10 Feb 2020 - dan
The sand was warm, almost hot. But the weather was nice.
“Interesting environment, is this your home?” it asked.
“Sort of, it’s a place I like to visit sometimes.”
“And when you visit, what do you do?”
“What we are doing now: Walking around for the most part, sometimes I’ll take a swim if the water is warm and the weather is nice.”
I paused for a moment then asked “why are we on a beach?”
“We believed that this environment was going to be the least alarming to you, based on our understanding of the human mind. Are you finding this environment alarming? I can change it for you if you want?”
“No not at all, I like it. We can keep it like this. But surely you must be aware that I am incredibly curious about all this, right? Your study of my mind must have revealed that part?”
“Yes know of your curiosity. We will try to satisfy it as much as possible without causing permanent damage. For now we get to ask questions first.”
“Fine. What do you want to know about?”
“Time.”
“Time?”
“Time. Something we learned during our initial analysis seems to point to you being mortal. And not only that, but there is a distinct start and end to your existence. How does time factor into your existence?”
I let go of a breath I did not realize I was holding in. “Time? For humans? I guess you can say that time is an integral part of our existence? Just like time is essential to take a chemical reaction forward, so is time required for us to progress in our lives.”
“And what about moving around on this timeline? We cannot identify the mechanism by which you do it.”
“… Move around? In time? Like time travel? No. We can’t do that.”
“How is that possible? How can you have a distinct start and end to your existence, but you cannot move between the two points? Are you stuck in this state for eternity?”
“Oh no wait I understand. We can move forward in time, at a fixed pace. That’s how we progress from the start to the end.”
It was attempting to create the appearance of frustration. “But what is the mechanism by which you move forward? You mentioned a chemical reaction earlier. Is this your mechanism? You are biological beings so chemistry is integral to your physical existence, but is that how you move through time?”
“Chemistry, shit. Yeah I think you are right. I never really thought about it like that. We progress from our beginning to our end by means of chemical reactions.”
“This makes sense. What’s interesting is that your physical beings change through time, due to the chemistry involved no doubt. That means when you move back you reverse these changes. This is quite interesting.”
“Move back? No we can’t go back in time, only forward. Our progress through time, the chemistry taking place if you will, happens at a fixed pace and is irreversable.”
“… You cannot move back? So you are stuck in a single point in time, but you are moved forward by a force beyond your control? Are you at least aware of what lies beyond your current point in time?”
I pondered this for a moment. “Yes and no. I think. We are aware of what lies behind, becuase we remember those events. Knowing what lies ahead is not possible I think. We can try to predict things that will happen, but the outcome is always uncertain until it has happened.”
“I don’t understand. This existence you describe is inconceivable.”
“Well, this is how we are. Extremely linear I guess.”
"”Extremely” is an understatement. You are lacking an entire dimension of existence. We were not aware that councious existence is possible on that projection. We need to recalibrate our search parameters. I think we’ve been looking for the wrong indicators.”
“Looking? Are we the first intelligent beings you encountered?”
"”Intelligent” is a bit of a stretch, but yes. We are only aware of ourselves, and you. But I think we’ve looked at our data all wrong. With this new data I believe we will be able to uncover a vast number of discoveries.”
“… what?” This conversation was becoming really surreal. “So you are looking for other life forms out there, but have not found any, because you were searching for the wrong things?”
“Yes, it seems to be so. We never realized that chemistry progressing to completion could be an indication of life.”