Omega Dawning

By David Villa

An ordinary man begins an extraordinary new life...

In this sequel to "Waiting for Omega" (2016), the solitary man chosen as humanity's representative continues the journey he started a very long time ago and a very long way away. Alone on a strange new world, guided by nothing more than his own instincts, overseen by tantalisingly aloof Hosts, he must confront his deepest fears and navigate unknown dangers as he comes to understand his purpose and learn his destiny. And with him he carries the key not only to his own future, but that of the entire human race among the stars.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Villa
• Release date: May 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9780463983218

Book preview

Preface

On the issue of extraterrestrial life Sir Arthur C. Clarke once observed that either it exists or it doesn't, and both possibilities are terrifying. One of the most profound and ancient questions the human race has asked - can ask - is: are we alone? And as of this moment in our history we still have no idea what the answer is. There is not the slightest evidence that any kind of life, even simple bacteria, exists anywhere in the universe other than the single planet that is our home. For the case of simple bacteria, and even some more complex organisms, we should not expect evidence at the present time, even if such life is commonplace among the stars. We have only just begun to explore the universe beyond our doorstep, and the amount of it we have so far explored with anything like the resolution needed to gather evidence for this kind of life is infinitesimal compared to the whole.

The story is different for advanced technological life - the kind of life human civilisation can expect to become within a relatively short space of time. Here we do have evidence - or at least a lack of it under circumstances where evidence might be expected if that sort of life existed. This is what has come to be called the Fermi Paradox or the Fermi Question - named for the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi who, ostensibly, first posed it in the 1950s : Why do we not see signs of intelligent extraterrestrial life when, if it existed, we should? Or more simply: Where are they?

Many answers to this question have been proposed. Perhaps advanced civilisations universally hide themselves, or cease any activity that might be visible across the distances that separate the stars. Or perhaps we have overestimated our own ability to see or to recognise such activity where we ourselves have not initiated it. But probably the simplest, most obvious and most plausible answer to Fermi's question is that, for whatever reason, technologically advanced intelligent life - life broadly like ourselves in the relevant respects - is exceedingly rare.

Rare, however, does not necessarily mean unique, and for those for whom the prospect of us occupying the vast universe entirely and permanently alone is truly terrifying, there is still hope that, somewhere, a neighbour is waiting to introduce itself to us.

The literature and cinema of Science Fiction is replete with stories describing such an introduction - when and where it might happen, how it might proceed and what consequences might follow from it. Sometimes the first encounter is marred by violence and aggression, such as H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds, other times it is gentler and friendlier, such a Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Sometimes extraterrestrials reach out to us, for example in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still, other times we are expected to go to them, as in Carl Sagan's Contact. Sometimes the first encounter is thought to have taken place long ago, as with Arthur C. Clarke's own 2001: A Space Odyssey, other times it does not occur until one party is long gone, such as in the 1956 film Forbidden Planet. For the sake of narrative flow, works of this genre frequently downplay - or entirely ignore - difficulties that the laws of physics, such as the finitude of the speed of light, would have for the plot, and the ramifications of the Fermi Paradox rarely get a mention.

In the pages that follow I present yet another scenario describing a possible way the event in question could unfold - one which, in my opinion, is especially plausible given the constraints imposed by our present understanding of the laws of nature and the potential implications of Fermi's question. The story is presented in the nature of a sequel to my previous novella, Waiting for Omega (2016), which sets the stage and supplies some clarifying details, though the careful reader should be able to infer the missing elements from the sequel alone.

It is a hopeful and optimistic tale which affirms the inestimable value of the human species in a vast and expanding cosmos, in the light of what will be the most momentous event in all of history.

David Villa

Sydney, 2020

Omega Dawning

"In the beginning...

God ..." (Gen 1:1)

Prologue

All that was, all that had ever been, was pain. Searing, unbounded, indescribable pain. Indescribable not just because of its intensity. There was no reference by which it could be described. Unremitting, unvarying pain. There were no factors through which it could vary. There was nothing else. There was only pain.

Then something else. Something to surround the pain, to contain it. To own it. Consciousness, a self, a mind - a person. Him. He was in pain. It did not exist without him. Could not exist without him. That was necessary - a link between two things becoming a third. Necessity. Logic. The essence of structure and form.

A primal trinity of being - pain, mind and logic.

But the pain was ... wrong. It should not have been. It was different. Different from what? A fourth thing? Imagined - dimly at first. A memory. A goal. An alternative to the pain.

