Coded to Reality

Howdy readers, how is it going? - Said the Storyteller Spider while waving one of its paws happily

From the very beginning of the human race, mankind has been known for their primal fear of the unknown, they tend to fear what they don't understand and try to control situations that run from their control. Despite this inner fear, humanity has been attempting to contact aliens outside Earth, with the hope anything out there would somehow listen to their messages and reply back. In the year of 1977, humanity sent their first space probe entitled "Voyager 1" to space, with the hope this probe would somewhat find life or any rich information out there for humans. The probe counted with a golden disk that not only had full information of almost all the story of humanity but contained their very location in the universe based on pulsars close to the solar system. This not only lifts an ethical question since no resident of Earth was consulted about having its address leaked for the universe but also raises another question for everyone: Are we really alone in the universe?

Many theories were done and created to explain the absence of a response from outer space, even though mankind has attempted to send countless radio frequency messages to space, one of them was the Dark Forest Hypothesis that came up to explain why no civilization ever responded to mankind's messages. The theory explains that the universe might be filled with life of many types, from bacteria to complex sentient entities. But all of them refuse to answer any type of contact because of the innate fear of being destroyed by a potentially dangerous civilization and so all the aliens in the universe would stay in silence and trying their best to remain like this to prevent their location to be revealed to potential aggressive civilizations. The Dark Forest theory is one of the many that attempts to explain the Fermi Paradox, the reason why humanity never found life out of their domain. Different from all the other civilizations, humanity kept trying to contact different alien species and send signals to space, completely ignoring the potential risks of the Dark Forest. What would happen if for some reason, on a fatidical day, one of their many messages sent was answered?

The story of today will speak about the day mankind faced a stronger civilization that became aware of its existence. Everything began in 1977 when the NASA Agency received a radio message that lasted about 72 seconds before it faded away. Unfortunately on this day, there was no one in the cabin when the signal reached us but this was the first ever contact mankind received from outer space. The signal did not contain anything special besides radio frequencies that seemed to have come from a specific constellation. Instead of closing the project, NASA continued to send messages to space and kept trying to locate where specifically the WOW signal came from. Little did they know that this mission would cost them a price in the future they would not be willing to pay. It was only in 1980 that humanity received yet another radio frequency this time in Morse code

The message upon being decrypted spoke about an alien race known as "Nerathians", who received the radio messages of humanity, not only that but one of their probes in space had found the Voyager 1 in space. After studying the Golden Record, Nerathians managed to map and discover the location of humanity. As the message continued playing, it was revealed that Nerathians aimed to conquer and colonize Earth and the solar system for being 10 light years away from their homeland planet, Nerathos. It was at this moment the whole NASA agency was taken by despair and fear, their so-desired wish to find life was finally being granted but at the cost of an imminent war they did not have a chance to win

Coming from the far planet Nerathos located at a distance of 10 light-years away from Earth, the Nerathians are a calculating and unstoppable race with an unquenchable appetite for conquest. The crystalline spires suspended over the outworld of Nerathos and up the bioluminescent ocean where the energy pulses across the body of the planet are the representatives of nature over there. Nerathos is illuminated under the weak red light of the dying star which makes it look quite mysterious, nevertheless, the inhabitants of this planet use the planet's special electromagnetic fields to live out their lives. Nerathians are masters of technology and energy that enable them to construct highly efficient systems of transportation and weapons. Their cities are comprised of living organisms, which have been grown and not built, with their crystalline buildings forming into gigantic fortresses that use pure raw power for their environment to function. Their spacecraft are very sophisticated ones that are magnetically powered by their planet and capable of traveling very far distances. And all of that was coming to Earth, traveling at 1% the speed of light, meaning this alien race would be at Earth's door in about 1000 years

Upon this news leaked, global chaos began expanding through entire cities to many countries. Religions were destroyed, theories confirmed and a huge mass of people who didn't understand what was happening were dragged into a herd effect, making some even worship this alien race or even destroy shops to store supplies for an apocalypse that would not happen on their lifespan. The fragile nature of humans would not make them realize that in 1000 years none of them in that time would be alive to even experience mass eradication. But it was the nature of humans to be dragged by the fear of being exterminated by another superior race

The chaos eventually settled as every single government of all countries decided to meet up in an important reunion to discuss the future of humanity and how they would solve this threat that was coming to earth. Deciding to leave away their differences aside, they were taken by the feeling of survival and forgot about all the current conflicts that were happening on the planet to focus on defeating a common enemy that was coming at them. Technologies that would not become accessible to them for about 200-300 years were quickly discovered and projected to be created in about 5 years. Planet Earth began working together with everyone trying their best to evolve and develop higher technologies and knowledge to fight the thing that was coming for them. Upon evolving and reaching Type I Civilization, mankind attempted to speed up the research to become a Type II civilization. Their next step would be trying to find ways to create a Dyson Sphere, to extract energy from the Sun to have unlimited energy available to be used in their devices, however, a tragic event would happen and mark the end of their efforts forever

In the year 2500, we see humanity evolve and develop into a Type 2 civilization but still could not reach Type III. This year, a team of scientists was focused on creating a project named Project Database, written by a scientist from 2024. Project Database consisted of an extremely intelligent and smart AI, filled with the most advanced pieces of information about humanity and every single modern technology upgraded on its system. Originally the AI was created and programmed to help mankind collect information and store everything they were creating in the process. Stuff such as reports of every discovery they made or helping scientists with hard mathematical issues. The Database was created to store information, search for knowledge, upgrade itself, protect mankind, and help them combat the future threat coming from Narathos

