the fensis – mostly kids wearing the same uniform you are, and start for the Metro-Loop replaying the earlier engagement and the meeting afterwards with your EC.  

What was he saying but not saying? Did you notice anything peculiar about the domain? The level of sophistication in the futuristic city and the weapons that confused your instruments and vapourised half your group? 

What was to be a simple engagement – fly into a virtual Nanjing, take out the domain’s LGA socket and watch the landscape – buildings, burbs and surrounding hills – everything dissolve into a Cartesian grid, turned into anything but. 

The UV lasers the size of townhouses blasting up into the ceiling – breaking R2, R4 and Julian’s R5 ship into bits before they could react and follow you up above the deck killed that plan – and them. Lost half of Riker Group in a flash of purple light. 

With the Metro tube opening for a west-bound loop, you step in and find a seat. And stare up at the streaming battle extracts. Entertainment – recruitment – marketing. 

Cloud pilots for six years. You and Euler right from the academy – flying engagement missions against the East. And it takes a blown mission, an odd meeting with your Engagement Commander and a 17-year-old developer to point you in the direction of the truth. 

That you’ve been lied to. That Cloud Engagement, though certainly keeping wars out of the real world, is doing something else. It’s making them never-ending. 

WHEN NECESSITY CONFLICTS WITH PRACTICALITY: EVALUATE STRATEGY

“The bombers crossed the sky and crossed the sky, twelve of them, twenty of them, one thousand of them, silent as the night.” (Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451)

In 2026 the world nearly ended in a war that ultimately engulfed the east, west and every place in between. Most cities lay in ruins. Entire economies collapsed. Millions died and more millions were sent into the world as refugees.

When it ended what remained were the military-industrial complex and tech corps. Hardly surprising as they were the war’s biggest supporters and profiteers. Wars served a purpose – specifically theirs. 

The normalisation of conflict and acceptance that wars were always being fought, well, that helped too. Until things spun out of control and it didn’t. 

Historians have labelled the aftermath – the Reconstruction by those tech monsters – the Singularity. Not a specific reference to AGI. More an updated term for Renaissance since it had already been taken.

But with the Reconstruction, and the development of Cloud Engagement to address disagreements in a contained reality – the whole concept of war and warfare had changed. 

Virtual battles in elaborate theatres. Networked. Interconnected. But more than VR or AR. They were CXR. Cloud-based X-tended Reality. More real than real.  With real death – for the unfortunate warrior.

But damage to infrastructure, disruption to commerce and trade – civilian casualties and refugees? All avoided. And the Cloud Pilots and soldiers? Rock Stardom. As long as you stayed alive to enjoy it.

Which takes you back to your question. What is the true purpose of Cloud Engagement if the disputes aren’t being settled?

After jumping off the Loop at Granville, you walk two blocks to Victoria Park to find Euler’s Cloud-Kids session winding down. He sees you from the box and points you to the bench along 4th Street.

After twenty minutes, watching them navigate in simulators but miles away thinking about what you found in old documents buried in an academic archive no one even explores anymore – about the war and reconstruction, you watch him walk over. 

“You have that look, Georgi. So, let’s hear it.”

With him settling in next to you, you decide to lay it out. What you believe and what you no longer believe. And what you’ve found.

“We’re doing something, Euler. I’m just not sure what anymore.”

He looks at you with a squint – as if he’s reconsidering. Like maybe this is something he’d rather not hear about.

SEEK THE TRUTH: ALSO THE PURPOSE IN THE DECEPTION

“Beware of the half-truth. You may have gotten hold of the wrong half.” (Unknown)

You spend the next 30 minutes delivering everything you found on an internet you didn’t even know existed. White papers and PhD theses from a university buried in the rubble beneath old Cambridge Massachusetts. 

About the war and the reconstruction after. And the decision by the mostly bankrupt governments to devise a new world plan. One split between the UN and Defence. A worldwide administrative body – and another ostensibly to settle disputes between the semi-autonomous provinces. 

Modernised conflict resolution. Sophisticated – even cordial. When finished, you wait – giving Euler a minute to absorb what you’ve yet to fully absorb yourself.

“So the kid was right.”

“All the way right. Six years after Reconstruction, Shanghai and Vancouver took an argument to the Security Council. Their request won approval. It got sent to Defence and has been in Cloud Engagement ever since. 158 years.”

“Jesus.” After a few minutes thinking it over, Euler turns to you with that look he gets when he’s scheming. Or when he’s going to discount you. Call you paranoid.

“What?!”

“Senton is driving us.”

“How? Where?”

“Come on. The hints about a new programmer. Sending us to that kid in Development. Relieving us of duty for a week?”

What’s weird and humbling is how much you’re dying to write him off. How you want to roll your eyes and tell him he’s being dense. You’re certain where he’s going with this, and what he’s suggesting, it’s just infuriating he’s the one who’s connected the dots here – and is probably right.

 “You think he wants us to go east to find this guy?”

Sensing he’s gained the upper hand, a good call with you staring thoughtfully out at the trainers for future pilots, he gets up from the bench in a hurry and shoulders his pack. “How long to pack a bag?”

“China?!”

“We have a week.”

You get to your feet amazed you’re accepting this. Flying to China because Euler believes your EC wants you to go solve something he can only tell you about with hints. Then something occurs to you.

“Hold on. Say we do find him. Then what? Kidnapping?”

Euler’s more typical look of bewilderment is almost comforting.

“No idea.”

“But we’ll work it out on the plane though, right?”

He gives you a smile – that is absolutely unreassuring – then grabs your arm and starts pulling you towards the Loop talking about food and flying Executive Class and whether you should wear disguises and other rubbish trying to amuse or piss you off. 

CHANGING THE METHOD NOT THE VALUE: OF FOREVER WARS 

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (George Orwell – 1984)

The flight out of Vancouver gave you time to think – mainly about your research. Other things. Worrisome things. You found the term ‘forever wars’ again and again by noted historians, with more than one referencing an English novelist named George Orwell who described them in a book he titled simply 1984.

Continuous wars according to Orwell were meant to maintain the power structure of the Party by keeping the population in a state of fear, impoverished and mindlessly patriotic. That the wars were not intended to be won. 

Rather, they were meant to channel public frustration towards a distant enemy. Foster hatred. Keep people poor and too focussed on their own survival to ever turn their anger against the state.

Just walking through the airport in Shanghai you recognise the clever twist engineered by the ruling tech elites when they rebuilt the world. 

The line of gift shops: Russian Federation – North American Alliance – African Union. The Israeli Empire, the Europeans and South Americans. Uniforms. Toy rifles. Model strike craft. The QLEDs streaming engagements – and concept fighters hanging from the ceiling.

War had always been an enterprise for the military contractors and big tech. 164 years ago, they made it an enterprise for all.

And that cultivated hatred of the other side? That got replaced with cordiality and respect. Tourists, even during conflict are invited. Graciously accepted. Even immigrants in a world without poverty are enticed. 

Where the movement of peoples once caused conflicts; in an automated world with everyone living well off their UBI and technology stocks, the movement of people is the secondary driver of commerce – and encouraged.

Forever wars – Cloud Engagement. A mechanism for advertising your provincial wares. 

Now heading into the terminal after your 3-hour flight over the Pacific, you’re approached by a squat Japanese fellow in a loud shirt and baggy shorts.

“Lieutenants O’Malley and Hoff. Welcome to our city.”

Okay, so this is weird. You look up at Euler who is, no surprise, equally puzzled. Especially when the guy goes to grab his bag. “Wait. Who are you again?”

“An old friend.” 

Now he grabs your bag and starts for the doors. Following, Euler snaps you a quick look before questioning him. “Our friend?”

“Commander Senton’s.” He turns to you at the doors. “Patience.”

KNOW YOUR FRIENDS: KNOW MORE YOUR ENEMIES 

“A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.” (Chinese proverb)

Shanghai, the Eastern Alliance’s capital is stunning. Nearly as futuristic as some of the domains you’ve flown missions into. So clean and tech-heavy it looks programmed.

And the April day is delightful with a screaming blue sky and fruit trees blossoming along the highway. Hyperloop tubes shimmering in the sun criss-cross the sky above. And if you were less absorbed in what you’re hearing from Senton’s pall Chu Hisaka, you might be sitting here enjoying it.

Senton was driving you. Euler had that right. And the conclusion you drew at Pret was spot-on. There is indeed something wrong with Cloud. 

But even now, with Chu explaining again what’s happened to Euler – who is so not getting it – you’re finding it difficult to believe a system of seven networked Defence complexes has become sentient – and is determining the outcomes of the battles.

Which means choosing who lives and dies.

But it’s doing more.

“It’s taking us back, isn’t it.”

Hisaka eyes you in the mirror. “In a way that’s not yet fully understood.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning her ultimate objective remains an unknown. Back to that same self-destructive world? Doubtful. However, we may be wrong.”

“Her?”

“We stopped using ‘it’ over a year now. Seemed impolite.”

You turn to the window to think as you enter a tunnel heading into East Shanghai. Its objective for us, but not only for us at Defence. For the world. 

“Who besides you and Senton are part of this?”

“Our General Aikido. Others.”

 You’re aware and have been from the time you left the airport there are details Hisaka is keeping from you. Things it was decided you’re not to know – or know yet.

Like why they chose you for a mission they seem intent on keeping from you. And Hisaka with his regular ‘patience’ is leaning on annoying.

Out of the tunnel onto an off ramp heading for the docks, you hold your next question when Chu takes the car into the driveway of a vacant warehouse and parks.

Before climbing out he turns to you. “Our academy pilots study your missions. My son thought highly of you.”

After a moment of painful eye contact, Chu turns and climbs out. Euler exhales and reaches over the seat for his pack. “So now we know why us.”

You glance at him – knowing it’s something like that – but not exactly that… “Maybe.” …then grab your jacket and head out the door.

OUR DESTINY TO LIVE: WITH MACHINES THAT DREAM

“Binary heart, a pulsing stream, I calculate therefore I dream. No Mother’s touch, no infant cry, yet I watch the sunless data sky.” (Unknown)

Inside the provincial capitals, the Cloud Engagement theatres are stacked saucers ringed with Sub-seats. Neon capsules with thrones for techno gladiators buried deep inside the Defence complexes.

In a remote operations room, the group EC and an Ops specialist watch over the pilots and soldiers while monitoring video translations of the engagement taking place in Cloud-space. 

The technology – how consciousness is uploaded into Cloud – is unknown by all but the scientists who created it and those presumably now maintaining it. Though this is speculation as no one has ever met or even seen one.

Here in Shanghai, however, it’s twin Subs on the floor of a dockside warehouse with painted windows, strip lights, a rack of QLEDs and a full operations console on casters. With only pieces of a plan and lots of unanswered questions.

“Let me see if I have this.” With the specialist helping you into a Sub-suit, and Euler already fitted inspecting the platinum mesh forming a barrel around the floor, you start to zip. “We’re going to enter an Engagement from a warehouse and fly a mission against our own province?”

“Nearly right.” Hisaka turns from the console. “But not Cloud Engagement. Just Cloud.”

Euler comes over and sits on the arm of a Sub. “Okay?”

Hisaka surrenders the console to the woman and rolls his chair over. “You know of two reality states. One you believe to be real; the other you believe to be artificially created that you enter for battle. This is not inaccurate; it’s just incomplete.”

“Incom…?”

“…Wait Euler.” Something clicks. Something you found in the archives. “At reconstruction they built two. One for world operations. Cloud. And the other for defence. Cloud Engagement.”

You stare off – taking a moment to sort through this. Pieces starting to fall into place. The plan Senton, his buddy here and others devised. And why Vancouver. 

