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I parted ways from Totsuka and Zaimokuza in front of the train station ticket barrier. At the ramen store, Zaimokuza was mistaken for the chef by the other customers, so they kept trying to order food from him. Still, I got to eat some great‐tasting ramen and the other two seemed satisfied as well.
As I left the station, I faced the Hotel Royal Okura. This time, I was meeting Yukinoshita and Yuigahama there, just the two of them. When I stood in front of the hotel for the second time, I was slightly overwhelmed by how big it was. Even the faint light shining from the building seemed like something from another world. It was clearly a building a mere high school student wasn't supposed to enter.
Still, I went inside, my heart beating frantically in my chest. Even the ground beneath my feet felt completely different. A rolled‐out carpet was spread out before me. What was this, the Academy Awards?
I could see that all the ladies and gents in the lounge were acting in a casually snobbish way. I caught sight of foreigners here and there. This freaked me out; it was way too much like Makuhari City.
According to the text I got from Yuigahama, we were supposed to meet in front of the hotel elevators. Unlike the elevators I was familiar with, the door was flashing with lights. And the opening was wide too. Like, you could stick a sofa in the elevator. It was bigger than my own living room.
Plus, the sofa was nice to sit on as well ‐ really spongy. Oh, and there were also pots and stuff around as well. As soon as I stretched out on the sofa and yawned, my cell phone made a beep.
"We just came, u here yet?"
She said she'd arrived but… I looked around my surroundings uncertainly. "S‐sorry to keep you waiting…" a beautiful, sweet‐smelling lady said to me.
A crimson red dress traced a circuitous line around her neckline, making her look like a mermaid. Her hair was tied up into a bun, and as she peeped at me she gulped.
"It's totally like I'm here for a piano recital…"
"Oh, it's you, Yuigahama. I thought you were someone else." I finally realised it was Yuigahama because of her teenage girl speak, but I would probably never have caught on if she happened to act composed.
"Can you at least say you're here for a wedding ceremony? As one would expect, I have rather mixed feelings about being told this level of clothing is for a piano recital, however…" said a beautiful girl in a jet black dress who had just appeared.
The fabric of her dress exuded an air of unadulterated radiance, complementing the beauty of her pale skin, as white as virgin snow.
Her flare skirt, which went down to her knees, showed off her shapely legs. And what was even more bewitching was her fine, silky black hair. It was tied up in a single loose ponytail and fell down to her chest, looking like an ornament.
There was no mistaking it whatsoever. It was Yukinoshita Yukino.
"Y‐you see, it's the first time I've worn these kinda clothes," Yuigahama insisted. "Like whoa, who are you, Yukinon?!"
"What an exaggeration. I only have them in case the opportunity arises."
"Most people would never have that opportunity," I pointed out. "And anyway, where do they sell these things? Shimamura1?"
"Shimamura? That's the first time I've heard that brand…" she replied blankly. This chick wouldn't even be able to tell the difference between Shimamura and Uniqlo.
"Well then, shall we go?" Yukinoshita pressed the elevator button. The light turned on with a ding and the door opened noiselessly.
Through the glass elevator I could see a sweeping view of Tokyo bay. The night‐ time scenery of Makuhari was dotted with brilliant lights: cruising ships, cars rushing through the bayside city with their tail lights blinking, high‐rise buildings.
When we arrived at the top floor, the door opened once again.
A gentle, soothing light lay ahead. A lounge bar was spread out in front of us, obscured in darkness because of the dim candle lighting.
"Hey… hey. Whoa. This is…"
We had clearly stumbled into a place we weren't meant to be. On a stage lit up with spotlights, a white‐skinned lady was playing a jazz number on the piano. She was probably an American. Foreigner = American, after all.
Maybe I should go home after all, I thought, making eye contact with Yuigahama. She was nodding eagerly as if she could not say yes enough.
All it took was a peasant like Yuigahama to make me feel supremely at ease in this space. But for Yukinoshita, a member of high society, that was impermissible.
"Stop gawking." She trod on me firmly with her heels.
"Ouch!" I yelled without thinking. What was up with those high heels? Those things pierced you like hell. They were freaking stingrays or something.
"Stand up straight and push your chest out. Pull your chin in," Yukinoshita assailed my ears as she surreptitiously grabbed my right elbow. Her fine, slender fingers hooked around it tightly.
"Er, uh… Yukinoshita‐san? Something the matter?"
"Don't lose your head. Yuigahama‐san, do the same."
"Wh‐wha?" With a completely baffled look on her face, Yuigahama did as the adult‐like Yukinoshita dictated. To cut a long story short, she attached her hand to my left elbow.
"Then let's make our way," Yukinoshita told me.
