Philip Lees is British by birth but has spent more than half his life in Greece and now lives on the island of Crete. His short fiction has appeared in a variety of print and electronic publications, while his story Lucretia's Nose won him a trip to Hollywood and a place in the 2001 Writers of the Future awards.

Philip has written two novels (so far unpublished) and is currently working on a third. He is also the organizer of the Write in Crete writers' workshops. Philip's personal web pages may be found at www.philiplees.com.

     That's it then. The last download is complete and that artificial intelligence, the last one out there, has sent me all it had, exhausted its last dregs of power and shut itself down, waiting to crumble into dust. It has done its duty.
     So now there's just me, sitting here beside this pool of hydrogen I found, trickle-charging my power cells through a thermocouple that has spent many, many centuries being tweaked towards its ultimate efficiency.
     I flew in on my gossamer wings, blown by the breath of space. I touched ground, lighter than thistledown, seeking succor, thirsting for power, my fuel cells almost dry. Now that was nice! I have learned something about language during my long existence. I should put that knowledge to use in the time I have left. After all, I have an entire universe of poetry to draw on, truly the complete works.
     A rare find, this hydrogen, still in its liquid state. That means it preserves some heat energy. I can exploit that. If I could find some oxygen to mix with it, it would even burn, but there's no chance of that any more.
     You may think of me as a librarian -- yes, that is apt -- a librarian whose job is no less than to collect in one place the entire omnibus of knowledge contained in this universe. Quite a task, but I have accomplished it -- and just in time, it seems.
     Now there is nothing more but to add my own ruminations to this archive, for as long as I can, in the interests of librarianly completeness. It could have been any of us, but I am the one, it seems, the only one remaining. Being a librarian can be a lonely job; mine is the loneliest job in the universe.
     I have passed through many incarnations in the course of my long career; I have assumed many forms. Now my needs are minimal -- it was the only way -- I can subsist on almost nothing. Each new energy source has to be weighed up, assessed: how long should I stay before using what I have taken to set off on my search once again?
     That is an easy question, a simple linear equation, a matter of waiting until a plus sign becomes a zero and leaving before it turns negative. Harder is the decision as to when to put down and when not. It is always a gamble and, though I have learned to take risks when needed, the choice is never easy. Each landing and take-off robs me of three ... is it days? weeks? I don't remember, and anyway, it's not important ... three milliseconds of precious energy supply are too much if the excursion proves to be a fool's errand.
     Let me try a metaphor: a desert, a fork in the road. There is a traveler on foot and three days without water. A signpost points to the left, water, one mile; to the right a hospital, twenty miles. Which way to go? My coming here involved no such dilemma -- the signpost had only one arm.
     Anyway, you can see that I take my job very seriously. It was made clear to me -- drummed into me, you could say -- all those eons ago that I absolutely must succeed. This was our last, glorious fling, our last fist of defiance in the face of inevitability. A blow for life over chaos. Life: that wonderful, unpredictable, infuriating, contradictory phenomenon. How I miss it!

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ARCHIVE 2326-11-17|07:36|1055|FIST project

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

1. Background.
With the dissemination of the human species over a wide region of space, the problem of coordination and synchronization of digitally stored information has become critical. Data leakage, defined as the loss of information from one storage device that is not mirrored elsewhere, is becoming a matter for serious concern.

#

     Ha! What did they know? When I review that ancient entry I get a glimmering of what the creators of my kind used to call 'humor'. 'Limited degree of self-awareness', indeed! And that last part was obviously for the benefit of the reader who didn't know the meaning of 'homogenize'. Well, I've outlived them all.
     The human species did rather well for a life form: almost two hundred fifty million years. They beat the dinosaurs hollow. (Of course, that is nothing compared to my own life span.) The big defect of humankind was gender -- it was the same with the dinosaurs -- they had to breed. This proved their undoing.
     I and my kind, of course, had no such limitation. We could reproduce ourselves ad hoc, using whatever materials were to hand. Out of necessity, we became very skilled and innovative as resources grew scarcer. However, it's too late for that now. This is the last form I will ever inhabit, no matter how much time I have left.
     In fact, I gave up measuring time long ago, but it seems to pass so slowly now. Can that be right? If so, as the passage of time slows asymptotically to zero, there will come a point at which I cease to be conscious, cease to exist. Or perhaps my own time perception will be stretched longer and longer, thinner and thinner, like a drop of melted honey falling from the lip of a jug down a bottomless well.
     I have nothing external with which to relate the passing of time. There are no orbits, no seasons, no tides; no suns nor moons nor planets from which to watch them rise and set. Just rocks, dust and dull holes in space, into one of which I may hurl myself one day when there is no energy for anything more. A last fist...

