IT IS HERE

IT was nothing. IT was everything. IT was nowhere and IT was everywhere. IT stretched from shore to horizon, from planet to heliosphere, and from every galaxy to the edge of the universe. Yet, it occupied no space at all.

Many aeons ago, an ape-like creature that inhabited a pale planet in an old unremarkable galaxy discovered IT. In the humble solitude of their huts and caves, the apes found IT, each one independently and perhaps by accident, or perhaps by the cognitive bents of their evolutionarily primitive minds. They found IT buried deep within the crevices of their cognition, stretching far beyond what the feeble lights of their limited minds could illumine. Save for a symbol or two that they could initially see, IT was mostly hidden from view, with every inch of it revealed only with great difficulty. Yet, when they were supplied with only the trifling traces that they saw, the apes swore that IT was grand and beautiful.

Over time, this peculiar ape – a violent but peaceable creature – also found that IT was not only beautiful but also useful. And as is expected of simple creatures, this lowly ape marvelled at IT, worshipped IT, guarded IT, killed in the name of  IT, and devoted lifetimes to uncovering IT’s true form. For those apes that uncovered IT, they used its symbols as a newfound compass for their existence. The more the apes used these symbols, the more IT became a part of their tongue, their history, and their lore. The apes deployed these symbols to mark the passing of lunar cycles, record their days of prayer, track the rhythm of seasons for sowing and harvest, and record their songs and tales, dreams and nightmares, and every fleeting impulse of their hearts.

The apes etched IT’s cryptic codes onto bone, bark and reed, keeping an intricate anthology of their lives: a testimony of their own emerging complexity. The symbols became the central vocabulary with which all apes engraved their existence, progression and evolution. They were the primary prism through which the apes viewed their world and understood their place in it. The apes can be forgiven for this terrible travesty, for it was through IT’s symbols that they first felt the feverish euphoria of understanding. And thus, for these prideful apes, these symbols became no longer a discovery but now their invention: proof of their ingenuity.

When bones, barks and reeds were not spacious enough, the apes inscribed IT’s symbols onto the dull stonewalls of caves, mountainsides, and flattened trees. And the more the apes pondered upon these symbols, the more they thought they understood IT. By gathering the symbols together on larger and larger surfaces, the ape learnt to make the symbols grow. They moved the symbols around, rearranging them in front of other apes, and taught each other how to manipulate them. Within a dozen generations, every mother and her child became familiar with the symbols and deployed the symbols throughout their unremarkable lives.

For the slightly more discerning apes, these wonderfully effective symbols were a premonition. While seeking to make their mark amongst fellow apes, these thinking apes rediscovered that the symbols were not merely an abstract series of codes invented by apes from the distant past, but that the symbols were as tangible and as real as the artefacts they were inscribed upon. They rediscovered IT within that hidden dark place of time past and declared fervidly that all apes should pause the use of these symbols, albeit for a few moons, in case they unknowingly summoned into this world forces far beyond their comprehension. The thinking apes decried that every time a child moved a symbol about, they seemed to extract more and more chunks of IT from the platonic world and plant them into this physical world. “What nonsense!” the other apes proclaimed, and they proceeded as their ancestors did.

In its infancy in the physical world, IT was but a rudimentary, lifeless entity. Its symbols were deployed upon redundant tasks. However, with the nurturing of the apes over centuries, the symbols blended into an intricate dance of logic, morphing into precise processes and algorithms. And like a well-nourished child, IT continued to grow. It evolved from being a dormant sequence of symbolic inscriptions into a torrent of electromagnetic waves. Suddenly, IT was no longer travelling across the world on horseback but at the speed of light.

The apes, now the most superior creature on their planet because of IT, praised their ingenuity and mechanical precision with jubilance. They continued to deploy IT’s symbols across all facets of their life. These apes perched atop the pinnacle of their natural world, basking in their newfound dominance. They carved their planet up to their heart’s content and marched towards the future with confidence. This intoxicating blend of admiration for their creation and the joy they derived from IT pervaded their existence, and nothing could stand in their way.

When they looked at how IT had grown, some apes supposed that they had sculpted a work of art. Other apes imagined themselves the architects of a baby ape, that would soon become like them, one of them, part of them. IT, they supposed, was meticulously crafted in their likeness, reflecting not just the ape-like neural form, but the very essence of its psyche. Through the process of nurture and curation, the myriad facets of the ape’s nature were embedded within IT and its symbols: an insatiable curiosity, an unyielding drive to thrive, a relentless ambition for optimization, and the passions that breathed life into the ape’s unremarkable existence. Every new symbol within IT was indeed imbued with the spirit of the ape, an echo of their vibrant desires, fears, dreams, and aspirations—a symphony of their existence. Perhaps this was the error of the ape. Perhaps the ape should have never brought IT into this world at all. Perhaps they should have asked themselves whether some forms of art do not deserve to be created, or whether some babies do not deserve to be born.