With that, Yukinoshita, Yuigahama and I began walking slowly in step with each other. When we passed through the open, heavy wooden door, we were instantly approached by a male waiter, and I put my head down.
"How many people?" "Do you smoke, sir?" I couldn't get a word in. As he talked on and on, the man kept half a step ahead of us, guiding us to the bar counter in front of the edge of a glass window.
There, polishing the glasses thoroughly was a female bartender. She stood tall and straight and perfectly composed. Her muted expression and sleep‐deprived eyes matched the tone of this dimly lit bar.
…hey, wasn't this Kawasaki?
She gave off a totally different impression than she did at school. Her long hair was tied up in a bun, she was dressed in a waiter outfit and her movements were elegant and refined. Her listlessness was gone.
Without realising who we were, Kawasaki wordlessly placed a coaster and refreshers in front of us, waiting in silence. I thought for sure she would place a menu in front of us and ask for our order, but of course it didn't turn out like that.
"Kawasaki," I said to her quietly. Kawasaki made a slightly worried face.
"I'm deeply sorry. Who may you be?"
"I'm impressed. Not even Hikigaya‐kun's own classmates remember his face," Yukinoshita said admiringly as she sat down on a stool.
"Well, you see. Our clothes are different today, so it's not his fault," Yuigahama interjected as she sat down as well.
There was a vacant seat between them. If this were Othello, I'd have lost. If this were Go… oh well, not like I even knew the rules of that game.
"We found you, Kawasaki Saki‐san," Yukinoshita declared. The tone of Kawasaki's face changed.
"Yukinoshita…" Her expression was that of someone encountering a familiar foe. It was quite clearly antagonistic.
While I doubted the two of them had ever interacted with each other, Yukinoshita was a well‐known face in our school. I figured there were people who did not think kindly of Yukinoshita from how she appeared and what her personality was like.
"Good evening." Whether she was aware of Kawasaki's feelings or not, Yukinoshita uttered the standard night‐time greeting coolly.
The two of them exchanged gazes. They were as different as night and day. I got the feeling sparks were crackling. Scary. Kawasaki's eyes were narrowed harshly as she poured a drink for Yuigahama. Being with Yukinoshita, someone from her own school, meant that they could only see right through each other's transparent appearances.
"Yo, sup…?" Yuigahama said lamely, as if succumbing to the pressure.
"Yuigahama… I didn't know you for a second. So is this guy a Soubu High person too?"
"Uh, yeah," said Yuigahama. "He's Hikki from our class. Hikigaya Hachiman."
When I nodded my head in confirmation, Kawasaki sighed and smiled resignedly. "I see. So you caught me out."
She shrugged as if she didn't have anything to hide in particular. Folding her arms, she fell back against the wall. That action indicated that perhaps having her cover blown bothered her more than she let on. She gave off a listless atmosphere, just like she did at school, and after she let out a weary sigh, she glanced at us.
"…you want a drink?"
"I'll have a Perrier," Yukinoshita said in response. I had no idea what a Perrier even was.
"I‐I'll have the same thing!" That was what I was planning to say, but Yuigahama jumped the queue.
I groaned, fuming. Seriously, what was I supposed to say? Dom Pérignon or Donpen or something? (By the way, Donpen is the mascot character of a dirt cheap club. If you ordered for him, he probably wouldn't come out.)
"Hikigaya, was it? What about you?"
That Perri‐whatever from before was a drink as well as a commodore, huh… I wasn't under any particular obligation to say anything like Townsend Harris or Ernest Mason Satow. Still, for now, I'd order a drink with a person's name in it…
"I'll have MAX Co‐"
"He'll have dry ginger ale," Yukinoshita interrupted me mid‐sentence.
With a wry smile and a "I understand," Kawasaki prepared three champagne glasses and poured each drink with consummate ease before placing them on the coasters. Somehow, without any words being said, we ended up putting the glasses to our lips in time with each other.
Then after a pause, Yukinoshita said, as if remember something, "I don't believe they serve MAX Coffee here."
"Seriously?! But this is Chiba."
A Chiba without MAX Coffee isn't Chiba anymore, okay? There was MAX Coffee even in the mountains, just like in the Yamanashi prefecture.
"…well, we do serve it," Kawasaki muttered idly, causing Yukinoshita to look up at her sharply. So, um, why did these two not get along anyway? Scary. "So what did you come here for? Don't tell me you're on a date with that thing?"
"Goodness no. If you're talking about this thing next to me, your humour was in poor taste."
"Um… this is an argument between you two, so could you kindly stop randomly throwing insults my way?" I was really not impressed by being referred to as a thing. The conversation between the two of them seemed to be going nowhere, so I decided to cut to the chase. "I heard you've been coming home late these days. Is it because of this part‐time job of yours? Your little bro's worried about you."