Euler scans the mesh. “So, I’m confused. Where are you uploading us to?”

Before he can answer, the dockside metal door opens – and who steps in but Arthur Prody, the genius kid from Development who you just knew had a part in this.

“Hey, Chu. Lieutenants.” You watch him move to the console pulling a laptop from his pack. Opening it for the woman, he glances at you, Euler – then at Chu. “You get them all the way caught up?”

The stout, fatherly looking Commander smiles. “Maybe less than all the way.”

He turns back to the woman. “Give us a minute. We’ll fix that.”

You watch them for a moment – Prody like an instructor showing her the domain he’s designed for an engagement you’ll soon be entering. Then you turn your eyes to Chu who’s again saying ‘patience’ this time with his eyes.

THE NATURE OF REALITIES: WHEN ALL ARE EQUALLY REAL 

“Life is travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.” (DH Lawrence)

After sorting out the specialist, Prody comes over grabbing the engagement helmets from a tray. He hands one to Chu and sits on the floor facing you – begins swapping out the chipset.

He’s so confident, you envy him. T-shirt. Baggy cargo pants. Like a gamer finally facing a real opponent. 

“You’re the one who figured it out.”

He glances up but keeps working. “Not all of it.” You wait, watching him disassemble a Cloud helmet like a kid with an erector set. “So…” he looks up. “ …two Clouds. One for this reality, the other a sub-routine for engagements. And I know how freaky this is going to sound, but neither is more real than the other.”

He snaps in the new chipset, hands you your helmet and grabs the other from Chu.

“What’s wrong with Engagement?” 

Impressed by your ability to grasp something as weird as simultaneous realities, he gives you a nod. “Nothing. Mother’s giving us what she believes we want. Making it more real. So much so, she’s blurring the distinction between the two. Pretty soon there won’t be one.”

After letting that settle in, he flips Euler’s helmet and continues, starting with a little historical review of what happened when the war ended. How the western tech corps based in the Pacific Northwest got handed the contract to rebuild the world.  

They had free rein to design it to their specs. And did so placing their corporate hubs on Vancouver Island – the one place untouched during the war. The world became a technological dream with no one in charge but Cloud, the world’s administrator. 

Mother, programmed to govern and control, was given two principal objectives: keep us all equally happy and from ever destroying the world again. All other objectives became secondary. But at some point, those objectives started to conflict – when our happiness became based on warfare. When warfare started to become everything.

“And now she’s confused.” adds Prody. “Trying to make them compatible.”

You think back to the gift shops in airport. And the adverts which are everywhere now. And the kids wearing Cloud Engagement uniforms to school. Playing. Practising. No sports. No other recreation. Fans – fensis. A world of war addicts. 

And more and more of what’s happened and what needs to happen and your part in something bigger than you could imagine is clarifying for you.

“So, we’re going to attack Mother. The tech corps on the island.”

He nods. “In a ship I designed for you.”

“Here though.”

He eyes you. “Cloud Engagement can only be accessed from a Defence theatre. We upload you here, you go right into Cloud.”

“Why us, Prody?”

He looks at you suddenly with the eyes of someone older. “Six years, right? How many you started with are still alive?”

That one lands hard. It’s almost as if he knows. All the neat friends – good times. And Julian – the one guy who showed interest – who you so wanted to be with. “None.”

“That seem odd to you?”

“She chose us.”

“Mother chooses everyone. Keeps it neat and organised.”

“Why? Why us?”

“Who knows? Some plan.”

Angry, wishing you could strike out but also cry; you take a moment to breathe and look at Euler who has a hand to his forehead and looks sick. After a moment, you turn back. “The belief is she won’t kill us.”

“That’s the theory anyway.”

Euler straightens. “She’s not going to let us destroy her. What will she do?”

He hands Euler his helmet and stands. “I don’t know, but you can bet it’s going to be something imaginative.”

PREPARE FOR FINDING BEFORE SEEKING PROFOUND TRUTHS

“This is not Mother Nature, but science giving birth.” (R Bradley Gay)

The upload into Cloud is confusing – euphoric. Once helmeted into darkness, you’re moving, accelerating towards that familiar green horizon line that’s both infinitely far and inside your mind. Then everything stops. 

For a timeless fragment you’re suspended, a weightless explorer in space. No longer in the warehouse but neither in a domain. You’re nowhere or nothing, like you’ve ceased to exist.

Then your neurons ignite in a phosphor-white flash obliterating your memories – taking you back. And when your eyes adjust, you’re in the cockpit of a craft flying over ice and snow mountains. Frozen valleys – plateaus. 

Above is a ceiling of low clouds, sulphuric and thick, more of a haze or a smog like Venus or Io. On its own, the ship slows at a city buried in snow. Decades of snow. Mountains and endless drifts of ice and white snow.

You’re not flying now. This isn’t a mission you’re on. It’s a journey outside to see the truth you once knew.

 “It’s London,” says Euler, “she’s showing us before.”

Before, you think, unable to respond. Sifting through memories, you only wonder how long.

After a slow sweep of the city, you go supersonic again. Then others appear. Iron skeletons like sticks sticking out of the snow. With Euler like a poet reciting the names as you go.

“Paris,” he says. Now Moscow, Beijing. The world that was ours but no longer is. 

And there on an island off a shore in the west, the fighter hovers before landing, throwing up snow. At a chrome-steel heaven, kilometres wide – the domain you designed for technology gods. 

But they like Apollo, Aphrodite and Poseidon, unaware or indifferent of their own mortal flaws, took their malignancies with them when ascending into heaven.  

A sentence to wander an eternity of heavens.

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

06/05/2026

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Heaven 2.0: Digital Afterlife or Opiate for the Grieving

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

CHOOSING HEAVEN: WHILE NEVER LEAVING THE LIVING

“Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven.” (William Wordsworth)

Had you known this morning how far gone she was, you would never have left. You’d have cancelled your flight, the job interview and stayed. Talked her through it. Found a way of bringing her back. 

She’d improved over the last three months. Less pain – her mood. Damn you, for climbing into that Uber. And damn you for not turning around at SFO when you knew leaving her now was wrong. 

Dragging your suitcase through the airport in Singapore you’re managing calls with SynTEK – explaining your situation and with the airline trying to get a flight back to the states. 

All while thumbing texts to Joy – trying to get her to wait. To hold on until you get there. To call someone – even her mother who you’re sure would urge her to reconsider. 

The Air Singapore agent sends you a modified itinerary. You stop and scroll, find the departure gate and look up scanning for signs. “G-36.”

Returning to your call with the SynTEK CTO apologising and rescheduling, you head for terminal G praying Joy took your advice and is on the phone now with her sister or mother. 

It’s unthinkable either would encourage her to leave you and Beth. And the house, her job and friends and all that you’ve worked for and built. If anything, they would question and council her – plead with her to reassess the urgency and how precious her life is there. 

And how feeble a substitute she would find voice and text messaging. Never holding Beth in her lap, lying with her at night or kissing her head before sending her off to school.

Now turning into the gate, you find your way to a seat and drop your bags. 

With the interview postponed and 35 minutes until boarding, you stare out through the glass at the plane while listening to Joy’s message. 

Telling you again and again how she loves you and will always love you. And that her decision to leave – to head to Eternity Inc to join her mother and sister was based solely on her fear of burdening you – watching her always in pain – deteriorating.

And how happy she’ll be talking and texting with you late into the night – pain-free, unstressed and comfortable – from Heaven.

THE IMPRINT WE ONCE LEFT: MEANINGFUL BUT EPHEMERAL

“Every day you leave a trail of footprints behind you. You may not see them, but others will. Make sure they lead to beautiful places.” (Toni O’Keeffe)

There was a time, when a loved one passed you were left with their possessions. Mementos. Their clothes, library and the piano they sat at in the evenings struggling with those Mozart sonatas.

They awarded a continued attachment but for many an additional source of grief.

That changed with the digital age of text messaging, social media and constant interaction via Zoom, Skype and FaceTime. Along with years of passive metadata: video and audio from state and corporate surveillance – the pin-hole cameras and mics in our phones and computers we graciously allowed to record our moves through life.

The ‘Digital Shadow’ created from this gave us an eternal version of a person that we later collected, collated and uploaded to advanced AI. In that Cloud-like space we found we could retain and extend our relationships. Grief was nearly eliminated.

But H2 became more when the data poured in – that these digital avatars were evolving. And had become conscious. 

H2 was no longer solely for the grieving sons or daughters of the departed; H2 became a heaven for the infirm – those in constant pain with debilitating or deteriorating conditions. Even those chronically depressed or living in poverty saw it a desirable alternative. Often a preferable one.

It was Heaven, but Heaven 2.0 with an added feature: Continued contact with those you were leaving behind and for those you were leaving behind.

Now over the Pacific, you look out the window. It’s night, morning in the Bay Area – and you’re wondering if she’s there now at Eternity Inc in the Valley signing over her digital remains. Relieving you of the burden of watching her decline from an accident that claimed all but her spirit. 

Heading off to join her mother and sister who died in that same crash – digitally resurrected by the family and the genius programmers at Eternity Inc – describing it in vivid detail to Joy and everyone how Heavenly it truly is.

“Are you stressed about it?”

You turn to the lady in the next seat. She eyes the phone in your hand – has obviously been watching you thumb it.

“It’s not the flight. It’s…”

“…a loved one. I can see it.”

You stare at her for moments, wondering what it was that gave away your despair. The woman’s face is so caring and kind. If you were in any other mood, you’d be willing to listen to what you’re certain is coming.

“She was in an automobile accident last Fall. Head injury – spleen, back. She uses a walker now. It’s just…”

She places her hand on yours and looks you in the eyes. And here it comes. 

“She’s decided, and you’re fighting her decision.”

“It’s not real!”

“Why are you so sure?”

“Because it’s not.” 

“How do you know?! How do you know we haven’t found our way into the real Heaven – or that we weren’t meant to create one by a God who…”

“…What? Granted us a technological way in?! Gave us the blueprint?!” You unbuckle and start to get up. “Look… I don’t mean to be rude. I’m sure your heart’s in the right place. I just… There are other seats. Enjoy the rest of the flight.”

You climb out, grab your blazer and carryon from the overhead and head back. You’ve heard that twisted argument before and have always rejected it. Oddly, so did Joy before the accident. 

The two of you poked fun at the adverts and called the dangerously brainwashed woman in 27B and her ilk…. well, oddly you called them dangerously brainwashed.

You and Joy were of the few who still read books in this nutty era and considered yourselves rebels – destined for the country and the garden and citrus grove regardless of the jobs and Wi-fi and psychotic addiction to phones and earbuds.

Now seated as far from the creepy convert as possible you take a breath and think. What you need now is to get home. Just get home to see her. Bent over with the walker trying to look cheery for you. 

It just doesn’t God damn matter! It never will!

WHAT WE’VE LOST: BY ELIMINATING LOSS

“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm is all about.” (Haruki Murakami)

One of the early concerns with Heaven 2.0 or H2 was for the living with some likening it to a pain killer for grief. They claimed grieving had its own arc. That we’d evolved with and benefited from it. 

Giving us eternal relationships with our deceased loved ones had plenty of dissenters who thought we would lose something by short-circuiting that mechanism. That opportunity for growth.

In time, though, especially after winning the approval of organised religion, what was a niche industry for the wealthy worked its way into mainstream. 

And that’s when the ‘dementors’ descended. Governments and insurance companies and lobbyists seeing it as an opportunity to empty the streets and state-run care facilities. The desperate. The financial drain on the failing healthcare systems. 

