I was driving home from work on one of those days when you don't want to be alive. The radio hosts were talking about something with great enthusiasm, but I had no energy to listen; I'd turned it on out of habit. Muscle memory was doing the driving. I just drifted, and the lights of the highway blurred in front of my eyes.
Routine has swallowed me whole, I thought. All I do is work and sleep. My real life only starts after dark, inside a video game...
And then, as if through fog, a voice reached me, one I actually found myself listening to.
"We've got another caller! Good evening, what's your name?"
"Good evening, earthlings. You're speaking with the Responsible for sector G3A."
"Well, that's quite an unusual name."
"It's not a name. It's a title."
"Fair enough… ha-ha-ha! So then, what story did you want to share with us?"
The voice changed. It dropped slightly, and a cold metallic resonance crept into it, the kind that sends a chill down your spine. Though maybe I was just imagining things.
"Many civilizations, in the course of their development, become consumed by a single goal — the search for paradise," the guest began.
"They dream of it, building entire religions around it: eternal life free from suffering, every desire fulfilled. But then progress inevitably leads them to start building that paradise themselves, literally. For advanced civilizations, this takes the form of colossal computing systems, machines capable of storing and sustaining the digitized consciousnesses of entire worlds."
"Digitized consciousnesses?" the host interrupted.
"Yes. You understood correctly. Some desires simply cannot be fulfilled within the constraints of an organic body. And so, consciousness is digitized and uploaded into a supercomputer. These systems draw their power from black holes, extracting energy directly from the rotation of spacetime. It grants them a near-eternal existence, independent of the lives of stars. Almost eternal…"
The voice paused. For a moment, the airwaves went completely silent.
"Once inside this digital Eden, consciousnesses are no longer bound by biology or the laws of thermodynamics. Within these systems, they build simulations of infinite universes. They construct any world they desire, where time itself is just a variable in the code.
Can you imagine that, earthlings, living through billions of scenarios, realizing every whim of the imagination… And yet it is precisely in this absolute power that a fatal flaw takes root. For some civilizations, it takes hundreds of thousands of years; for others, millions. But sooner or later, they all arrive at the same place: the entropy of the spirit. Imagination runs dry. Infinity inside a closed system becomes a prison. Every 'unique' experience starts to feel secondhand. The civilization withers in its own boredom, becoming still water.
In the end, they always reach the same decision: they choose the one experience that cannot be emulated — real death. The supercomputer disconnects from the event horizon and falls apart. Another civilization disappears… Though 'disappears' isn't quite the right word, consciousness doesn't know how to simply end. But that's a different story entirely."
"So what are you suggesting we do?" the host asked quietly.
A pause. A long one this time. When the voice returned, something in it had shifted. The metal was still there, but behind it, something else had surfaced. Something almost weary, almost human.
"I've made this call before. To other civilizations. I haven't always managed to get through in time... Don't hide inside your machines. Look at the stars."
The line went dead. The Responsible for sector G3A had disconnected.
"Wow…" the host said softly, and you could hear that he had nothing to add.
As the radio clicked, the usual pop music returned, filling the car as if nothing had happened. I became aware again of my hands gripping the wheel. Slowly, I pulled over to the shoulder, the hum of traffic suddenly real again. I got out, leaned against the hood, and, for the first time in years, tilted my head back and stared up at the cold scatter of stars.
"You know what?" I whispered. "I quit."