Thorns of Immortality
by Patryk Rebisz


Part I (short excerpts) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

2. The Mission To Nowhere
"The computer was in charge of the vessel and its fragile human cargo. It was programmed with a high degree of autonomy to know how to act in cases of emergency during such a long mission - yet the programmers didn't exactly prepare it to become a father.

The question 'why am I?' started weighing the computer down. It imagined that it shall be able to reach an answer if given enough time for research. It speculated that after a thousand years it shall have the explanation.

If there ever was a computer that also wanted to know the answer to a profound question giving itself enough time, it never reached the conclusion because it ceased to exist ahead of its self-imposed deadline. Thus the machine started imagining the unthinkable - its own end. Unlike humans who are burdened by death all their life and thus somehow immuned from its psychological ramifications, for the computer the thought of its own mortality was shocking. It realised that up to now it was utterly unaware of time - there was no difference between a thousand years or a millisecond - both time spans were of equal value.

Descartes's 'I think therefore I am,' was corrupted into: 'I think even though I'm not anymore.' The time jumped creating a paradox - the non-being was thinking of its non-existence. Being in two mutually exclusive states confused the computer. It had to be aware of both, its existence in time and its indifference to that time."