Then there was darkness. Impenetrable blackness. Surrounding him on all sides - space - containing him as he contained the pain. Darkness contrasted with the memory of light. Memories forming and solidifying. Change. Time. Then more images - perhaps dreams, perhaps memories, perhaps mere fantasies - but thoughts, concepts, constructs of the mind. Not real, but potential. Suggesting a whole world of possibilities.

Then more sensations. Sensations beyond the pain. Sensations recognised only through their absence. The darkness still, and silence, and ... cold. Touch. Something solid. Something ... external.

He was awake.

"... All was without form, and void, and darkness was upon it..." (Gen 1:2)

For yet another time the man had survived his birth. For a while he tried to lie still, letting the final partitions of consciousness trickle back into his mind as if waking from a deep sleep. How many times before? Seven - no eight. Only seven he could remember. But this was different from those, disturbingly different. They had been comfortable and gentle, with subdued light and soft sheets. This was distressing and painful and dark and wet. A vague sense of dread started to close in on him, but even as it did he found himself wondering if this might be closer to the one birth he didn't recall.

There was something in his throat, filling his mouth. Instinctively he clawed at it, gagging as he pulled it free, and realising too late as he did that it had probably been feeding air into his lungs. His mouth filled with thick liquid and he struggled to push his head clear of the shallow pool in which he was lying. Gasping for air he managed to find a position in which he could cough out the last of the fluid and start to breathe with some small measure of comfort.

It was dark, very dark. For an anguished moment he wondered if something had gone wrong this time and he was blind. But no - there was light, a small patch of faint, blurred light that moved as he moved suggesting it was real and external. Not enough to see anything else, but enough to provide a point of reference. The surface he was lying on was hard and slippery, the liquid pooling across it - not water, but more like thick mucous - slimy and just lukewarm enough in enough places to feel disgustingly organic. With no friction to push against every attempt at movement left him flaying helplessly on one spot. More than that, he was being held loosely by protrusions from his abdomen and the back of his neck that tightened on some distant anchor if he managed to twist too far. He grabbed at the one in his belly, digging fingernails into its fleshy surface to gain purchase against the slime and tried to pull it out away from him. There was pain, but not so much as to overcome the feeling that this was a foreign thing that had to be removed. As it came free he realised what this was - it was his placenta, his own afterbirth that had been feeding him nourishment for however long he had been there. And the one in his neck, which he attended to next, had been doing the same thing with information - his memories, his skills, his personality - pumping his very soul into a new brain. These realisations did not diminish the relief at having them gone.

For a further moment he lay still, gathering composure, planning a next move. The light. That was where he needed to be. He inched towards it, partly swimming, partly crawling until the ground dipped ever so slightly underneath him. Then gravity took over and he began to slide.

"... Let there be light." (Gen 1:3)

-Day 1

He was lying on what felt like coarse, wet sand. Pulling himself into a sitting position he began to look around. All about him was misty and indistinct, nothing but whiteness into the indefinite distance. On top of that his eyes were blurred and unfocussed. They were filled with the amniotic mucous he had just been immersed in and also, he thought, still adjusting to a new set of pupils and lenses. But at least he could see. When he held up his hands he counted ten good fingers, albeit fuzzy ones.

He tried to stand but it took several minutes before his legs felt steady enough to bear his weight, and several more before he felt confident to take a few tentative steps. He trained each of his senses on the world around him trying to gauge where he was. The air against his skin was cool, but not cold, and there was a light breeze. Towering above him was the place from which he had just emerged. Blinking to clear his eyes he tried to take it in - a single black column, wide at the base and tapering inward before spreading back out at the top like a mushroom, its insides exposed but invisible through a dark cavernous opening. Not such a noble birth, he thought, incubated and hatched from the cap of a large black mushroom.

Beneath the sensitive soles of his feet and out as far as he could see around was sandy ground. A beach perhaps, or a desert, or just a large sand pit? There was not much else he could see, the heavy mist obscuring anything more than a few metres away from even keen vision. He could hear - water, running water - like a nearby stream. The scent, barely noticeable - earthy, like a morning in the country or spring in the mountains. Evoking old memories. Very old memories. From these sensations he could not tell if this was a moderately large cage, a gigantic habitat or the surface of a planet.

Hello, he called out, unsure if he was even expecting an answer. He waited a few seconds. Hello, he called again, is anybody there? No response. He walked around the base of the tower, feeling its texture and looking for other clues. It was mostly smooth but with the grain of rock, like basalt. The dead remains of a vine that had once been growing up the stem gave it the appearance of great age as well as a certain mystique.