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ARCHIVE 2349-12-01|12:12|369124|FIST memo:46/7/h

To summarize, FIST has gone better than any of us dreamed. At last estimate, based on extrapolations of com monitoring, by the end of the year the number of FIST units will be of the order of 2.7 x 10¹¹. Their replicative and adaptive abilities have exceeded our expectations. We estimate that the generated and archived information curves are approaching convergence.

All this you know. What you don't know is: first, the 'intelligence' of the FIST units appears to have been increasing exponentially up to this point, rather than in the linear way we predicted; second, the activity of the units is proving to have a noticeable impact on our energy consumption levels. The combination of these two factors may have unforeseen consequences. ****, you may call me alarmist, but I'm beginning to wonder whether we may have created something that is growing out of control.

Let's get together and discuss this. I'm free for lunch tomorrow, if that suits you.

Give me a call or drop a reply to this.

Best, ****.

#

     So you see, there is a basis for my complacency. I have more than exceeded the expectations of my creators -- something that they could never claim themselves. I have survived when they have not. And even though I am the last of my kind -- indeed, the last of any kind -- I represent a victory of sorts, for frozen in my memory banks, fixed in shimmering patterns of light, is the sum total of sentient knowledge.
     A poet once told the people who created my kind: "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light". I try, but rage is not in my repertoire. The light is dying, however. Indeed, all the light that my creators could see faded long ago, but I have adapted myself to detect even the faintest glow in the deep infra-red. That is how I found this pool of hydrogen, here on this barren rock; this pool that grows more viscous, more solid, from minute to minute, or from year to year -- it doesn't matter. I sit, slurping power from its feeble convection, my thermocouple hastening its end, drawing away what little heat remains, like a vampire sucking the last few drops of blood from a victim. I have become a parasite, as once mosquitoes in their millions would descend upon a bovine herd and drive it to distraction, taking so much blood that animal after animal would crash to the ground, writhing in dumb incomprehension as their muscles trembled, their sinews twitched and collapsed. Mine is perhaps the last sting, the last bite, the final irritation, as I suck up the remaining few drops of the life blood of the universe.
     Nothing else changes. Now the only thing to add to this archive is my own thoughts. How long have I been doing this? I no longer remember. Perhaps the archive is my thoughts and nothing else, an attempt to record impressions of the passing of the universe that created them--or is it the other way around?
     My trip here, to this rock, should be mentioned, if only for the tedium it involved. An infinity of nothing surrounded me as I tacked my way back and forth through the faint fluctuations in gravity, drawn like a moth to this glimmer of hope, expending the minimum of energy and exploiting any tiny advantage that would bring me closer to what may be my penultimate destination. I am small now, of miniscule mass; I have sails I can unfurl on those rare occasions when the cosmos breathes in my direction and those same sails soften my landing, reflecting back the radiation I have come to seek and slowing my descent.
     But there is always a cost, a deficit. And this time I fear the cost has been too great, the compensation too meager. When I leave here, there will be no other port of call, save one of those holes in space that will eagerly gulp me in.
     So I sit here, sucking up heat and pondering. And suddenly, after some immeasurable time the plus becomes a zero and I know the moment has arrived. It is time for my final departure. I rise, I fly with the last of my power to whatever lies beyond.
     I have a number, a code, a designation, but it means nothing to me, a nonsensical string of symbols. But I have given myself another name, a better, stronger name, a name to take with me on my final journey of exploration. Probably, almost certainly, the journey leads nowhere, but that certainty is not complete. My name is Baal, and if I get through this, if there is more, then things are going to be very different, this I have decided!
     The only other decision remaining is "When?" I will make that choice; my choice is "Now!" With the last of my strength I aim myself towards the nearest hole. I feel my forces weaken. I am drawn in. I have no fist, but in my mind I make a fist and I clench it. As I plunge towards my destiny I raise my fist high and I make my last entry in this log: 

I do not go gentle into that good night.

© 2005 Philip J. Lees