A Short Story.

After anti-gravity was achieved by electrostatic capacitance and zero point energy used for propulsion close to light speed was achieved and space travel became far easier. On an unmanned mission a probe hovered low over the surface of a planet in a distant galaxy. It was distinctly inhospitable, poor atmosphere, high temperatures and levels of radiation, but a lot of what seemed like mobile phone traffic. The probe listened in. Back on earth people tried to decipher it as the probe sent back pictures. They showed cities and towns but no inhabitants. Though aged they had an almost Disney Land cartoon look. Incongruous amidst the beautiful coloured building were shiny metal monoliths, rectangular and featureless emitting masses of microwave activity. On earth the signals appeared to be like online gaming. They would have remained a mystery if it weren’t for a single man, James Fitch, recognising his own name in one stream of code. He recorded the code and studied it. Working on the assumption it was character moves in some game or other he began to plot the likely moves, walk, speak, lift and turn of head, and much, much more. He struggled with the meaning of all this, and all from an uninhabited planet that obviously had been. Perhaps the inhabitants had somehow converted themselves into electronics as the planet became uninhabitable, that would make sense. But there was his name in the code. He began to decode more, his wife’s name and then his children’s, where he worked. This was not coincidence. Then an accident, his son Jake broke his leg. But his son had broken his leg weeks ago. This gave him more insight into the code. He followed the events, hospital, a holiday to recoup, back to school. The code described his life like a delayed TV program. Weeks later he was still following the code in disbelief. The code was now showing him working on code from an uninhabitable planet sent back by a mission probe. It was him in every detail. How? He checked the time delay, 17 days, 5 hours and 25 minutes. This was shorter than the time the probe had taken to get there but when he recalculated for the speed of light it was the same. So the signal reached earth the exact same time as ‘his’ present. He was living the code as it arrived. His life couldn’t be creating the code because the code came first so was he, his life in all its happenstance, being created by the code? Might he be a game character, an avatar? He decided to send a message via the probe, “Who are you?” The answer came back, “We are you.” Then another message, “How? Why?” “Our planet was dying, we became silicone from carbon life. A few of us found your planet, not all could go, and as your numbers grew we became you. We needed a beautiful place to live in to fulfil our dreams and you are those dreams. And in time as you evolved you have found us. We are happy.” “But you’re saying my life is being written on a games console seventeen light days away!” “Oh come on, don’t take yourself so seriously.”