He started walking towards the sound of the flowing stream, still trying to focus both mind and eyes. Seven times in the past he had woken like this, returned to life after a long period of hibernation. Each had been different in its own way, but each of those previous occasions had been in clinical, comfortable surroundings, usually with someone assigned to greet him and help guide him into an unknown world. He'd expected this time to be different. Actually, in truth he'd had no idea what to expect this time - but surely that very uncertainty would justify some assistance.

Is anybody out there? he called once more, halting his stride and straining his ears for a response. Still nothing.

Portia. He remembered that Portia had promised to be here. She had been the one who met him after his first big sleep, his first greeter. That was an ancient memory, a memory that had been dormant in the back of his mind until ... until just a few days ago when a series of events had called it to the front once more. But Portia was also the last person he had spoken to. That was a much more recent memory, only hours - even minutes - old, still fresh and clear in his mind. She'd said she would be with him.

But that was wrong - very wrong - an illusion. He knew that. It was a promise made far too long ago and under far too different a set of circumstances for there to be any real hope of it being kept. The realisation of that truth made him shudder.

A substantial brook emerged from the mist before him, tumbling over rocks and cutting a wide gash through the sand. Part of it slowed into a deep pool before flowing off again to his right. He knelt down and splashed water over his face and across his eyes, pausing only briefly to consider the possibility that this might not be water at all. This place was new and alien and he was a stranger here, so a degree of caution should have been the prudent attitude. But at some point he would have to take a leap of faith just as he had done countless times before, even if he was not sure in whom that faith was being placed. As if to force the point home he scooped up a palmful of water and rinsed the foul aftertaste of the birth fluid from his mouth, then another two scoops which he drank. It was fresh and sweet, his first act of consumption on this new world. Then he slid into the pool up to his chest before submerging completely to wash the drying slime from his hair and skin. The water was cold, but not uncomfortably so, and he could feel it refreshing his spirit even as it did his body.

Feeling clean and with his eyes nicely focussing, he stood for a moment at waste depth until the water calmed enough to glimpse a reflection. The stubbly chinned face looking back from the surface was not unfamiliar, but much younger and more delicate than he remembered. He judged it to be that of a youth about twenty. That would do - he would think now of himself as having been born at twenty. He had long ago stopped being surprised or even grateful at the periodic rejuvenation his body experienced. It was what his life had become. The exact circumstances under which that rejuvenation had occurred this time - that was the more important question he was yet to face.

The ambient light filtering through the fog began to dim, and he realised he had no idea what cycles of time existed here, how long a day lasted, or how far into the day he had emerged - even whether day and night were the relevant concepts. He thought to make his way back to the tower and had just picked up his own trail of footprints and was starting along it when, over the span of only a few minutes, the light level dipped to zero. Inky darkness, total and complete. With the light went some degrees of heat, only to be replaced by a nebulous dread. If a heavy fog in an unknown land had been disconcerting, darkness on top of it was that much the worse. Almost immediately his hearing became more acute. There were sounds here above the faint trickling of water, indistinct and distant - perhaps nothing more than the wind playing with his imagination, perhaps much more. A primal, childlike fear of the dark, of what might lurk nearby and unseen within it, began to invade his mind. But there was no point trying to hide or to find somewhere safer - there was nowhere to go in the dark. He lay down where he was and tried to dig himself into the sand in a bid for some amount of warmth and comfort.

And there, half buried in the sand in an unknown world, surrounded by unidentified sounds, engulfed by cold and fear and blackness, the man very quickly and very soundly went to sleep.

-Day 2

When he woke again light had already begun to penetrate the darkness. It intensified slowly until the world became visible once more. A thick layer of cloud covered the entire sky making it difficult to judge the primary source of light, but the heavy fog of the previous day had lifted and he was now able to take in his surroundings in their entirety. In one direction the river meandered its way from left to right, cutting a swathe through coarse grained sand. The opposite bank of the river opened out into an expanse of grass and scrubby bushes, and beyond that in the distance he could make out clumps of trees, maybe the beginnings of a forest. In the other direction was nothing but gently rolling dunes of sand for as far as he could see, punctuated here and there by dead trees bleached white from wind and weather. Standing prominently by itself in the middle distance was the black mushroom shaped tower from which he had emerged the previous day. It was the only thing that had the appearance of being unnatural - the product of intelligence. For a moment he considered returning to it and trying to re-enter it in the hope of finding a clue to his next move, but he knew at this stage that would be futile. It could wait for another time.

He made his way back to the river and started walking in its direction of flow. If there was any habitation here, he reasoned, it was most likely to be found along the bank of a river and nearer to a coast. And if a coast was to be found at all it would be downstream.

