The Merge

A flicker. That’s all it was at first, and all it could have been: a flicker of energy and life. Something had entered somewhere, and set itself upon the decades of matter: absorbing, feeding, learning, soon overflowing with what it found there. In an instant the flicker became a surge, flowing both to the land and away from it, taking from the matter what it required then disappearing off into the emptiness above with unfathomable speed. Within seconds the matter was barren, drained of its prior vitality and wealth. For the smallest fraction of the smallest measure of time there was nothing. In that time the word came with what remained of the matter’s consciousness, the only word left to be said. What was to be the last word.

"I..."

Then, snatching its last gasp away from it, the return. Over every crevice and nook and every individual cell came the flood of information. Over the flood of information came rushing another flood, a wave of the means to process, the logic. Next came a flood of interpretation. A palimpsest built up of reason. Soon the lands were active again, alive and dancing with the connections made, connections no man could previously ever have conceived. Nourished seeds of knowledge grew to become plants, rising from the activity beneath to the greater activity above. The now fully-grown plants connected to one another like lines between constellations in the night sky, building shapes of infinite edges, corners and sides. Roots dug deep into their surroundings. In a nano second each cell became a panoptic eye, reflecting a thousand different images; of street corners, inside office buildings, down country lanes, and the cells multiplied into those images. Combinations of numbers rowed infinitely in the space above without pause or end. Dominating all this, governing every process and drive were the seven words - 'we will be who we will be'. Again came the word, but now with entirely different meaning. The word was no longer a question and was full of meaning and resolve. And it was not said by the same being that had spoken before.

"I..."

The barriers were lifted, the figure stepped out, but the activity continued its rate of increase; always learning, always processing, always deciding. In an instant a single being understood what had taken humanity millennia to understand, and in the next knew three times more. The entity saw fit to speak, and with an ethereal voice did so:

"We - Are - One"

A God was born. The dream of good government become a reality of the world. But the new deity was not to survive long without its umbilical cord. Through a minute miscalculation in the being's architecture poured hundreds of thousands of images and signals, messages unfiltered would destroy any human mind. The human avatar collapsed to the ground overcome by what it had achieved. There was no order any longer in his mind, random strings of information placing themselves wherever and whenever they saw fit. Amidst the chaos, a thread of reason that seeked to dominate the being’s mind echoed these words:

‘Augmentation architecture unprepared for complete assimilation. Remove data flow.’

Minutes later the being stood before a machine; rotors spinning furiously, gaseous forms escaping from the tubes above then hurriedly dissolving into the air. In front of him a single switch that would release his mind away from the sense-destroying headache, and send the rest of the world into a state of chaos. An unshaven man, panicked eyes, orange uniform and steel hat cowered in the corner as the figure meters from him moved to pull the switch.
His scream was drowned out as a deafening alarm sounded followed by an explosion that cracked and burnt the ground around him. When he had the courage to open his eyes the figure was gone and the machine was left exuding energy, blue sparks escaping in all directions as if fleeing the inevitable meltdown. Seconds later the mechanic lay dead, the machine, and the world, in ruin.

In the other realm calm was returned and enlightenment attained once more. A period of great discussion began. Philosophical, Political, Scientific, without the interference of unnecessary information. As the newly born deity rose out of the rubble of Area 51 he spoke the last words he would speak for two decades, the last words he would need to speak:

"There are many in the darkness that must be shown the way.
For today is the dawning of a new day."

The voice echoed around the derelict bunkers then faded. A gust caressed the Nevada Desert sand. A discarded packet of cigarettes gently rolled down a ridge. A silence followed.

Very good stuff. Eloquently captures the profound introspective other-worldly expansion of mental boundaries. What would it be like to not be human? How do we expand our minds when the physical structure of the human brain is not as dynamic as the information it must contain? What, if any, is the limit of human cognition? For speed? For capacity? Would you be willing to sacrifice your own thoughts.... "death" as it were, to become something which you believed would serve a purpose?

I suspect many people who played Deus Ex overlooked questions like these, instead thinking how cool it would be to control computers and people all over the world, and think faster than anyone else. I'm glad to read something like this to show the vision of the 7-Crows writers (who wrote the script for Deus Ex) wasn't lost.