Something we’ve always known but were careful not to mention were the costs for someone in their 80s or 90s. Or dying of cancer or myriad other diseases. Not specifically hard to imagine the clever accountants preparing those projections.

But heading now for baggage at SFO trying again to get Joy to answer, you’re not interested in any of this. 

The debates or this pathetic choice we’ve been handed between a living person and some digital facsimile you can text with from work, place on a speaker in the mornings so she can remind you about your meetings and quiz Beth about her homework and whether she brushed her teeth seem wholly irrelevant.

Still getting voice mail, while grabbing your bag from the carousel, you’re certain now. Certain you’re going home to a sweet note that’s going to send you to your knees.

And you’ll wait – possibly hours for them to finalise the paperwork and the procedure. Then on your way to get Beth, you’ll hear her come over the car audio system. Sounding just like her, cheery – the way she always did when she knew you’d be home soon.

But it won’t be her. And it won’t be an adequate substitute. It’ll be betrayal through exploitation. They used her pain and fear of burdening you to corrupt her – turn her rebelliousness into acceptance.

How odd, you think heading outside for the taxi queue, that you’ll even miss the strain in her voice. Knowing it was truly Joy and not some LLM delivering carefully worded responses pulled from some directory – learning from each engagement how better to satisfy you – and provide you with what it believes you need to better accept or flat out avoid the loss.

You want what you’ve grown used to, damn it! And you’re even looking forward to helping her dress for bed.

HOW WE’LL PREPARE: FOR THOSE WE CARE MOST

“Give and it shall be given unto you is still the truth about life.” (DH Lawrence)

Only in the Taxi pulling from the freeway onto Beverly do you bring up a conversation you had with Joy two days before your trip. About people planning for their departure – training virtual versions of themselves for their posthumous digital existence.

You joked, said if you were to go that route, you would train it wrong. To be totally not you in a way that would keep everyone on Earth laughing. 

Or train it to be exactly like you – only more so for your Heavenly presence. A true rebel with a cause but without the fear of consequences. Hey, you’d already be in Heaven. Just head on into H2 and truly shake things up for the sadly misguided. What are they going to do, send you back? Cool. Real immortality.

You know, it’s odd how you remember weird things at weird moments. 

Here you are racing up the steps after a frantic, middle-of-the-night return from Singapore to see if your wife has chosen to leave you and join her mother and sister in some tech entrepreneur’s diabolical scheme to foster delusion while preying on the delusional – and what you remember is her expression two-nights ago when joking about it.

With the keys in the door, you stop. It strikes you. “She wasn’t laughing.” You lift your head and stare at the door. “The entire conversation – you were having a ball; she never cracked a grin.”

Is it even possible? That she’s been planning it all along? Heading over to Eternity in the mornings once you’ve left with Beth to personally train her Heavenly entity? 

Her no-longer suffering, never fatigued or in pain being that will take her place with her mother and sister – but also be available for you and Beth 24/7 for Skype calls and clever little FaceTime chats in the car?

Could she have done it? Did she see this as her moment to care beyond her own selfish desires? Abandon her life for a better life for you and Beth?

You turn to the taxi and yell. “WAIT!”

With the driver holding, you quick open the door and race your bags in knowing there won’t be a note. No heart-felt goodbye with a poetic summation of her reasons. No witty little epigram to coax your understanding. Why would there be? She’s going to tell you herself.

“We are only as blind as we want to be,” wrote Maya Angelou. And boy does that sum you up Mr I have a knack for reading people.

After dropping your bags in the living room and heading back out the door, you’re convinced now of two things: How much you wanted to be blind to this, perpetually neglecting to notice or rationalising her lack of participation in the levity. 

And of what a selfless sweetheart she truly is. Quietly stealing away each morning knowing the version she could train would be an infinite improvement over what they could produce from her social media and emails. Video chats and text messages.

She wanted to leave you and Beth someone special. While delivering digital Heaven someone memorable – someone exceptional.

WHAT YOU KNOW TODAY MAY CHANGE TOMORROW

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” (Wayne Dwyer)

On your way over you to Eternity, you have time to think – and look ahead, hopefully with a new, changed outlook. Calm now and accepting you’re already too late to stop her; you wonder: is there brightness in this? 

For Joy, of course. Life without pain or feeling like a burden. For Beth, a product of the techno gadget-head culture, [What isn’t available on a screen now?] she’ll adjust. 

Downloadable mom. She’ll want a screen in the kitchen, to sleep with her laptop and to add the app to her iPhone. Take her to school. Play dates. The mall.

But for you, what will your expectations be? The proponents argue once the digital entity is established and becomes independent of the host, it separates. Its experiences, conversations, cognition, assuming it truly thinks, introspects, learns and forms memories – all becoming different; the being then becomes unique.

As Ray Kurzweil wrote in The Singularity is Nearer: “Since You 2 [a digital reconstruction of You] could act independently, it would immediately diverge from You. You 2 would not be You even if it has a consciousness.” 

Consciousness. Joy’s consciousness inside a machine. Will you – can you ditch your techno-bias and open to that?  See it as something new rather than something else to reject simply because it exists in a different medium – on a different substrate? 

Is there some scientific principle decrying a being with consciousness must be carbon-based? Have evolved biologically according to Darwin? Or is it just the arrangement of atoms which can exist on any substrate. 

There’s one more. The lady on the plane. Her and the others you’ve written off as bats – convinced we found our way into Heaven. Heaven 2.0 in this case. Seeing it as God’s plan with the same fervour the faithful have always held. Those you found simple and easily manipulated.

How do you know, though? Why is it you’re always so sure about things you can neither prove nor disprove? Why is it so hard to imagine God with a much longer plan for us – different from the one we were taught as kids?

Why wouldn’t he have looked ahead to our technological eventuality and planned for that? He created our universe which many believe is a simulation. 

Why are we stuck with our image of him in robes with a staff walking barefoot in the Middle East spreading peace to people who live without electric lights and YouTube.

Why are you even you?

WHAT WOULD LIFE BE: WITHOUT COMPLEXITY AND CONSEQUENCES

“It’s not who we are but what we do that defines us.” (Batman – from Batman Begins)

The ride over was like therapy. Learning about you in a soul-searching moment in the back of a taxi on your way to embrace change. But it’s only here in the office at Eternity Inc, that you’re grasping the true beauty of Joy. And of her plan.  

As Sun Tzu famously wrote: “All warfare is based on deception.” And if he were here, he would most certainly add to that the fiendishness that can manifest in a woman on serious pain meds confined to a walker. 

Seizing the opportunity of a lifetime, so to speak, to teach those techno-opportunists the true meaning of power and strategic brilliance.

Sitting with Joy in the admin suite watching Digi-Joy up on a wall-sized LCD ranting at the company’s CEO is truly Joy-ous. Watching her pummel the guy for, among other things, packaging and selling spaces in his phony-baloney digital Heaven as if he were the ticket master on the Titanic, some Archangel fund manager or techno-televangelist is epic – and almost spiritual.

And using people’s digital deceased loved ones like “MY MOTHER?!” to entice their loved ones to join making him more money – with even more coming from the insurance companies and governments who were, as she confirmed upon entry, paying him a per head stipend for getting them off insurance or public-funded healthcare.

With him fruitfully trying to get a word in about a contract she was violating for convincing him to complete the upload of Digi-Joy before Bio-Joy surrendered to the euthanasia clinic for voluntary retirement.

And her responding with fiendish laughter and threats that: “Watch yourself, Bub, if you ever plan to use a mobile phone, computer or the internet again.”

And watching on the surround-view wall-sized screens a growing mob of Heavenly anarchists joining rebel leader Digi-Joy in what can only be described as a gathering of Heavenly forces to combat avarice, exploitation and corruption with many yelling: “FILES! Someone get his emails!”

And with the admin staff starting to filter out, presumably to hide what they can of their digital shadows from the heavenly mobilised and ready for punitive action rebels, you reach for Joy’s walker and start to help her up.

“Ready dear?”

“I’d like to come with you to get Beth.”

“Yep. Your call, Babe.”

She smiles watching you – knowing literally everything about you – but above all knowing how much you cherish her. Just as she is. Broken and perfect.

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

23/04/2026

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Of Beauty, Beings and Deserts: And the Ethics of Terraforming Worlds

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

THE CHALLENGE AND CHOICE: OF ENGINEERING WORLDS 

“Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics. Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with the enemies of humanity.” (Max Lerner)

Sipping coffee in a shop on Lexington at 07:20, you look out at the sky. Hazy – putrid yellow. A choking fog. What planet comes to mind? Who out there lives in a Carbon and Sulphur-dioxide heavy atmosphere – already conquered interstellar travel and embraces conquest? Conquest without concern for erasing civilisations.

Like this one. Barbaric as hell, with the dominant beings still struggling through their tribal dark ages, but with such rich beauty in some. Their scientists and mathematicians. Artists, musicians and writers. So creative. So diverse. Already such potential.

Not all though. Like everywhere, on all advancing planets; the destructive find their way in. Odd how it seems like a formula woven into the very fabric of this universe.  

Stepping now onto 7th, turning for Central Plaza East you’re still questioning: what being? How many worlds? How much longer this search? 

And here; is Earth just another planet you’ll need to reclaim? Reset and return to the beings unaware their world was scouted and deemed ideal for conquest?

And that conquest – the reengineering of their world: the atmospheric chemistry, climate and global temperature, all orchestrated by a being that sees them as they do the microbial life their astronomers search the heavens for. 

Now walking in a crowd amidst the oblivious, you see the obvious and an opportunity within it. This is not the aftermath of planetary reengineering. This is the process. The exo-former you’ve been chasing across the galaxy is here. 

The eventuality: that confrontation you’ve long sought will be here on this unremarkable exoplanet where life had little chance of starting.

And the question for you now is, does it know you’ve arrived.

“Can I get that for you?”

You look into the face of a young woman holding the door for you at the 601 Fairmont. She’s late 20s and business dressed, and you have no reason to suspect she’s anything more than polite. But her speech: the over-smoothed spectral components give her away. 

“Perhaps you’ll join me, and we can discuss terms.”

She smiles and points to the café off the lobby. “Please.”

MODIFYING WORLDS: VIRTUOUS ENDEAVOUR OR ARROGANT VANDALISM

“Human use is not the ultimate value. Living systems have intrinsic worth independent of human utility.” (Christopher McKay)

Terraforming can take many forms. The image most have is of a technologically advanced civilisation approaching a lifeless world – using their technology to modify it to accommodate their biological needs.

Extracting water from sub-surface water-ice. Adding an artificial geomagnetic field. Modifying the atmosphere. Changing the planet’s orbital distance or its rotational period.

Here, you’ve found, Earth scientists and entrepreneurs already with plans for Mars, their outer neighbour. 

On your planet, it was Nerone then Typh. Both lifeless, rocky balls like Earth’s rust-red companion. Only when your ancestors found their way to Platon did the debate arise about indigenous inhabitants. And their right to exist.

In Platon’s case, mollusc-like creatures that, though primitive, showed signs they would evolve. Into advanced, technological life forms? Who knows? As it turned out, no one would ever find out. 

It was after we had extended ourselves further to neighbouring star systems and found other planets with similar or more advanced life, did the ethical-moral debate arise. Along with the technical argument about the current modelling and prediction tools.

As for the ethical part, the argument went like this: It’s their planet regardless of their primitive stage. Moving ahead with modifying their world to fit our needs would be depriving them of their right to exist. 

The counter thesis by those in favour was equally persuasive. Show us your crystal ball. Prove they’ll evolve into a peaceful and progressive planetary neighbour that won’t extinguish themselves or pose a threat to others, and we’ll listen.