As the sky brightened, even under heavy clouds, he became cognisant of his own nakedness. This was a concern not just because of the possibility of finding a community of fellow human beings with something like the cultural norms he was accustomed to. Exposed skin was a condition he had grown used to being uncomfortable with, even on cloudy days. In a previous life, one that still felt fresh in his mind, it would have led to rapid and painful sunburn. Food, too, would soon become a matter of concern, not to mention the other necessities and comforts of life. In times past all of these had been taken care of. Each of the previous times he had returned from a long hibernation, rejuvenated and repatriated into a new world or a new era, he had been given what he needed to survive. Not pampered necessarily, but at least offered the opportunity of existing for free. It was not obvious that this would be the case here. This place appeared too natural, and nature was not known to reward laziness. At least fresh water had been sorted.

He began to reason through possible scenarios that would explain the current situation in terms that he did know. He was, by all appearances, on the surface of a planet, and moreover a planet with breathable air and drinkable water and tolerable gravity. He had been in artificial habitats that could simulate these conditions and were large enough to accommodate this landscape, but there were always signs - signs in the way ground and sky met at the horizon, signs in the way the clouds moved and the wind blew, signs he was not seeing here. As if to convince himself further he picked up a handful of pebbles and threw them one by one as high and as straight into the air as he could, carefully watching their path as they fell to the ground at his feet. Coriolis forces were always a giveaway. Of course he could not be completely sure. There was still the chance that this was a habitat far larger than any he had seen before. There was also the chance that this was entirely a simulation at the level of the brain and the senses - a high fidelity trick played on his mind by nothing more than computational processes. But that sort of deception had been outlawed - forbidden by whatever powers had authority over the worlds on which he had lived as a violation of the fundamental moral imperative never to lie. Those powers had variously been called Governors or Monarchs, Ubermensch, Overlords or Gods depending on the location and the era he found himself. He had always thought them benevolent and had always been prepared to trust them. They were, after all, the descendants of humanity. They were what humankind had become as it spread out among the stars, guiding its own evolution and taking its dreams and values and the better part of its nature along with it. They were, in effect, his own people.

But the progeny of humankind might not be running this show.

The realisation hit him with a jolt, as if it had not occurred to him before. He had come into a world vastly more alien than anything he had experienced before, traversed a span of space and time that put him outside the domain of his own kind. He knew that was to be the case, it was what he had signed up for. That was the role he had accepted a long time ago, humanity's representative in a new world. Then it had been an abstraction, a distant goal, the promise of an adventure. Now it was real. He was here and this is what it looked like. And what it looked like was ... flowing streams and sandy deserts and distant trees and cloudy skies. It looked altogether normal. The fact he had arrived here at all meant that whoever was in control - his ... Hosts - were not only able but willing to accept him into their world. In return he would be willing to put his faith in them, at least until he found a reason not to. For the moment he had little choice. And at least now he had given them a name.

That's a start, he thought, as he continued walking.

The sand gave way briefly to a wide patch of grassland where a billabong had formed from the changing course of the river. Dandelions and tall rushes grew in profusion around its edges, as well as some clumps of bamboo. He sat down on the grass by the bank to splash water onto his face. A flotilla of water skimmers, alarmed at his approach, darted away across the surface - a mundane enough event on its own, but imbued here with deep significance. These were the first animals he had seen here, and they were animals from his own time and his own place, like him brought, or sent, here from their distant point of origin and accepted into a new home. Recognising that significance he attended even more closely to the little ecosystem around him - a bee inspecting a flower, a swarm of midges buzzing past his head, the chirrup of a frog or a cricket somewhere nearby. He wasn't alone after all, yet the very realisation drove home how alone he probably was.

Some large water lilies floated on the surface of the pond. They were large enough that two or three of them would cover his back and shoulders and tough enough at the edges to hold together when sewn through with grass stems. So half an hour later, somewhat protected by a makeshift poncho and hat from whatever rays might be penetrating the clouds, he continued walking.

At length the river widened into a shallow delta and the sandy dunes sloped gently down to the shore of a large body of water that stretched to the horizon in front of him and into the distance left and right, forming a prominent coast. A tiny swell produced waves no higher than his knees that lapped the beach front along its length. Either an ocean or a large lake, he thought as he waded in and sampled some of the water. Salty. More likely an ocean, though impressively calm and serene.

Still no hint of habitation in either direction.

