Phase Q/Cosmic Growth
With a growl, Tiger City grows to twice its size. Worlds5329812-92123479 multiply, turning into a new worldset.
As the metaverse expands, its subworlds branch out with new codes. In some worlds, the chemistry lives on matter and energy from other worlds. Elsewhere, matter ceases to exist at all, leaving only fluidly evolving energyscapes.
In many of the worlds, simple creatures grow. Most of them live in monoelemental environments, basically performing the same reactions over and over. A much smaller number of creatures develop what looks like autonomy. And a tiny fraction develop an awareness of their own growth and death.
On Zinkolaster, a family of elastic sacs think with the fluid that fills them. When it comes time to reproduce, the thinking fluid empties out. A special reproduction fluid replaces it.
On Hurtlegurt, a species evolves to eat each other instead of the plentiful grasses all around, because their vision isn’t adapted to see at the wavelength of light that the grasses reflect.
On Unanium, the population of airminds believes so firmly that it lives under two suns that they never sleep even when their one actual sun goes down. Exhaustion is the leading cause of economic loss.
On Hinxland, an insect colony that fills the entire atmosphere spends so much time following each other, originally an adaptation to find and secure food, that at this point it forms a closed circuit. If any of the individual insects had enough thinking cells, it could realize that the colony as a whole merely wanders endlessly in circles.
Amid all the evolutions, a few people find their places. In the joints and creases of system revolutions, a few lucky ducks hit a hyperslide. And Gaboonga! Another populationally full world.
Even in the vast wasteland in the wake of the Zonnyx quantum disruptors, new upside down compounds form spontaneously. A life form that converts negative time into positive energy finds a home in the quantum antifoam.
After fifty million eons – or before that amount of time, for the antifoamers – sex goes out the window. A new reproductive technique that involves overindulging in metabolic intakes takes over. The results are impressive for the economy, yet lackluster on the intermundial emotional satisfaction scale.
The economic surplus leads to new forms of work. Workers weld together their different world, yielding a kind of complex interworld system. The system itself spontaneously condenses into a new form of intelligence. It rapidly climbs the IQ charts, topping the previously leading Middleworlders.
The spreading diversity of awarenesses in the metaverse leads to new standards of emotionality. Some spinning metal rods press for representation of the deadset. Overactive emoluers who descend ontographically from even before the Triad-Flowriser split of their tree, explode repeatedly in protest.
In the main mass of metaverse, which is the chunk that holds records for greatest economic output and most outrageous personality disorders, life explodes cancerously. Life even backswarms in from the exponentially expanding metaverse. Controversies ensue, leading eventually either to new hybrids or all-out warfare, depending on which line of history.
Amid all the explosions of life and matter and energy, you continue to look for your way.
Phase Q: An interactive adventure.