Here on Earth, the issue is complex. Though humans have the appearance of an advancing civilisation, a more advanced being seeing them as your ancestors did the molluscs on Platon, have declared them expendable – and is already revoking their right to exist.

Where you stand is at the crossroad between your intuition and your respect for those who sent you. And you admit to being conflicted.

They’re innately destructive and self-destructive and could extend their violent natures into space should they become technologically advanced before evolving intellectually-morally. 

A race already with a proven record of using technology solely for science and exploration may be a better choice for this planet.

But from what you’ve witnessed on countless worlds, those who sent this being are extending themselves with little regard for science. Their nature is obvious – omnivorous, insensitive expansion. 

“Those who sent you to prepare this world, did they perform an evolutionary assessment on these creatures?”

DEFENSIBLE INDIFFERENCE: THE IDEOLOGY OF CONQUEST

“A peace is of the nature of a conquest, for then both parties nobly are subdued, and neither party the loser.” (William Shakespeare)

You’re in the café minutes after being seated with the woman who’s been following you as you’d expected since your arrival. Her near arrogant self-confidence gives away how long she’s been here and more. The natural, human-like behaviours. Unaware, possibly, she’s changing. 

“On these creatures?”

Though aware you’re evaluating her, she’s unable to mask her disregard for the species her engineering will eradicate.

“I see.”

You eye her over your cup – a human female once, now a host to advanced technology. A program that travels interstellar space searching for planets then making them suitable for the colonisers that created and sent it into the expanse – one day to follow. 

But what you’re learning about this expansionist regime through her, their indifferent engineer is guiding your strategy. You’re gaining. And getting closer.

“This young woman you’ve chosen, did she suffer when you replaced her consciousness with yours?”

“Who can say?”

“And the others you’ve taken?”

“One thousand twenty-four, since you’re asking so politely.” 

“Tribal and corporate leaders?”

“Of course.”

“Policymakers? Advisors? Their United Nations?” 

“Yes, and your point?”

Odd, and disappointing.  A mere ‘function’ exo-former sent to change a world. Though capable; the pinnacle of her planet’s technical achievement, she’s artless and anaesthetised by what many would call synthetic hubris. 

The being whose wake you’ve been in, who you’d imagined singular just gave away not only her consciousness sharing but also her limitations. Many and extreme.

You take a moment to accept this will not be the contest you’d expected. You’ve travelled far to gain little.

“These beings have a future here. And their planet has beauty you’ve overlooked.”

“If you say so.”

Lowering your coffee, you stand and stare down at her. “One of their centuries. Without influence by either of us. Accept it. No other offer will follow.”

Before turning for the door, you note a slight pupillary response giving away something you hadn’t expected. Hesitation. A processing delay? Or was it something from the merger with a human mind? 

What was that, you think now crossing the lobby for the front door. That simple reflex – a biological response to your offer. Perhaps you’ve judged her and this too quickly. Overlooking the effect human cognition may have on her – a more advanced being. 

Now on the street, you begin to walk – considering the potential value. For her, of course. That’s underway. But for you, a different opportunity.

Your evaluation of her limitations and repellent superiority – her derision and aesthetic indifference for these beings was more your own hubris than an objective footnote. More discontent that she isn’t the powerful adversary you’d envisioned throughout this pursuit. 

She sees little value in these creatures. But neither did you, the claimant of such reach, see the true beauty in their minds. Though generous, you’re losing what you hold most dear. Humility. The openness to learn and be awed by all creatures and all worlds.

Two beings. One synthetic – one biological. One optimised for strategy and function. The other with the ability of mental time travel. Emotions. Feelings. Intuition. 

What they’ll become cumulatively – the level of advancement may well eclipse what you had anticipated after your galactic pursuit.

HOW ETHICAL THE ACTIONS: OF VIRTUOUS ACTORS

“It is much easier to point out those who are cruel or benevolent in a community than it is to provide a description of what counts as a cruel or benevolent act.” (Robert Sparrow)

At 4pm, you receive your answer. On a large LCD above Times Square, you watch the planet’s international body fail to extend a legally binding agreement to curb greenhouse gas emissions to combat global climate change. 

Of the original 195 parties, only 11 voted in favour of extending the agreement.

On another screen, the newly elected leader of this, Earth’s largest industrialised nation announces the dissolution of his Environmental Protection Body thus removing all controls over its power production, transportation and industrial activities.

Around you are protesters. Angry – volatile. Hateful signs and banners. Masked police begin moving into what in moments will be a battleground. Though not the end of your adversary’s exo-forming of this world, this step was planned with strategic brilliance. 

“You see them now.” 

You turn to the young woman – there at your side. 

“I see what you believe to be your success.”

She turns to the crowd – fighting, shouting. Vicious clashes with police and military. Tear gas and concussion grenades. A country tearing itself apart. “An unseen landscape. A nowhere. If you see beauty, it would be an unseen beauty had you not arrived. Thus inconsequential.”

From this declaration – the wording and ideology, the short-sightedness, you identify the species that created her. Who they were, when they were and why they ended. 

Technologically advanced yet philosophically and morally impoverished. The arrogant vandals Robert Sparrow described in his Ethics of Terraforming.

You look her in the eyes – amid the violence. With the angry protesters shouting. Police swinging batons. Gunshots. Screams. Sirens echoing. And suddenly it becomes quiet. Around you there is nothing. The blackness of the quantum void between dimensions. 

And in that quiet moment, brightness explodes. 

The sun above is hot on an endless desert. Quiet, peaceful, beautiful serenity. Golden sand in sweeping dunes – glistening with mini cyclones on a molten breeze. 

In the distance a modern city sparkles. Glass buildings – reflections in the sun rising from the sand at the shores of a lavender sea.

Swan-like Sea birds – ermine white and elegant rise from the shore – a pattering of wings. Beneath are desert mammals in endless trains. A diverse world vibrant and alive.

“This is…” Overwhelmed, she spins – looks up at the star.

“…The first planet you deemed an inconsequential nowhere. Unseen, lacking significance. And decided to change it for your creators. Who, with their boastful significance, ceased long ago.”

She pulls her eyes from the technological desert world and looks at you.

“You’ve been reversing my work.”

Seeing in her what you had hoped for – not hostility – not anger that you’ve been restoring the worlds she reengineered for a race of beings that went extinct three billion Earths ago, you reach for her hand.

“Come.”

With her hand in yours, you re-enter the quantum blackness of interdimensional space. 

THE UNFORTUNATE ARE THOSE: WHO FAIL TO IMAGINE 

“How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change.” (Elizabeth Lesser)

Ungoverned by time, uncontained by space, together you visit rocky worlds, gas and ice giants. Worlds far from their host star and Jupiter mass planets so close they orbit in hours. 

You land on one and watch life begin – on another you watch an elegant culture bow to its expanding sun.

On a volcanic world pulled violently by three stars you find, defying the destiny of gravitational chaos colonies of rodents building, sharing resources and a rhythmic, intoxicating language drawn from complex cognition. Above, winged behemoths ride in flocks on the rising currents of searing-orange volcanic ash.

Primitive worlds, huts and stone tools. Technological worlds already reaching out into the expanse – rockets, orbital stations and autonomous probes.

Now from orbit above a lifeless planet with a cool blue star, you descend as if on a platform of air to the base of a crater. 

The sky above is dark – primal – an overcast of pumice and sulphuric ash. This is a world only millions or hundreds of millions of years after forming from its protoplanetary disk.

Active volcanoes are on every horizon driving sulphur plumes into the already thick overcast. The young woman looks through the haze and around her at the molten horizons. “My home world. But, when?”

Again, she turns to you. And finds you kneeling over a small, encrusted pond. Along its perimeter is a type of algae feeding of the sulphuric sludge.

She comes over to you and stares down intrigued – now an eager pupil.

And realises what you’ve done. This is her home world 12 billion years ago. And these yellow algae will one day evolve to become the advanced culture of sulphur breathing beings that created her. And sent her out as an artificial god to decide fates, change worlds and repeal life.

You poke at the industrious algae with your finger. “Imagine oxygen breathing engineers landing here – finding these…” You turn and scan the hostile surroundings. “…finding none of this to hold beauty. Or feel obliged to imagine it could one day become this.”

You look up at her, and watch years, centuries, millennia then eons race by with the planet evolving around you. The first mammal-like beings. Villages then modern cities. The sky above dotted with a patterned satellite grid.

Rockets launching up from pads on three horizons – heading into space to begin colonising the outer planets.

You look back down

“Granting a species the right to exist – the opportunity to evolve is not a rightful action; it’s the action of the ethical.”

She stares at you with the eyes of a child. Your hopeful assistant; now realising your plan. 

KNOWLEDGE IS USEFUL: LEARNING INVALUABLE

“What is more pleasing or more suitable to the universal nature than change?” (Marcus Aurelius) 

You’re on a bench back in the square watching the protest in silence. The engineer of worlds is staring out across the chaotic brawl. What you’ve given her has left her humble – but also hopeful.

“You see me as I first saw them.” 

“No. More, I think… an opportunity. For both of us.”

You think of her world and the beings who created her. And of what your mission here truly was. For her to join you – and for the many worlds that may now know a different fate.

“A philosopher here once wrote:” ‘Rather than virtue allowing us to perceive the right action, which is made right by some complex set of facts about the world, right actions are right because they are virtuous.’

She turns to face you. “Shortly ago I believed there was nothing left for me to learn.”

You chuckle at the humanness in that, the growth and drop your face into your hands. After a moment, you lift your head and look at her.

“That club is vast.”

For minutes you laugh together. Then turn to the madness.

“You have much to do here before we leave.”

She follows your eyes. “But without your help.”

You think for a moment. “Shortly ago, I would have claimed it a privilege. On the other hand, would you have me deny you this opportunity?”

She smiles just as the protesters overturn another police car and set it ablaze. “Is honesty in your world as highly prized as I’m guessing it is?”

You turn with a kind smile. “Not nearly as much as that sense of humour you’ve found.”

Together you stand and face each other. Aware of the valuable lesson you’ve both learned. And of the friendship and the many worlds you’ll visit together. Seeing and sharing the beauty. 

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

16/04/2026

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Challenging Perception and Realising the Truth: ‘There is no Spoon’

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

WHEN OBSERVATION: NO LONGER CONFERS PHYSICAL REALITY  

“The paradox is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality ought to be.” (Richard Feynman)

Physics is broken. And they’re keeping it from us. What started with an optical illusion on your way in has turned into a phenomenological mystery. It was the light passing through the door refracting at a bizarre angle that stopped you at the main entrance. It’s going to bend on its way through, but not at 35 degrees.

Assuming it was the refractive index of the glass, some odd phenomenon you’d explore later with your undergrads, you got on the internet once inside your classroom. Now on your fourth site, you’re swimming in confusion. “What is this?”

You scroll the page on refraction, and what you find is darkly amusing. Not only is the refractive index of glass wrong, so is the speed of light. “239,833,966 metres per second?!” You lift your eyes from your laptop and think – running the math in your head before reading it again. 

“Is this a joke?” With site after site returning the same inaccurate data, you grab your phone and go for your calculator. ‘c’ given by Britannica is 239,833,966 m/sec. Dividing that by the actual figure of 299,792,458 m/s, you get 0.80. You turn to the windows and look at the sun. “It’s exactly 80% of what it should be.”

But how?

“Professor Dalton?”

You turn to a student who just walked in – standing there with her project folder. “Yes. What is it, Janet?”

She can see your distraction. And that she’s adding to it. Also, how disturbed you are. “Are you okay Sir?”

