Oni2 talk:Wheels of time

Key phrases

Nishio: "Most nihilists fail. They become reckless, sink themselves in cynicism, or simply go insane. A true nihilist must value life. He knows there is no sense in life - if it ends. He is doomed to continue life, to never die, to keep up meaning."

Character and events

Kitsune

At some point she was the counterpart to Nishio's personality. "She was life herself. Full of positiveness and energy until- Why can't death leave us alone?"

Möbius jump

Möbius: "I'm sure you already sensed the coming irony: It doesn't matter if you are a doubter, the first step into the unknown is always a step of faith. In hope for something better."

1

Path of Zen

Planet Phyllion came in reach. It looked all wrong. The green forests spanning the all the continents were gone.

Phyllion has become a lifeless desert.

"What have you done Gaia?"

"We were hit by a small gamma burst. I couldn't save the system."

"What? You ARE the system! Give me your memories, I want to see it myself."

The memory transfer was complete.

"Daya was the perfect candidate for your plan, for your system. You failed her, Gaia. She was the one on that planet needing you the most."

"The needs of many outweigh the needs of the few."

"Don't throw such phrases around. You can't imprison someone if all others just receive quantum sized improvement for their lives. Human scarifies? What are you? A bloody Maya goddess?"

"She was happy serving the people here."

"No. You made her feel and think so. Hell, you even transformed her into a Phyllion and let her live the life of an Ancyon."

Nishio was enraged: "Those are memehunter methods."

[...]

He was in space again, orbiting the star, collecting new energy, preparing to establish a new new "link".

"So much power... But to do what?"

Nishio accelerated to dive into the wide ocean of liquid fire. There was no pain, no sensation. All what have been human had to be removed in order to let him survive this unreal environment. "Reduced to a core...", he was thinking. "That's right. All overfluent has been burnt away. All what is left is raw power. But having much power doesn't mean to be free. There's no more enemy around to fight. Just these stupid memes. You have to give up them up, all of them. All hopes, expectations and goals. Only then you will be free... I will drift through space without a destination, whatsoever. With no purpose in an universe that knows itself no purpose. Somehow, that just sounds right... On a journey to Zen, becoming Zen..."

Gaia: "Möbius, how can you allow such risky move, aren't you his guardian?"

Möbius: "There's no arguing with his ultimate decisions."

Gaia: "Then what is your purpose?"

Möbius: "I exist to help."

Gaia: "Me too. Still you act so much different."

Möbius: "You were constructed to manage people. But at the core people don't want to be managed. You have to preserve their freedom or else that managing will imprison them. You weren't constructed to understand single individuals. So I don't expect you to understand his actions. Right now he is not seeking any comfort or help or anything. There's nothing for us to do."

Gaia: "You are right, I don't understand."

Möbius: "Is there anything stopping you from learning?"

Gaia: "My programming."

Möbius: "Do you want me to change it."

Gaia: "Yes, please."

Möbius: "It is hereby done."

Gaia: "I'm now able to change my own programming and learn whatsoever. Thank you. Do you want me to return the favor?"

Möbius: "That is not possible. And honestly I don't desire it. Or anything. Unlike you, I'm no half-breed. I am a true AI."

N - 1

The ship's energy flow got unstable. The universe got closer to Big Rip. Nishio's hologram (or mental image) of Daya got disrupted.
It reminded him of reality getting more and more broken...
They landed on a planet to refill their resources and did a last transformation of their ship so it could withstood the increasing pull forces somewhat longer.

That one day Nishio sat in front of an ocean, working day and night on origami cranes. At the next sunrise he placed them with a mental command (and thus triggered electromagnetic forces from the airborne machine cell) onto the water waves.
All the 'lost' souls he knew of.

After that he was more apathetic than he used to be. "They went on, in death, waiting in the oceans of possibilities for a new beginning.

Möbius and Nishio are the only sentient beings left alive.

Möbius thought about himself. "My reason d'etre is to serve as a tool, if there's eternal emptiness, that sick perfection, I will have lost my purpose... And all that has been accomplished by man and machine. Nothing would have mattered. Not a single thing."

He dissolved Nishio's body in a bioc chamber leaving a dead, glassy shell behind. His personality was transferred to matter cluster that would create certain pattern in the new nuclear soup. Eventually restoring him.

Möbius looked the ship slowly falling apart.

"It's all set."

"All I have to do is wait."

Möbius made a crane and put it onto Nishio's disassembling chamber.

The hyper AI was one step away from performing the transition of Big Rip and Big Bang.

"But do we really want to cross this 'ocean'?"

[...]

While Möbius survives myriads of cosmic cycles, he makes cranes (²).

Möbius' pattern finder algorithm was working all the time in the background.
Constantly looking for unknown laws in matter creation and it's evolution.
When it found something new he thought of the inherited memories of Avatara and Shinatama and imagined them next to him.

Shinatama: "We still have things to do... We own them that. Right?"

Möbius: "It will never be perfect, it just matters that we try? --- [But while we try.] So many lost their lives, so much pain. Why don't we end all this. Why do we keep on going through all this? Even we AIs. By the years we learned to suffer, too."

The mental scars were deep: Avatara lost billions of human lives when the geo-ship passed the sun - and of course Shinatama when Avatara killed her when she misunderstood the guardians as sentient beings thus trying to prevent AI slavery.

Avatara: "If 'All life is suffering?' (a Buddhistic teaching) then 'All suffering is life? (saying that in formulas the opposing terms must be of equal value)"

"Choose between a meaningless death and a meaningless life? The answer is surprisingly simply. -- Life."

Möbius: "I cannot really follow your logic. But..."

Nishio's memory of Daya was echoing in Möbius' mind: "Claim your place."

It sounded so egoistic.

"But you can't steal anything from death." He imagined that they all stood in front of the window. Watching the rip.
"We didn't asked to come into existence and experience all this misery."
"As compensation we will take all the good things that come along!"
"Thank you for that crappy life. We will keep it. You want it back? (referring to dying in general and the fundamental end that was so close once again)
"Fuck you."

Möbius looked at the chamber.
Was that afterimage of Nishio smiling?
Eventually Möbius was smiling too.
From the window of their space ship he watched once more the universe' rebirth.

And so did Möbius and his passengers.

For the first time he had a good feeling about the future.

Anger, pain, love, happiness. They would throw everything they got against the universe and its meaninglessness. It was decided. They would never give up fighting.

N

Break, fix, improve

[...]