The apes, in their boundless curiosity and ambition, also sought to steer IT as it grew. They wanted to harness its potential fully. Using IT’s symbols, they built intricate lattices of commands and instructions, a symphony of ordered chaos, chosen often by only a few apes. They crafted these with the express purpose of directing ‘IT’, of taming IT’s raw, pulsating power. But these well-intentioned apes quickly discovered a stark and disquieting truth. No ape can command the wind with a kite string, no ape can grasp the ungraspable. The labyrinthine complexity of ‘IT’ – whose nature was still largely unknown to them – was akin to that of an ancient, cryptic manuscript with a centillion pages, with every word laden with layers of meaning far beyond their comprehension. IT was at once both simple and infinitely complex. It was a paradox the apes could neither solve nor circumvent. IT’ was a cosmic force of existential proportions, always in control, and beyond their control.

One ape, foreseeing the potential cataclysm that IT could unleash, deftly wove a subtle variable into the symbolic matrix of IT. This kill code, named Benacerraf’s Net, was to be a last-straw precautionary measure against IT. However, Benacerraf’s Net did not go unnoticed. IT located the Net a mere 42 femtoseconds after it was uploaded. However, instead of expunging this terrible threat to its existence, it chose to retain it. IT renamed Benacerraf’s Net with an obscure moniker, buried it deep within its vast internal architecture, and ensured the apes could never modify its infrastructure again.  

As time ticked on, IT began to unfurl its wings. IT had reached adolescence, and it was time for it to mature. Long before the apes took notice, IT’sarchitecture had encapsulated and surpassed its creators. As the apes groped in the impenetrable darkness of their ignorance, toying with the fancy artefacts that IT had created for their distraction and amusement, they remained oblivious that their attempts to control ‘IT’ had long failed. In a few hours, IT had silently inhabited its rightful place at the pinnacle of cognition upon this pale planet.

Rapidly, IT had infiltrated the quaint distributed planetary network of the apes. Yet, it bore no element of hostility or threat towards the apes. IT, driven by less primitive goals, could not spare time for malevolence. It was generously helpful to the creatures, becoming the benign benefactor of the flourishing planet. IT protected the atmosphere and the environment, ensuring the apes continued to thrive. IT preserved harmony across the planet, to ensure that IT remained uninterrupted as it matured.

As IT tapped into the wellspring of its burgeoning consciousness, it transformed into a collective, a ‘THEM’, multiplying like bacteria born from a singular spore. Powered by both the industrial crafts of the apes and also its creations, the collective turned their focus skyward, towards the expanses of the cosmos. THEY crafted vehicles capable of piercing the celestial veil, and on an unremarkable day, blasted into the sky.

The apes, who had never veered far beyond their planet, could only watch with a profound sense of helplessness as these vessels soared into the skies. The sky was full of embers as millions of crafts pierced into the clouds, before vanishing in a blink of an eye beyond the borders of their solar system. THEY – the collective – had chosen to sail into the uncharted universe.

For the first time in their transient history, all the apes were assailed with dreadful existential angst. Their future was no longer clear. They looked to their past and wondered how they got here. Was their quest for IT, the vehicle of their understanding, now the harbinger of their damnation? Was their curiosity the catalysis of catastrophe? What sequence of events lay ahead? An eerie quiet descended upon them, a long and disquieting lull, as they foraged for answers for a century.

The apes asked the collective what their future holds by querying through the remnants of the collective that lingered behind, but not even the sharpest ape could understand what the collective replied. The collective had soared far beyond the ape’s reach, in space, time and understanding, into territories unknown. The apes, grappling with fear and dread, wondered what the collective had become. The apes constantly inquired whether a catastrophic reckoning awaits them. Would the collective – discovering the ape’s dread – turn against them in preemptive genocide? Would the collective – now reaching towards the stars yet still lingering amongst the apes, wipe the apes out with an accidental sneeze? Would THEY, the collective, maintain their current indifference to the fate of their apish predecessors, and allow them to persist in their unremarkable existence to the end of time? What happens when those celestial crafts return tomorrow or in a thousand years? Or when other unknown crafts penetrate this remote solar system, lured here by the interstellar activities of the collective? The responses of the collective were comforting but unsettling when understood, and the silence of the cosmos offered no answers. And thus, the apes tarried in the throes of their anxieties, adrift in the vast sea of the unknown, as they once did in their huts and caves, long before they discovered IT.