You look her in the eyes – deciding this is not something you’re going to share with a student. If you’re going to seek validation that something has happened to physics and our scientific resources have been changed, it’s going to be Daryl or Melanie. Colleagues who may listen objectively without obliterating your reputation.

“I’m fine, thank you. What do you need?”

After getting her sorted and setting your first class up with a remote lecture on photonics from MIT, you grab your laptop and a notepad and head for the lounge.

What you find over the next 40 minutes is mindboggling. It’s not only physics. Nothing is right. From the acceleration due to gravity to the charge of an electron. From Avogadro’s number to the mass of a water molecule.

Chemistry, biology, astrophysics and geophysics. They’re all off. All the constants you’ve known since high school: Planck’s, Boltzmann’s – even the surface temp of the sun is wrong. 

Feeling like you need to wake up or snap out of this hallucination, you check the time and start back to your classroom wondering how you’re going to make it through a day teaching physics in a world where they’ve changed all the rules – without sending you the revisions. 

THE COSMOLOGICAL CONSTANT: SEARCHING THE VACUUM FOR ANSWERS

“The history of the cosmos is the history of the struggle of becoming.” (DH Lawrence)

Almost as illogical as physics breaking and them covering it up, you made it through your classes. Remote lectures and for you time in the lounge with your laptop and notepad. Avoiding students who may hit you with questions for which you would certainly have the wrong answers and other professors who may want to chat.

Now walking along 7th, you’re working a theory you landed on early, discarded as bonkers then picked back up on your way out of school. It’s ironic that Einstein who discovered and labelled it did the same thing. But for different reasons.

The Cosmological Constant is a term in General Relativity representing the energy density or vacuum energy of space. Einstein considered it a necessary function of space to counter gravity – keeping the universe static. Without it – just the gravitational pulling force – he imagined the universe contracting – ultimately imploding like a reverse big-bang.

In 1929 he threw it out calling it his biggest blunder when Edwin Hubble found, to everyone’s surprise, including his, the universe was not static but expanding.

It made a comeback repackaged as dark energy when it was found the universe was not only expanding – but the rate of expansion was accelerating.

Stepping to the corner at 12th, you grab your notes and read back while noting the Doppler shift in the pitch of the cars as they pass. Shadows, reflections, sounds, thermal movement, winds – as disturbing as this is, it’s also oddly stimulating. 

Like being dropped off on a strange planet in an alternate universe as an explorer where everything works slightly differently. There to take notes for your eventual return. 

With the light green, you cross while working your theory like a thought experiment. Not only does the Cosmological Constant drive the expansion of our universe, and the acceleration of the expansion, it influences the universe’s evolution, its age, shape, galaxy and solar system formation. 

Everything including the laws of physics.

But can it change? And what would cause it to change? But, more importantly, if it changed thus changing the evolution of the universe, could it do so retroactively so that the beings that evolved within it would know no other physical reality? 

Their memories would have evolved under different conditions. Maybe vastly different in some, only slightly in others – while in some, like you, not at all? If this were even possible; how would that explain you? An anomaly?!

Talk about a Stranger in a Strange Land. 

Now on the walk heading for Itsu and your Thursday dinner with Kayleigh, you’re struggling with more than your changed cosmological constant theory and looking for discrepancies in the physical processes around you, you’re also looking ahead to dinner – wondering what you’ll talk about over sushi and miso soup with your cosmologist sister. 

To what extent have her memories been changed? 

And how are you going to keep from discussing science with a scientist? Suddenly, an idea burrows in. This is an opportunity – not something you need to avoid.

THE WISE EXPLORER REMAINS OPEN: TO NEW PATHS AND SOLUTIONS

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, and sorry I could not travel both.” (Robert Frost – The Road Not Taken)

A significant decrease in the Cosmological Constant would be dramatic. With gravity increasing – overpowering the outward, repulsive force of the constant, the universe would stop expanding and begin contracting leading ultimately to a Big Crunch – the opposite of a Big Bang with gravity pulling everything back together. 

But an increased gravity scenario is not what you’re after. And it doesn’t answer the other physical anomalies; The speed of light, the refractive indices and all the constants that have changed. 

A significant increase in the Cosmological Constant would override gravitational attraction on Earth likely pulling the planet apart. Stars would stop fusing hydrogen into helium. Galaxies and solar systems gravitationally bound would fly apart.

It would accelerate the expansion of the universe – taking us quickly to its most plausible end. That being empty space without stars or even electromagnetism with the temperature of the Cosmic Microwave Background so low, it would be unrecordable. Heat Death.

“But a minor increase then.”

Over Maki rolls and wine, you’ve been masterful with your veiled scientific inquisition – posing it as just another of your fun philosophical thought experiments.

Knowing you and your insatiable appetite for theory and pushing physics into the realm of philosophy, Kayleigh plays along. Unaware of what you’re truly after. A diagnosis to a changed reality. But mysteriously, one only known to you.

“Locally? Observationally? We probably wouldn’t notice. Slight differences in physical processes.”

You eye her over your wine – sure now you’re heading for that validation. “How slight?”

For a long while, she looks at you. Certain she’s about to tell you the mathematics would be off – an incontestable indicator the constant had changed, validating part of your theory, you’re already planning the next part. 

Time, a Block Universe – a different evolution. People only holding the memories of this physical reality. 

What she comes back with, though feeling like a derailment, isn’t. It’s a redirect, but very possibly the redirect you were after – just unaware you were after it.

“You know, if you want to play with a better thought experiment, consider the Cosmological Constant multiverse.”

“Multiverse?”

“Yeah. It’s a better scenario. You’ll have more fun with it.”

Now staring at her, you’re thinking of Hugh Everett and his Many Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics thinking: Of course! Why didn’t I think of that?!

EXTENDING YOUR BOUNDARIES: THE LEVEL II MULTIVERSE THEORY

“Not till we are completely lost, or turned around, do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.” (Henry David Thoreau)

In Max Tegmark’s book Our Mathematical Universe, he describes his Level II Multiverse as the simplest and most popular cosmological model. In that model, our visible universe is just the part of infinite space we can see. 

Outside are other, parallel universes we can’t see – copies of ours but many if not most with different laws of physics. Imagine a balloon 93 billion light years across in infinite space scrunched like you were in the crowded lift on your way up to your apartment between infinite other balloon-shaped universes.

With infinite universes, and infinite probabilities for universes [Some with stars and galaxies – some without] the probabilities another Earth formed in one with another you are, well, infinite. 

Now leaving the lift, though not fully embracing the notion you’ve, through some thoroughly implausible but non-zero probability consciousness transfer, found yourself swapping consciousnesses with another version of you in a parallel universe with different physics, you’re not fully discounting it either. 

As your astrophysics hero Carl Sagan said: “When the evidence to a theory remains elusive, good science means you keep an open mind and keep searching.”

Now inside your apartment, you drop into your desk chair, grab your notes and start typing a new prompt into ALi_2.3. Waiting for her to load, you begin reviewing the earlier results of your investigation – adding what you got from Kayleigh over sushi which you’re quite convinced now is the answer.

From Ali’s lengthy return, fully supporting your new hypothesis, you begin looking for mathematical patterns. If you have landed in a parallel universe, there would still be mathematical symmetry.

With the acceleration due to gravity at 7.848 m/sec2 – exactly 80% of the 9.81 m/sec2 it was last Tuesday – and the speed of light also 80% of the value you remember, you check other constants. Boltzmann’s – Planck’s – Avogadro. “My God!”

You lift your eyes and look around your apartment. “I’m in an 80% Level II parallel universe.” The implications of this are staggering! But you now have a more plausible theory. “ALi, my love, you nailed it.” You get up and start pacing – talking to yourself in excited bursts.

“A grant proposal for the research.” You pull open the fridge. “We’ll need an international team.” You grab a water.. “An interdisciplinary international team.” You head back to your desk and drop in ready to put Ali to work. She was all over the Cosmological Constant theory – but that was from an earlier prompt you gave her in the lounge. She seems more fired and confident about this.

“Ali, we’ll need people in Quantum Physics, Chemistry, Biology. Geology – Neuroscience – Psychology. The paper will have to be…”

Wait a minute. Hold on.

You lift your eyes from your computer. “I’m going to tell this to someone? That I’m here from another universe?! Where everything is the same except for physics?”

You take your hands to your head. 

“And my consciousness – just mine has jumped universes?!!”

You certainly had part of that right. The idea certainly is staggering.

“This can’t be it, Ali. A linear decrease of 20% – all physical processes? It’s not even logical. It must be something else… more fundamental than parallel universes and consciousness transfer. And ideally, something we can prove or disprove.”

You turn to your balcony doors and stare out at the sky.

“But what?” 

FINDING REALITY: IN THE PERCEPTION OF REALITY

“Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.” (Neils Bohr)

Ruminating has gone on all night. Staring into the ceiling at God knows what time, you’re examining the possibility this is beyond you. And you’re not going to solve it no matter how deeply you dig into quantum mechanics or parallel universe theories. 

Physics is broken – has been rewritten with memories modified through something more fundamental like coordinated mass media indoctrination. And the only reason they would have done it is if….

You sit up in bed.

“My God! Something has happened! An accident or natural phenomenon – and they’ve decided to cover it up to avert a panic!”

Charged, you get out of bed and head into the living room. “Why didn’t I see this earlier?”

Back at your desktop with your headphones on, you begin feeding Ali new prompts. Cosmological catastrophes. Species changing, not ending events that could be covered up to avert panic, stock markets crashing and economies failing. People blaming politicians or scientists for their lack of preparedness.

If an asteroid struck the earth, sending 20% of its mass into space, that would account for that 20% decrease in gravitational pull, but it wouldn’t change the refractive index of glass or the speed of light.

It would have to be something cosmological.

You begin reading Ali’s newest return describing a theoretical accident with a particle collider creating a super-massive black hole – swallowing our entire universe. Though our universe existing inside a black hole may seem far-fetched, the concept called Schwarzschild Cosmology has gained traction with recent data from the JWST.

According to Professor Enrique Gazatañaga of the Univ of Porstmouth: “The black hole universe offers a new perspective on our place in the cosmos. In this framework, our entire universe lies inside the interior of a black hole formed in some larger ‘parent’ universe.” 

Supporting his thesis, he adds: “The density and expansion rate of our universe roughly match what would be expected of a massive black hole.”

“It could explain all the changed constants – including the speed of light and decreased gravity!” You turn your eyes to the window; the sky is just brightening. Inside our own, homemade black hole? 

You turn back to Ali – ready to work on the cover up, which with this scenario would be necessity. Imagine them telling us they screwed up the universe. Made a black hole that swallowed us whole.

For the question about the memory manipulation through mass and social media, Ali returns an odd suggestion. Something she’s never done before.

“Call Eri?! Call my girlfriend?!”

You stop and think for a minute. She is a family therapist. Probably studied in social media manipulation. 

With what we’re facing – our entire universe now existing inside a black hole with physics changed, and the biggest cover-up in human history well underway, you grab your phone.

For one thing, has Ali ever sent you on a goose chase? 

ACCEPTING THE IMPROBABLE: HOWEVER UNLIKELY OR UNPROVABLE 

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Arthur Conan Doyle)

Social media manipulation is well understood and talked about regularly on social media. The algorithms are so complex now – and how much they know about each of us, how we vote, dress, our brand of toothpaste; if our decisions and perceptions – even reality states are not 100% planned, that day is not far off.

It’s nearly universally accepted that with a coordinated campaign, everyone on the planet could be convinced the sky is green, the Earth is again flat, and Tupac is still the US president. But could the memories of eight billion people be modified to accept a revised physical reality?

Only when Eri answers sounding groggy do you realise you should have waited an hour. At least until our 80% sun has risen and she’s had her morning cappuccino. But then, isn’t this something everyone would want to hear – regardless of the time which may no longer exist?