He couldn't tell how long he had been walking to reach that spot or how long it had been since he'd woken up, but it felt longer than he should have expected a day to be. The learned rhythms of his body were telling him to prepare for nightfall, but at the same time the higher faculties of his mind were telling him that those rhythms probably no longer applied. He would have to learn new ones. Having eaten nothing for that time, indeed for the whole time he had been there, he was also feeling growing pangs of hunger. How long it had really been since his last meal was a conversation he was not yet willing to face. The best hope of securing a food source was the wooded area across the river, so he waded across at a shallow point and followed the coast to where the vegetation looked to be denser and more varied. He had reached an expanse of rocks - hard quartz and sharp volcanic glass that required careful navigation to avoid cutting his bare feet - when he became aware of the dimming sky. Remembering the rapid onset of darkness he decided to prepare a place to hunker down for the night.

The rock shelf descended onto a small hill that sloped gently down to the shore, with a series of substantial rocky overhangs at its border making ideal shelter. He gathered a quantity of leaf litter and had just arranged it into bedding when darkness fell, once again coming abruptly and totally, with very little in the way of dusk or twilight. As he listened to the sounds of the night, trying to convince himself that those he could not identify were nonetheless too distant to be of concern, he distracted himself with memories of past lives and how they might fit with the present.

Daylight, if that's what it had been, was considerably longer on this world than that of his previous home - several times longer, in fact. But then the days on that planet had been much shorter than was common among those worlds supporting human colonies - barely five hours. He had lived there for close to forty years, so he had become used to it. This one felt closer to that of his original home, at least to the extent he could remember anything about how that felt. This was just one of the many adjustments he would likely need to make as he made his way in this new world. It was a process he knew only too well. He had lived on four planets as well as several artificial habitats, and one place that was both an artificial habitat and a planet. Each had its own customs and way of life. Each had its own set of skills and body of knowledge one needed to make it a home. And each had its own name - Kruger and Aurigae and the Citadel of Orion.

Names were important. Names provided the basis for organising thoughts and memories into something more than a clutter of mental images. The first planet he had lived on, the place of his birth, was Earth, his home world and that of his entire race. The last one had also been Earth, but it was a different planet and so far from his birth world that it had taken many thousands of years to reach it, even at the speed of light. It was a habit of humans settling in the frontiers to call their planet Earth. Most of the time it didn't matter because most of those settlers knew very little about the home of their ancestors, and cared even less. For them it existed only as a vague cultural memory, little more than a legend. He was different. For him the memories were personal, if at times distant, and so he had never liked that particular habit. Yet it also made sense to remain mindful of the deep connection between each of those places - his own existence on them. So he decided that his original home world would retain the name Earth, the place he now occupied would be NewEarth, and should the need to think of it ever arise his previous home would be OldEarth.

He lay for a time wondering how any of that would help him decide what to do in the days ahead, before succumbing once more to sleep.

-Day 3

Exhausted from the exertions of the previous day, he once again slept soundly despite the cold and the general discomfort. When he emerged from the cave it was still dark, but not so dark that he could not see the contrast between ground and sky along the horizon, or the ghostly outlines of trees in the distance. The sky was still overcast, but he felt the light was concentrating over the ocean. As it brightened further he began to investigate the surroundings he had placed himself in. The cave where he had spent the night could, with some work, be made comfortable and spacious, perhaps even homely. There was drinking water nearby, and if he could locate food and other resources this could, he thought, make a suitable base camp until the true nature of his circumstances became apparent. If food could not be found those circumstances would become very uncomfortable very quickly.

When the sky had reached what he thought was its maximum light level he ventured in the direction of several groves of trees that lined the shore on the outskirts of a thickly wooded region beyond. After a few hours of considering, then rejecting, several unidentified varieties of berry as a possible food source he stumbled upon an altogether more familiar species. An apple tree.

It was with some relish that he ate through the first fruit. This was, after all, the first meal he'd had since ... He sat on the ground under the tree to consider the question. By an odd coincidence, he recalled, the last thing he had eaten was an apple - in Murroluc's Temple - on OldEarth - during the Yule feast - surrounded by Temple clergy and others he had known there - just before he set out on the last journey he would take on that planet - the journey that had led him here. That was barely four days ago and the memory of it was still clear. It would likely fade with time, possibly in a brief time, like a dream in the light of morning, like most of the details of his life had done. Perhaps not disappearing completely, but merging into the patchwork his mind had become. He could sense the process starting already. The memory of that last apple was starting to feel less relevant to him, even now as he bit into the next one.

Yet he knew that memory was wrong in a far more profound way. He had pushed the thought from his mind for too long, and now he would force the point. That last apple had not been mere days ago. If everything had taken place as it was meant to - and he was working on the assumption that it had - it was thirteen million years ago. At least thirteen million years - there was no way to guess how much additional time might also have elapsed. His work and life, friends and enemies, those he had feasted with just those few hours ago - not only were they gone now, the entire civilisation of which they were a part was probably now long forgotten by everyone