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

"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."

Part I

[...]

End of part I

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.

Part II

[...]