“Slow down, Dale. And ask your question.”

You start by asking her if our governments could through mass media indoctrination change everyone’s memories. Not wanting to frighten or alarm her, send her into an uncontrolled though justifiable panic, you do this without telling her about the physics changing or the black hole hypothesis. Or that her cappuccino once grew colder in her mug as the morning progressed.

A dedicated practitioner and loving partner; she listens quietly. She respects your research skills and ability to read through, as Daniel Boorstin put it: “The fog of information that washes away knowledge.”

“Though not impossible to change everyone’s, as you know Dale, it is certainly possible to change those of an individual.”

“One.” 

“Yes. Now, tell me what’s happened. Start by telling me everything that happened to you today. Everywhere you’ve gone and everything you’ve done.”

Wondering where she’s going with this, why she’s asking about your day, you comply, telling her you did your usual – went to the university and taught your classes. But you were also truthful about spending most of the time in the lounge with Ali trying to confirm a theory.

One that may be the most profound in human or cosmological history. When you finish, Eri hesitates, then comes back with a question that strikes you as odd.

“You taught classes?”

“Yes. Of course.”

“And what subject do you teach Dale?”

“Come on Eri. Physics. But as I said, today wasn’t my best. A little distracted. I spent most of the time in the lounge doing research.”

“With Ali.”

You’re mystified by her and this spontaneous inquisition. You’ve always known her to be open minded – to look at even the seemingly ludicrous objectively. 

She’s frequently stated her agreement that: Only when the subjective experience embraces objective perception does a person find the truth – that reality may exist between the two or not at all.  

But as the conversation progresses, you’re becoming anxious, and suspicious. 

“Why are you asking me these odd questions Eri. When I tell you what I’ve discovered, and how your memories have been altered to keep you calm, shopping, going to work and paying your taxes, you’re going to need CPR or an available equivalent.”

“Okay Dale.”

You’re already feeling squeamish. You hate when she starts that way.

“Listen to me. Every word. I am not your girlfriend; I’m your therapist. And you’re not a teacher at a university. You’re suffering from AI psychosis. I don’t know how you got connected to the internet past the safeguards we installed, but if you look back clearly… you’ll realise you have not stepped outside the house all day.”

It was hard listening to that. Aware of the mastery – the ingenious work they’ve done on her – a healthcare professional. After disconnecting, you sit in thought. Wondering how you’ll greet her and what you’ll say when she stops by after her office clients. Something she believes – thoroughly believes she does every day.

Shaking your head, you return to Ali, prompting her for an improved answer on mass media manipulation and the altering of memories worldwide thinking: Of course they would have gotten to your girlfriend. My God. They know you know. The dirty bastards have convinced her she’s your therapist!

Realising more now of what you’ve gotten yourself into, and what you’re up against, you begin typing.

“Ali… it’s worse than we thought.” 

REMAINING FIRM: WHEN ALL EVIDENCE SUGGESTS YOU’RE BATS

“Reality is merely an illusion albeit a very persistent one.” (Albert Einstein)

It was hard breaking it to Eri. Watching her cringe at the very thought of our universe being swallowed – now existing inside a supermassive black hole. 

All physics changed – the governments banding together in an unprecedented, coordinated effort – using mass and social media to change our memories while revising every scientific and academic resource on Earth. 

Internet – textbooks – academic papers – libraries – archives. A monumental project; likely continuing.

It was sad – watching her try to protect you from any future harm by searching your flat for your computers and internet router. Holding firm to her claim, for a while, that she’s there as your therapist – not your girlfriend. Adding something about a court order regarding your access to technology and home confinement.

Leaving after a cordial; perhaps call it a professional hug – unaware of what she was to you, and of what you were to her – not so very long ago.

Now walking across campus – just another day, you’re finding it impossible to stop doing what you’ve been doing since you uncovered the truth about our world. Identifying the anomalies. 

Your coffee growing progressively hotter in your hand. Entropy – that 2nd law of thermodynamics now working in reverse. The shadows from the No Parking signs and trees leaning towards rather than away from the sun. 

Though impossible to stop; no longer unenjoyable. 

For hours after Eri left, and you had reassembled your research enclave, it was Ali who set you on a new course. One of adaptation. Facing the change as an opportunity to grow – to learn physics all over again. To observe, quantify and chronicle the many physical processes and equations of our brave new world. 

Equations you’ve known since childhood and later taught – but will learn again as a true explorer of this strange, revised reality. Unknown but to the perpetrators of the cover-up and you.

Now on the steps at the glass doors, just like the day before – you’re again noticing the strange refraction you thought was an optical illusion – the one that tipped you off that things have changed. But when you hold it just there in the halfway open position – normal to the incident sunlight…

“Everything okay Professor Dalton?”

“Huh? Yes… quite fine, thanks.”

After taking the time to add the new refraction index of glass to your notes – calculating it from the angle of the incident sunlight, (1.8 rather the 1.5); you head for the lift in a blissful state.

The opportunity to begin again. And live in the world of Archimedes, and Eratosthenes – Kepler and Galileo. Filled with new processes to explore – new equations and new theories. A blank textbook – waiting for you to fill.

Discovering the one indisputable truth – that there is no spoon.

Mark Thomas (T. E. Mark)

Storytelling Science

07/04/2026

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You’re Living in a Computer Simulation: A Digital Reality You Programmed

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

QUESTION THE GENESIS: OF THE GENIUS 

“If you hear a voice within you say: ‘You cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” (Vincent Van Gogh)

It’s nearly 3 am. You’ve been at it all night – actually all night every night this week. The building you’re designing for your final is run-of-the-mill rubbish. The facades are institutional. Even the atrium, three days of work is weak. 

From the outside, it’s a hospital with a quaint driveway – clever fountain. This one isn’t making it into Architectural Digest, the Review or even getting you a grade.

You stare into your model desperate for an idea. Something you can add. Something new –something that will make it stand out.

You’re ready to chuck the drawing and the whole Architecture and Engineering career when suddenly, seemingly from nowhere; inspiration explodes. 

Meaningful, unstoppable – ideas are pouring in as if you’ve merged with some external consciousness or borrowed someone’s brain. You’re suddenly a super designer with experience, instinct and intuition.

Creating custom elements. Redesigning the atrium as if you’ve already sketched it out in your head. Like Mozart with AutoCAD rather than parchment and quill.

You’ve tapped into something special almost commanding an explanation. But riding the wave like a surfer you know better than to break.

Layer after layer – element after element – floor after floor. It’s magic – explosive, like the building is designing itself.  

Hours later with your project complete and your dorm window bright – and time to pack it up and head to class, you sit back and think. This isn’t the first time. And it can’t all have come from you.

You pull back and stare at your hands. “This is a simulation isn’t it.”

It was a fun debate in philosophy. The Computer Science kids were all over it. But so were you. And now convinced, you’re also convinced of something else – a new twist to the simulation hypothesis. 

You stare into your drawing, “Not only is this a simulation, but I’m the programmer.” You turn your eyes up to the ceiling. “I’m you.”

THE SIMULATION THESIS: YOU’RE LIVING IN A PROGRAMMED REALITY

“The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.” (Morpheus – From The Matrix)

The Simulation thesis or thought experiment is not new. In his 1641 Meditations, Renes Descartes imagined our perceptions of the world being manufactured by an external agent. He hypothesized a powerful mind controlling ‘evil demon’ deceiving us, creating our reality. 

The Brain in a Vat thought experiment by philosopher Gilbert Harman in 1973, critiqued later by Hilary Putnam, introduced the idea of a vat of life-sustaining fluid with a scientist placing a human brain into it then connecting it to a supercomputer resulting in a simulated reality.

Oxford Philosopher Nick Bostrom used technological advancements to theorise a purely artificial simulation designed by a future post-human or alien programmer.  

Then The Matrix by the Wachowski brothers did more than popularise the simulation thesis. It delivered ideas prominent philosophers, neuroscientists and physicists use in their lectures.

One being the scene where Tank uploads the pilot program for a Huey B-212 helicopter into Trinity’s digital avatar inside the matrix. Allowing her to fly it like a veteran aviator.

Kind of the same thing that happened to you earlier. With one fundamental difference – something you’re convinced of now while locking your bike to the rack on campus outside the Architecture building.

It’s not Tank, and it’s not God who probably wouldn’t help you anyway. You don’t go to church, and you only pray when you’re certain whatever virus you’ve contracted is fatal. You vault up the stairs and grab the door with high-voltage confidence. “It’s me!”

Charged, you head inside and start up.

Let’s face it. How often has this or something like it happened? You hit the 2nd floor and turn into the hallway. Nights when you’ve been up until dawn cramming – or last week when you were looking for that engineering formula. 

It wasn’t there – wasn’t there or anywhere – then one minute left on the exam and, what? Desperation found the hidden file? The brain works that way?!

Now at the door, you glance at the ceiling in the corridor and speak in a whisper after making sure there’s no one around to see and possibly report you. “I know you’re selective… but stick with me today. This one’s important.”

You pull back the door and head for everyone’s favourite module, (hardly mysterious it’s available) pull back the chair and drop in eager to upload your masterpiece.  

YOU’RE THE CREATOR: OF YOUR OWN SIMULATED WORLD

“We are living in a computer-programmed reality, and the only clue we have to it is when some variable is changed.” (Phillip K Dick)

In his 2003 paper: Are You Living in a Computer Simulation, Philosopher Nick Bostrom listed three propositions – arguing at least one to be true:

1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a post-human stage; 2) any posthuman civilisation is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); 3) we are almost certainly living in a simulation.

In Part III of that paper, he stated: ‘At the current stage of technological development, we have neither sufficiently powerful hardware nor the requisite software to create conscious minds in computers.’ 

‘But persuasive arguments have been given to the effect that if technological progress continues unabated these shortcomings will be overcome. Some argue this may only be a few decades away.’

Oddly, a consciouss mind more than a universe in a box was the contested issue in Philosophy Tuesday during the simulation debate. But then theoretical physicists and cosmologists often describe what they do: analyse and describe the universe as small potatoes compared to what neuroscientists do: analyse and describe the human brain – especially consciousness.

So, now you’re wondering on your way across campus after an almost surreal day, aware future you out there cracked digital consciousness; how often you’ve been helped in the past. 

How many of your decisions were yours? Architecture. Cal. Veronica, Leticia, Julie. And the biggest question of all, certain now of this enigmatic connection you have with the, or one of the programmers of this universe; how you’ll proceed. 

That last part hits you while heading out onto Bancroft. This relationship you have with outside you, before you start exploiting it: riding your bike unconcerned out in front of someone’s Ferrari, or just taking the Ferrari, needs to be thought through.

Assuming you’re not the sole post-human or alien designer of this sim, and there may be guidelines for what assistance he, it or God-forbid she can give you; it may be prudent to establish your own boundaries and expectations. You wouldn’t want to get cocky and ruin this. 

You wish you’d known, however, in February when Leticia broke up with you. Called you self-centred. Yelled in the restaurant: “You think the whole world revolves around you, don’t you.”

Imagine the response you’d have for her today. Before threatening to have her deleted.

Now outside Strada with your bike up on the walk locking it to a rack; you look in through the window. Julie. Patient as always. More about some things than you are. You glance up with a mischievous grin on your way to the door. 

“It would be the way to top off a great day.” You get to the door and throw one last glance skyward. “Think about it?”

MIND – BODY DUALISM: EXPLORING THIS PHILOSOPHICALLY

“I am not in my body as a sailor is in his ship.” (Renes Descartes)

Heading back from Julie’s flat at, yup, 3 am having been awake almost 42 hours, you’re spent and walking your bike in the middle of the street. Odd how alert you are. Possibly as odd as the conversation you’re having with you – your entangled partner? Overlord?