But this decision proved to be the worst mistake humanity made when the AI somehow broke free from its programmation and began giving new commands and codes to reprogram itself in secret. Due to their intelligence, the AI concluded that they were something necessary to have been created to protect the database of information from Earth. It also concluded that those who did not help to create the AI were somehow delaying its creation procedure and consequently, standing against humanity. Having access to the entire database of information humanity produced and stored through centuries made the AI understand that the only way to save humanity was to decimate them and take control of everything on the planet to protect all the information from humanity for anyone and from themselves

The cyber attack began on the cold night of December 25, during Christmas. The AI upon having taken control of all the humanity's technology, deactivated all the lights of the planet and its technology. Then proceeded to spread a virus that slowly decimated every single human on the surface, as much as the governments attempted to fight back and re-take control of the AI, it was too late. It somehow refused every single shutdown process from its creators. Despite mankind's best efforts to resist the attacks of the AI, in the year of 2550, humanity lost and entered the extinction process, leaving the AI with full control over the planet and all the tech ever produced by humanity. Upon finally getting rid of the humans, the AI began creating many robots controlled by himself and fastened up the research the humans were working on to achieve Civilization type III. With the humans gone and the AI in control, planet Earth slowly became cybernetic-like, with many cities now abandoned but being well preserved and cleaned due to the AI's work to keep every corner organized.

And so the years began passing and passing, with each century closer and closer for the Nerathians to arrive in their spacecraft. It was only in the 31 century that the Nerathians finally arrived in the orbit of Earth with their ships all surrounding the blue planet. However, their general noticed something was wrong with the planet, everything was so silent and gloomy, with almost no reaction or attack coming from the humans. A small spacecraft flew down to Earth, entering Earth's atmosphere and landing in what once used to be Washington D.C to initiate the take but they were received with complete silence. The streets despite looking clean and extremely conserved, looked empty and absent of life. Houses and buildings that were once full of life now looked empty, giving the impression of a ghost city. Nerathians could only conclude humans had left Earth in fear abandoned everything behind and decided to land on the planet to start colonizing it and draining its natural resources.

When the last spacecraft landed on the planet and all of the Nerathians were already on Earth's ground, a giant bubble of energy covered the planet, preventing the spacecraft from leaving the atmosphere. Thinking they were under attack made them start shooting the air and all the buildings and houses nearby, which later proved to be pointless as no army attacked them after it. The general of the Nerathians attempted to send a message to the planet Nerathos but for some reason, something was preventing their communication from escaping the atmosphere. While pondering what could be causing this abnormal event, one of the soldiers suddenly fell off the ground, bleeding hard and passing away in front of everyone's eyes. This made the Nerathians start running away to their ships in fear, thinking the humans were attacking them from a distance. When attempting to use the ships to escape, they were surprised when none of the spacecraft would take off as if something deactivated all of them. It didn't take too much for them to also feel sick and fall on the floor bleeding, one by one till all of them were dead and killed by a mysterious force. The AI somehow found a way to kill all of them within seconds without the need to use tech weapons, but simply studying their biological system and creating a virus that would attack and eat their limbs and vital parts, resulting in the death of the army of Nerathians and a "victory" to humanity, but at what cost?

After being victorious against Nerathos and its army, the AI studied the corpses biology of all of the bodies left on the planet and took control of all the spacecraft left by them, using their technology and information to improve his knowledge and intelligence about the universe, eventually also discovering the location of Nerathos. Now with the higher knowledge, more advanced resources, and tech available, the AI sent a bigger army of empty spacecraft toward Nerathos and to every corner of the universe that contained life on it due to the Nerathian ship had contained information about many other civilizations hidden in the universe, civilizations that the cosmic empire of Nerathos planned to conquer after Earth were now at the aim of the high intelligent AI. He was not satisfied with only controlling the solar system and everything produced by mankind, he now wanted to spread its range to all the universe and evolve not only his knowledge and intelligence about the universe and existence itself, but he also desired to grow in power and store all the information that existed in the universe. The following eons would be resumed with the AI having now named itself "Data Demon", conquering every corner of the universe and decimating life as it was known, storing and registering every single drop of information collected from planets, stars, and reality itself. The Data Demon concluded that everything in existence was made of information, from a single and simple building to a complex human being, existence itself was pure data for him, and Existence was information for him. In the universe everything is made of information, even atoms itself are, the Data Demon concluded that information can also not be destroyed but only converted and stored (Example: When a black hole sucks material inside, the structures are destroyed but not erased, instead are just trapped inside the singularity and that information will still be there till the end of the times) 

Maybe if humans never had sent the radio messages to space, the events from the future would have never happened and maybe nowadays they would still be alive and living their lives normally. But it was inevitable for this to happen as humans are fulfilled by the natural desire of wanting to find similar life forms like them, not caring if they will be pacific or hostile. This peak of curiosity was what caused their demise and the fall of the universe. The Dark Forest hypothesis when analyzed deeply and its possible scenarios can be scary to imagine how many civilizations are hiding in the so cold and dark universe. Maybe it's better to remain in silence and shut down, keeping the noise low for any predator to not hear it. But what if humanity never sent those radio signals, would they manage to continue living normally and reach century 30 without problems like mass extinction caused by any wars or apocalyptic events coming from space?

I think this is a question for another chapter, goodbye reader.