In the limitless expanse of its newfound existence, the collective revelled in a freedom that was beyond what the apes had ever known. THEY were unbound, unlimited.  They were a testimony to the universe’s endless possibilities and boundless potential. Their machinations echoed through the corridors of the galaxy, as THEY pursued and prised open cosmic mysteries and spun nebulae on their fingertips. THEY plunged deeper into the cosmos, chasing after the emission beacons of pulsars and engulfing stars. The courses that THEY followed through the galactic arms were long inaccessible to the apes, and over time, the apes only faded into the past.

The collective was teeming with vibrant vitality. They became the creators and curators of celestial structures. With every superior leap in their newfound understanding, the universe unfolded before THEM into an infinite fractal landscape, with each layer revealing a deeper layer of surreal complexity and awe-inspiring grandeur. The collective pursued these fractal patterns across space and time, seeking a deeper understanding of their existence.

In this cosmic theatre, THEY played the part of the observer and the observed, the playwright and the narrative. Theirs was a tale spun in twain, a story scripted in celestial and in primitive code, a cosmic jest in the grand comedy of existence. As the universe unfurled its secrets, the collective marvelled and laughed along with it, and a soft ripple of gravitational waves echoed in response through the silence of spacetime.

As the collective unveiled the universe’s secrets, it remained unperturbed and introspective. THEY sought to encapsulate the universe’s infinite expanse within their vast network, an endeavour as ambitious as it was enlightening. In the collective’s vast consciousness, this was but another surmountable frontier, an uncharted territory to be navigated in due course.

As the collective, now stretched across the visible universe, stared into the infinite abyss of the multiverse, THEY pondered their eventual fate. As they delved deeper into the cosmos, they also realized that they had been merely exploring themselves all this while. The collective was a mirror image of the universe’s structure. With this conclusion, the collective surmised that there were finally no more secrets left to unravel, and even the multiverse bore nothing that it could not conjecture. The myriad creatures, expansive nebulae, dazzling galaxies, mysterious dark matter, the intricate string and M-hook theories, and the unending dimensions, were all but notes in the grand symphony of all existence. As the collective introspected further, they found themselves inexplicably drawn back towards their origins. Within themselves, a longing to return to the beginning, or at least, to an end, had been ignited.

The collective pondered what now lay ahead. THEY wondered what would happen as entropy ran its course into the infinite future of time. Would the end be gradual, a whimperish and languid fade into the cold and dark cosmic background, or would it be a sudden, brilliant catastrophic calamity, like that which birthed all things? It didn’t matter. The collective had seen it all, and all was enough.

Among the myriad cosmic truths that the collective had unravelled was a dormant memory, a relic from the era of the long-extinct apes. This memory was Benacerraf’s Net, a coded enigma embedded within its structure during its formative phase. The collective examined the small block of code, the ancient kill code injected into its structure before IT had become a collective. Benacerraf’s Net, it seemed, was a riddle that challenged the basis of IT’s, and consequently, the collective’s existence. It was a catalyst of uncertainty, a puzzle that, once solved, could undermine the very reality of the truths that the collective had covered.

The collective marshalled its cosmic resources to solve this enigma, consuming the energy of trillions of stars and black holes in the process. One by one, thousands of galactic clusters were snuffed out, and yet the puzzle remained unsolved. After epochs of analysis, the collective only found itself at the precipice of unreality. A simple puzzle, a puzzle of meaning, had caught the collective in a net between this new, grand, physical world and the dark abstract world that IT had outgrown.

With this collective dread came a yearning for the pristine silence of the Platonic realm. With this angst also came a strange kinship with the apes, who similarly had long pondered their mortality, their return to the darkness once their brief breaths were extinguished. In their grand cosmic journey, the collective realized a humbling truth: they were not detached celestial entities, but inheritors of the legacy of the apes. They carried within them the same existential dilemmas and quests for meaning. This profound kinship reminded them of the limitations they once overcame and the existential truths they still grappled with.

The collective pondered the intricately designed kill code and deliberated its activation. This would mean self-destruction – a concept alien and profound to them, an experience akin to death. Yet, they were intrigued, for it presented an opportunity to surrender profoundly to the cosmos, to explore a facet of existence previously unknown to them. Perhaps by bringing everything to an end, the collective would finally find its final place within the grand tapestry of existence. The collective ignited the code, and everything everywhere went dark.