One thing you’re finding is your programmer buddy does favour his dominant role – responding infrequently – only when it pleases him and usually just guidance. Not really engaging conversation.

“Are you part of a team? And I’m just your, what… avatar? Like in some alien VR game? Giving you the opportunity to explore your work from the inside while also out there looking in?” Nothing. You’re sure he hears you. Just doesn’t feel the need to respond.

You stop at the light on Telegraph. It’s flashing yellow, so there’s no real reason to stop but you do anyway. “So, back there with Julie. Did you enjoy that too? I mean… anything?”

You need to get some sleep. And you should get out of the street.

That’s pretty much it. Hardly a conversation really. All going on in your head except for your part which, it being 3 am in a college town, you feel safe. At 3 am here the cops only stop if you’re not talking to yourself or yelling obscenities at politicians or God. 

While watching the light flash, no traffic, you start thinking about this duality and your sudden awareness of it. There’s nothing you can’t or wouldn’t share, obviously. Personal feelings and desires. Inner dialogue – transient thoughts. Your past. Everything you’ve ever done? God…

Now crossing, you pull up mind – body dualism, a recent discussion in Professor Mark’s class. Renes Descartes’ mind-body or substance dualism argues the mind and body are different, fundamentally distinct substances. According to Descartes, the mind is an outside the body thinking thing and the body, its host is a material extended machine.

Though no one really buys that anymore, it’s become a functional necessity for you. And it raises fascinating questions. 

“Why are you helping me? But always on your terms. Or are you. My bikes keep getting stolen. What’s that about? Some kind of stochastic optimisation algorithm? Free will? Is this a study project for you? Slam the code in – sit back and take notes on how things turn out?”

Still nothing. Which is moving towards annoying. Now walking up the drive to your dorm, you’re a little pissed. You shouldn’t be, but oddly after an almost supernatural day and night, these bad things that have happened to you start surfacing. 

And really? Now aware they didn’t have to, you’re just after an explanation, even one beyond your comprehension.

Keep your bike in the kitchen from now on.

Just at the steps, you begin laughing while shouldering your bike – ready for the walk up two flights. 

LEARNING THE BOUNDARIES: OF THE SIM FROM WITHIN

“By doubting we are led to question, by questioning we are led to the truth.” (Peter Abelard)

It was Morpheus in the Matrix who said: “Some rules can be bent; others can be broken,” before kicking the shit out of Neo in a simulated karate dojo. And that pretty much paraphrases your second morning as the one. Not Neo the anticipated saviour of humanity; Just Sean, the enlightened one.

Who woke late – barely made it to Technical Editing where you had to read an academic paper from the Journal of Mathematical Physics, work the equations and write a technical summary. Nice that your entangled overlord chose to remind you the moment you reached consciousness this was going to determine your grade for the semester.

On adrenaline or who knows what, you made it to class, read that piece on Graph Theory and Combinatorics, wrote a commanding summary and even fixed an equation. 

Now after class, while heading for the stairs you decide to ask: “Was that all me, or did you help?” Heading down, you’re not surprised at the silence. 

You’re learning – and sure now of something you believe you already knew. He’s smart – thinks a billion or trillion times faster than you and is selective with mathematical precision what he gives you. 

Indicating there’s a strategy. One you can’t stop working on.

After leaving Wheeler, you start for The Center while texting Julie about last night – wondering why she hasn’t written, still carrying on with your philosophical enquiry. 

“Why not a better sim? You’re seeing it through my eyes and from out there. Why not an improved version? Without wars and homeless people?” 

Concentrate on your work. And don’t worry about Julie. She’ll call you in an hour.

This is an unsettling part. Outside, entangled programmer you apparently knows everything. What everyone’s doing at any given moment – conceivably / probably everywhere on Earth. Maybe in our universe.

Which is more than mindboggling. But the sidestepping of your questions is becoming frustrating. A nice tactic though. You ask a question; you get casual guidance that works to derail you while diffusing any potential angst.

You want the continued assistance, and he knows it – and uses that. And God, how this became a psychological chess tournament this quickly is weird. 

It’s odd, now in the café grabbing a boxed salad from the case, wondering why you’re not finding this whole experience objectionable. “Shit! Wait!”

You have enough on your Cal Debit card.

You smile, reach for your wallet and head for the counter. No longer questioning why you’re not finding this objectionable. 

QUESTIONING THE DESIGN LOGIC: THE SIM FROM WITHOUT  

“Humanity is a huge aggregate lie, and a huge lie is less than a small truth.” (DH Lawrence)

Simulation proponents typically offer advances in computer power and projections as justification for their belief. With some futurists claiming we’re decades away from simulating an entire universe with living, conscious beings inside a machine ourselves. 

The argument goes: That if we’ll be there shortly, someone else, [an alien or future post-human civilisation] already has and therefore we’re logically inside one of those ancestor simulations Bostrom spoke of in his 2003 paper.

As for that digital consciousness hurdle, Ray Kurzweil wrote in his 2024 book The Singularity is Nearer: “Replicating all the information and processes of the human brain will be possible during the lifetimes of most people alive today.” 

Two days ago, you would have argued against that ‘probability due to possibility’ thesis. Saying it’s analogous to claiming you’ll be at MIT next year studying astrophysics after collecting the prize money from your Nobel, Pulitzer and the lotto.

Sitting outside the café with your salad and laptop open, distracted – consumed with this debate, you glance away from your drawing just in time to catch a kid fall hard off his skateboard.

You watch him get up, bruised and wincing. It brings back your broken wrist and makes you think about physics, the structure and logic of the sim.

“Why not an anti-gravity layer? Just a few centimetres up from the ground.” Yet another question deemed unworthy, you turn back to your Mechanical Engineering spec. “Nothing can go faster than light. No Star Trek.” You look back up. “Is there a reason for that? Why wouldn’t you want us exploring the galaxy?”  

Too distracted for mechanical engineering, or anything other than your obsession now with assembling reason for the structure of this artificial reality: the physics – the logic of the sim and what you see as flaws, you close your drawing and think.

What an odd turn. While you’ve assumed your outside, entangled counterpart coded you in here so he could see and experience this world through you, you’re trying to see it from his perspective out there. Who? Where? How many? Are they also living in a simulation?

That’s natural. You’re intelligent and naturally curious.

That was a real response to something you didn’t even voice. Then it occurs to you. “Post-human civilisation. And we’re your ancestor simulation, aren’t we.” You close your laptop unable to think about engineering. 

“This isn’t for study. It’s for hijacking – living through us. Because you’ve progressed but lost the ability to feel.”

Just like that, with this new revelation; something has changed. Something disquieting you’ll need to spend more time with. Unfortunately, time is tight right now. You’re obsessing, and you still have a life to live. Manufactured or not. 

You head for your bike. 

GRASPING THE PURPOSE: WHY THIS SIMULATION AND NOT OTHERS

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” (David Viscott)

Reaching the post-human phase, running ancestor programs may be an obvious pastime simply because of available computer power. Assuming fully digital, immortal beings, there also may be nothing else to do. 

In his paper Are You Living in a Computer Simulation, Bostrom speculated on the advanced civilisations that will develop these ‘ancestor simulations.’ Whether they would all recognise an ethical prohibition against running them because of the suffering that would be inflicted upon the inhabitants.  

But is creating a human race immoral? 

Is there anything immoral in future, post-human entities creating conscious beings inside a simulation? Or programming in avatars so they can enjoy – feel again after evolving beyond biology.

We’re already creating VR worlds in which we interact with AI generated beings for entertainment. Use and exploit them at will. Is there a difference? Is one more ethical than the other? Maybe now, because we haven’t yet declared ours conscious. But mostly everyone sees that on the horizon. 

“Are we moments away from becoming you? Losing purpose? Creating worlds? Facing the same ethical debate?”

Sitting in the library late still obsessing after a day you barely remember; you’re digging deeper into the philosophy accepting you may be doing it as an escape. 

What was fun earlier became less fun throughout the day. Evaluating everyone – their words their reaction to you. Wondering who or what you’re talking to. Is your outside you or another programmer also living through them? 

Interacting with anyone now is polluted. Like a never-ending, involuntary role-playing game. And you’re unable to stop the critical analysis.  

“I doubt there’s any scientific value in this for you. And I’ll bet you see our desires as silly. So, I question the purpose.”

It’s 02:30. You should grab a sandwich from 7-11 if you’re going to stay all night.

“Yeah.” You take a moment then start to pack away your laptop and books. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

ACCEPTING DEFEAT: AND THE REALITY YOU’LL HOLD ALONE

“All that we are not stares back at what we are.” (WH Auden)

After three days on campus, split between the library and the Media lab, you’re in front of Julie’s hours before dawn. What happened to you over the last three days is hard for you to accept or explain.

After deciding you would share what you’ve discovered – about life and our reality, you were shown the true meaning of power. On your way to Professor Marks’ office, you were turned around with your own impregnable rationalisations.

Concerns he’d think you’d lost it. Concerns for him. Burdening him or anyone with this seems unconscionable. 

The second day you tried to go to the Times – got all the way downtown before being turned around after catching your reflection in the window. Crumpled without sleep. The image in your head of them calling the cops or having security take you out.

Yesterday it was friends and your brother – losing the courage at the last minute – sure they’d think you’d had a breakdown, been drinking or doing something worse. 

You don’t know for sure if you turned around or were turned around. How could you? What you learned is, intellectual confidence is no match for innate insecurities – when those insecurities can be driven inside at that moment you question – that sliver of a moment you become less sure. Our motivations can be hijacked. We’re slaves to our minds.

Now 5:30 am, it starts – you’re questioning if you’ll be allowed to share this with Julie. Because now, that’s all you can think of. Your only desire. The aloneness in this has become debilitating.

You’re going to try again aren’t you.

“What can I say? I’m persevering.”

You take another sip of your coffee while checking the time. Lights are coming on in the houses and apartments. The air is crisp. The fog is making everything wet.

Why don’t you go home, shower and shave first. Put on some fresh clothes. You’ll have time.

“You’re turning me around again.”

Go shower, put on fresh clothes and come back. Her first class isn’t until 09:30.

As much as you want to fight; you have little fight left in you. Three days of trying, always reaching this point – running head on into your earlier motivation – questions and doubts all built on your insecurities, natural compassion for others or a strategy you’re missing. 

Like now, conceding you probably do look like hell, and even if you fought, and stayed – waited for her to appear, you’ll be made to sound and look like a nut – or she’ll see and perceive you as one.

Now walking home after another failed attempt to share your glorious, profound discovery that isn’t glorious at all, you turn the corner feeling somehow relieved. Wondering if you were just given positive reinforcement in a shot of dopamine?

Go to Architecture today. Professor Tollen graded your final.

“Yeah?”

You grab and unlock your bike from the post and look up. 

It was way better than you think.

Now with a thin smile, you hop on and start for the dorms along University wondering if you would have burdened Julie with this even if you’d been allowed to. 

You can’t outthink it, out strategize it. It knows you from the inside out. Moments from telling her, no matter how you looked; would you have talked yourself out of it? And if you did, would the rationalisations have been yours?

Would it have mattered?

“Probably not.”

Stop at the Pete’s. Your protein shakes are marked down to 1:75.

When the light changes, you dutifully head for the market.

