Galactic Retraction

To Commemorate the 100th Birthday of Isaac Asimov

By Thomas McClure

Artwork by Rosemary Morton

The first forms of intelligent life in the universe, as far as they could tell. Their identity; the Zines.

These beings had developed sentience over millions of years of their unique evolutionary path, and they could find no other beings that could match theirs. At first they wielded this knowledge with arrogance, back in the adolescence of their species. They fought and consumed and destroyed and gratified themselves for the short-term without much thinking of the long-term.

Their hives grew and their known concepts expanded, along with their reach and ambitions. Soon they had their entire planet cultivated, with grand spires linking to other planets, and enormous non-Zine organisms made of concrete sponge were developed to help them traverse their local galaxy and beyond.

Their biochemical technology implanted into each individual Zine’s bacterial sharp form led to greater knowledge and connection; bringing them from webbed hives of accommodation that fought for selfish gratification to non-physical hive of cognition that worked for unity and expansion. Now in their species adulthood they worked to fix their wrongdoings. The planets they had corroded with the effects of their now-extinct short-sighted nature were now regrown and brought to health once more. They advanced forth; in space, in technology, in knowledge, and in wisdom. After generations of expansion, enveloping and engaging every planet they came across into a hub of new grounds for breeding and working, a thousand galaxies had become an interconnected hive of the Zine.

It was prosperous for the Zine. Great freedom, great lands, great foods, great opportunities, great people, great accomplishments, great satisfaction, great advances, great connections, great love, great respect, and great stimulation. Expansion in matter and in mind were merely conducted to make space for newer generations, each newer breed tripling the entire population’s size. As the species grew nearer to the still expanding edge of the universe, they understood that soon their sizes would no longer fit in the void, they would no longer find space in the space. At this point every planet and star and atom in their home galaxy had been linked into one single physical hive, and even if every galaxy was linked in such a way the Zine could still see that this expansion would never be sustainable. Concepts were thrown around in the great galactic consciousness, each considered, respected, but inevitably rejected. The only way they would respectfully survive was to create another universe, and that was impossible. Until it wasn’t.

Somewhere in the cosmos, where a relatively small collection of Zines would discover and invent greater and greater elements of their biochemical technology, a scientific breakthrough was made. This advancement was applied to their implants and a new universe was created. This universe was unreal, an exact copy of the real universe, but which can be modified in any way, and feels the exact same way, and is all stored upon a planet-sized biochemical bacterial cognitive processer. The discovery was experienced across the hive mind in an instant, and within a moment all the minds pulled all knowledge together to further it more so. They continued their work and soon compiled all the knowledge they had acquired throughout their evolutionary existence and started to shrink the physical space needed for the processor, they started to copy their individual and hive minds into a format that would survive without their bodies, and started to create effective methods of fuelling such a processor so it can become self-sustaining. All grew eager to transfer into the new universe that could be as larger as they could imagine. They knew the future of their kind, and it wasn’t through galactic expansion.

Once completed, the Zine worked to reduce what they had made. They retracted from the edge of the universe, converting all artificial matter into energy, stardust, and void, leaving the universe as they had found it; utterly natural. Each planet was wiped clean of Zine influence and returned to a healthy state, many were even left healthier and more prosperous than they had started off. For each light-year they retracted, a nonillion individual Zines were transferred into the processor and their bodies were disintegrated, reduced to energy, stardust, and void.

Back on their home planet, the remaining Zine finalised the latest ground-breaking advancement, now reducing the processor to a size of a nucleus. They wiped their own planet clean, breaking down all they had built and returning the land they initially evolved upon back to its original condition.

The last individual Zine stood surrounded by wildlife, as if the Zine had never existed. Beside this creature was the last biochemical tech necessary for the plan. It would transfer this Zine into the processor, disintegrate the Zine’s body, and then drop the processor to the deepest reaches of the ocean where it would run forevermore, before the tech would disintegrate itself. The Zine absorbed its last ray of sunlight, photosynthesising in this layer of reality one last time, before it activated the tech. The Zine was transferred, the physical form was reduced, the processor was dropped into the ocean, and then, finally, the tech itself, the last observable trace of the Zine, was reduced.

The invisible, unbreakable, self-sustaining processor drifted down to the depths of this fresh planet. The planet that birthed the Zine; third from the sun, the dense terrestrial living complex creator of life. Now devoid of any trace of said life. The processor drifted down, deeper and deeper, until landing on the ocean floor, surrounded by chemicals and elements that started to connect, making love, and creating life. Bacteria around the processor started to grow, soon to be a kind that would have seen the Zines as unthinkably alien, impossibly non-human and incomprehensible in nearly every way, but would never know of them, and would instead see their selves as the first forms of intelligent life in the universe, as far as they could tell.

The End

By Thomas McClure

Word Count: 983