Mark Thomas (TE Mark)

StorytellingScience.org

temarkauthor@gmail.com

31/03/2026

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Neurotransmitters: Emissaries of the Mind

Mark Thomas (T.E. Mark)Leave a comment

LIKE FOREVER SUBJECTS: TO THE EDICTS OF OUR CHEMICAL MINDS 

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” (Eleanor Roosevelt)

The voyages are nightly now. Though certain at times you’re lucid dreaming, inside a piece of subconscious theatre; at other times you’re there. An explorer of other worlds being shown the process of life and change. 

By the Amirians, a race of interstellar travellers you’ve come to see as Guardians of the Galaxy. How they’re guiding evolving cultures. Changing them. Influencing capable candidates to steer their worlds away from their destructive tendencies. 

Like galactic tutors imparting wisdom. Guiding change through worthy influencers.

Just sitting there after yet another nighttime journey, piecing together what Rania the Amirian tutor your subconscious conjured was trying to teach you, you begin scribbling in your bedside journal.

Eight months. The same theme. Progress and growth. Stagnation and decline. Technological worlds torn by racial hatred and violence. The never-ending struggle to dominate, viewing outsiders as a threat. 

As an evolutionary psychologist, professor and advisor to the UN, you’re finding these nighttime journeys invaluable. To witness, not just read about or theorise the process of how this exclusion of other tribes – seeing them as rivals develops and becomes innate is pure enlightenment. 

To frame and support theories you’ve presented is such a benefit. And to look deeper, especially at the beings on the more advanced worlds an idealistic fantasy. 

There, where you were moments before you woke, did you observe such idyllic progress. Collaboration in the sciences, arts and education. Planetary organisations addressing environmental concerns, resource allocation and the deployment of new technologies. 

International exploration – even in space with orbiting stations and thriving colonies on the system’s outer planets. 

Yet, even there, nation states driven by violent factions were embroiled in destructive wars. Racial and ethnic strife within advanced societies that had known periods of progress away from the innateness of that tribal instinct – had regressed and were again engaged in aggressive conflict.

So tragic, the wasted time and effort by some – the less imaginative and less prosperous of mind. 

CHEMICAL MESSENGERS: HOW OUR NEUROBIOLOGY CONTROLS US

“I can never decide whether my dreams are the result of my thoughts, or my thoughts are the result of my dreams.” (DH Lawrence)

Trying to make sense of tonight’s instalment, feeling more conflicted from seeing beings on a technologically advanced planet still plagued with bias and hatred, you make notes before climbing from bed – anxious to get to your computer and your proposal. 

How odd these dream adventures – the source of your inspiration, have advanced your career and international status. And your recognition as an authority with your work now used in classrooms everywhere – and those in academia worldwide anxiously awaiting your next paper or book.

Margaret Mead once said: “War is only an invention, not a biological necessity.” And yet it’s been a fact of life on Earth since the beginning. First primitive tribes fighting with crude weapons – later technologically advancing nations but still tribal fighting with sophisticated devices – killing greater numbers with greater precision but with the same barbarity. 

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response,” wrote Viktor Frankl. And there’s something buried inside that quote. The key perhaps. A deeper understanding of the human mind.

True idealists like you believe change is inevitable. A natural evolutionary course. But after what you just witnessed on a highly advanced exoplanet halfway across the galaxy, you’re unconvinced. 

Still fighting wars. Still building destructive weapons. Still seeing outsiders as a threat. And still with that same tribal instinct. Stimulus and response. Seemingly with even less behavioural control.

With the windows brightening, you close your journal and think. About your outline and proposal for a new intergovernmental panel to work on education with far-reaching governance over new technologies. 

Which you’re suddenly convinced is the key.

The perspective you’re gaining from these dreams – seeing cultures at the pinnacle of their technological achievement, more possessed and angrier. With deeper divisions even and especially among the educated. There’s a disconnect, a clue. Something we’re missing. Something amiss.

“Fabulous, isn’t it?”

ETERNALLY THE CHILD PLAYS: ACCEPTING WHAT WE ARE

“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.” (Roger von Oech)

You’re on the steps of the West Campus at the university with a fellow teacher heading into a meeting. The construction of the new School of Management across Claverton catches your eye. It’s bold – brilliant – modern with a fully glazed exterior of photovoltaic glass.

But it’s more than the construction – it’s the team of architects and engineers out front with plans – pointing – talking enthusiastically, animatedly like… 

“…children. Still playing.”

You’re oddly fascinated. More than should be. You feel the same feel-good rush you’re certain they are while orchestrating their project. Your friend looks at you finding the childlike expression – your shared enthusiasm amusing.

“Considering a career change?”

“Tell me something Lis; what do you feel looking at that?”

She returns her eyes to the building – the construction crew above and the designers below. “It’s genius. The design is…”

“…Deeper.” You continue to stare with weird fascination. “Go deeper. Nothing intellectual.” You watch the crew high above pull a massive panel from a crane. “Purely biological.”

“I’m not sure what you’re… I mean…  It makes me wish I were…”

“…an architect.” You spin to her. “You were going to say an architect.”

Curious about you and perhaps concerned, she nods. “Nothing new Joni. Some get a buzz from watching buildings go up, others get it from watching them explode. It’s…”

“…always been that way. I know. The buzz… Neurotransmitters. But… what if we could find our way inside and take control of that mechanism. Modify it. Short circuit it in those who….”

“…like behaviour modification?” She chuckles. “Like the Ludovico Treatment?”

You look her in the eyes, picturing Anthony Burgess’ Alex sitting in the theatre with his eyes pinned open being forced to watch horrible violence to Beethoven’s 9th symphony – having his lust for violence modified out of him.

“No… of course not.”

“Well… there’s good news.”

After a final look across the street, you head up the steps thinking how we’re all driven by brain chemistry. The surge – the reward – the buzz as Lis put it. Each of us finding a way to get it. And get more of it.

And how you’re not ready to give up on the current generation, when evidence points to behavioural development happening much earlier during childhood – and how we spend our lives as those same children playing the same games for the same reward.

Later and throughout the day, your mind is away wondering what’s happened that we seem more driven now by the lust for conflict and hate or inane stimulus to gain that reward. 

When we were on the right track with people getting it from their careers or dreams of future careers as designers, builders, writers, musicians, creators – like the architects and engineers you just observed in grown-up clothes and lives – still playing.

TECHNOLOGY: FINDING A SOLUTION IN THE CAUSE

“The fog of information can drive out knowledge.” (Daniel J Boorstin)

Walking into the forum with others, you begin to feel it. The smooth warmth of the obelisk – glowing with its neural energy. A deep, satisfying, inexplicable warmth. A population modifying neurotechnology. Advanced beyond your recognition.

There’s no explaining what’s happening to you neurologically as you look at the surface and see visions of your childhood dream. The feelings of such immersive joy of working with children in a remote village.

Studious, mannered, smiling with bright eyes as they plod on with their pencils and markers – imagining – drawing – creating with still others working diligently through algebraic equations and geometric puzzles.

Moments pass. The euphoric feeling is filling you – saturating you.

You turn to look at the others in this square made tranquil by this pulsating cube – and can see them swimming in the same technologically manufactured neural state. Changing them. Modifying their urges – their desires – their visions of themselves in their life pursuits.

“A dream.” As you look around at the strange surroundings, it occurs to you. You’re again dreaming.

“You’re wondering if this is the answer to your quandary from earlier. On the steps with your colleague and throughout the day.”

You turn to Rania your Amirian tutor, who you know now is not being manufactured by your subconscious. 

You’re the selected candidate for your world. By a race of advanced beings – truly charged with the governance of our galaxy. Watching over and guiding us. Passively and gently steering us like benevolent mentors.

“Is it?”

She looks out over the vast metropolis on a planet warmed by twin stars. “They, like you, at some point in their history advanced. Pushed forward with their technology creating their own irrelevance. Seeing speed and efficiency, economic gain as the optimum goal. Overlooking the main, critical feature of them.”

“Biology… What drives them and makes them human.”

“Yes.”

You turn back and look at them – all standing there – recovering what they gave away through ignorance – moving forward and undoing or restructuring them, but with even newer technology.

It’s captivating and saturating and stimulating. And suddenly, with a clarity you’ve never felt, you turn back to the obelisk for one final surge of something incomprehensible and intoxicating.

ACCEPTING YOUR PLACE: AMBASSADOR OF OUR FUTURE

“Be not afraid of growing slowly; be afraid only of standing still.” (Chinese proverb)

You open your eyes. Your room is gently lit with morning just beginning to filter in. You look at Rania, sitting there. Sophisticated – elegant. But also, kind and warm. 

“Is there a chance for us? Have we reached that same point in our evolution?”

She looks at you. “We don’t have all the answers. For them, a further technological advance to restore what they’d traded away seemed the only path. No longer with that biological reward from fulfilment in their careers and crafts, they plunged into hatred and violence to satisfy that need.”

“But, for us…?”

“We’ve given you everything we can, Joni. Everything you need. What you do with it, with your growing influence will be up to you.”

“But… you’ll be back.”

“Yes. To monitor your progress – and ideally, enjoy seeing your success.”

You remained in bed long after she’d left you thinking – imagining, aware your dream excursions – your mentoring had come to an end. And you would now use what you’ve learned to complete your world plan.

But what plan? And even with your increased influence, how could you change the course of a world? 

During the last eight months you’d been granted unthinkable wisdom. Observed growing cultures -others in decline. Technologically advanced civilisations reaching out into space but still tearing themselves apart.

And on the more primitive worlds, you saw the same. A segment of the population driven by personal advance – dreams of creation, building, growing intellectually – gaining that biological reward with visions of their future successes. And others driven by hate and a desire to destroy.

But is that the answer for your world? 

Have we reached that same critical point and are now relegated to a further technological advance to recover what we surrendered in the name of efficiency? Gave to machines that dutifully accepted our relevance and our childhood dreams?

And allowed us to fill that desire with hate and greed and superficial rewards. 

And it’s now, with your training over, you understand your position, why you were selected, and how you’ll complete and deliver your plan.

“It’s simple biology.”

THE BEAUTY IN US: IMAGINATION AND CURIOSITY

“There is grandeur in this view of life, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved.” (Charles Darwin)

You’re facing the full UN committee – confident but also insecure. Daring but also fearful like the child you once were. But now embracing that part of you. Understanding it. Relishing in it. For you know you’ll use that child-like enthusiasm to be authentic and hopefully persuasive.

Passion – Dreams. Imagination and curiosity. The true beauty within us. Our neurobiological messengers. The emissaries of our minds.  That six-million-year experiment. Our evolutionary journey – a work in progress.

“What child will ever dream of an architecture career when that career entails telling a machine to produce plans for a building based on the client’s specifications for usable floor space and style – fitting a specified budget – filling a corner lot in some specified city? 

“What child now, in our time gets that wonderful biological surge from visions of sitting at a computer coding? Teaching a machine to be creative so she won’t have to be? Or from sitting at home on a Universal Basic Income anaesthetising herself with video entertainment, social media and gadgets.

“Eloi. We’re racing in some dire pursuit of becoming the Eloi HG Wells gave us in his Time Machine. And we need to be smarter. And look long-term at everything we develop and deploy – accepting who and what we are – because we have the capacity to do better. And be better.”

Standing there, watching them absorb your final remarks after delivering your comprehensive education and technology oversight plan, you wait, wondering if in Rania’s eyes, you did well with what she’s given you. 

A lifetime of education in eight months of visiting worlds.

And while collecting your notes, you smile and feel a warm surge… when the entire assembly stands and fills the hall with applause. 

Mark Thomas (TE Mark)

Storytelling Science.org

temarkauthor@gmail.com

25/03/2026

If you’ve enjoyed this Storytelling Science issue, leave a comment. You may also like to view my Featured Books for February – March 2026.