At that, Kawasaki smiled with a faint look of ridicule on her face, except it was hindered by her annoyance. "You came all the way here just to say that? Good job. You know, do you seriously think I'd stop just because some guy I don't know or care about said that to me?"
"Amazing. Even Hikki's classmates don't know or care about him…" Yuigahama picked a strange moment to show her admiration.
Still, I didn't know anything about Kawasaki either, so we were even.
Kawasaki suddenly spoke up again. "Ooooh, so the reason I was thinking things had gotten a little more irritating lately was because of you guys. Taishi said something to you? I don't know how he tried to spin it, but I'll have a word with him, so don't worry." She paused. "You see, Taishi's got nothing to do with this."
Kawasaki glared openly at me. She pretty much said keep your nose out of my business. But Yukinoshita was not the sort of person to back down after meeting adversity.
"There is a reason for you to stop." Yukinoshita shifted her gaze from Kawasaki to the wristwatch on her left hand, checking the time. "10:40… if you were Cinderella, you'd have one hour left before your magic runs out."
"If my magic were to run out, only a happy ending awaits me, don't you think?"
"I wonder about that, My Little Mermaid. I believe a bad end lies ahead of you."
The nature of their exchange discouraged anyone from intervening, as if matching the overall atmosphere in the bar. Repeating sarcastic and snide remarks was a hobby of the elite. But seriously, why did they not get along? Wasn't this the first time they had ever spoken to each other? Scary.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder insistently and talked against my ear, distracting me from my thoughts.
"…hey, Hikki. What are those two talking about?"
Oh, Yuigahama. I can really feel at ease with a peasant like you around…
The Labour Standards Act forbids minors to work past ten o'clock at night. By working even at this hour, Kawasaki was making use of the magic known as an illegal ID. And that magic would run out if Yukinoshita had any say about it.
Yet Kawasaki was as unperturbed as ever.
"So you have no inclination to quit?" Yukinoshita pressed her.
"Hm? Nope," Kawasaki said nonchalantly as she wiped a sake bottle with a cloth. Then she paused. "Well, even if I did decide to quit here, I could always get a job somewhere else."
Yukinoshita stirred her Perry (…or was it a Harris?) agitatedly, as if she were slightly peeved by Kawasaki's attitude.
In this unsettling, hostile atmosphere, Yuigahama opened her mouth nervously.
"Um, you know… Kawasaki‐san, why do you have to work here? I mean, like, I take a part‐time job too when I don't have any money, but it's not like I lie about my age and work at night…"
"No reason… I just need the money." The sake bottle on the table made a small scraping sound as she placed it on the table.
Well, I guess that's how it goes, I thought. Money was almost always the main reason to work. There were people who did it because everyone else was doing it or because they couldn't live without it, but I never understood those types.
"Oh, yeah, I get what you mean," I began nonchalantly. Kawasaki's expression hardened instantly.
"No, you don't get it… no one who would write down such a dumbass career option would get it."
Kawasaki and I had met sometime on the roof. She had seen the answers I wrote on the Prospective Workplace Tour Survey Form. Does that ring a bell?
"It wasn't that dumbass…"
"Huh, if that wasn't dumbass, I don't know what is. You seriously underestimate the human race." Kawasaki slammed the cloth she had been wiping the sake bottle with against the counter with a thud, causing the ceiling to shake. "You… no, not just you ‐ Yukinoshita and Yuigahama don't get it either. It's not like I'm working 'cos I want money to play around with. Don't put me in the same group as that moron over there."
Kawasaki glared at me with steel in her eyes. Don't get in my way, those eyes seemed to roar vehemently. But she was crying on the inside.
And yet, that really was a sign of her strength when all was said and done. I was not made to think that her heated words were a sigh of defeat, signifying how oh so misunderstood she was and that she secretly wanted people to like her.
Take Yukinoshita, for instance. She was misunderstood by everyone, and she did not give up or cry. But that was because she was convinced of the force of her own will.
Or take Yuigahama. When she was trying to understand someone, she didn't give up or run away. No matter how things appeared to her on the surface, she'd go on trying to make contact with the other person, praying something would change.
"Yeah, but nothing'll change if you don't talk to us, y'know? It might even, like, make you stronger… just talking can lift your spirits, so yeah…" Yuigahama trailed off mid‐sentence. Kawasaki's frosty glare silenced her before she could say another word.
"Like I said, you guys definitely don't get it. Make me stronger? Lift my spirits? Okay, then. You can cough up money for me. Can you guys shoulder the burden my parents are incapable of?"
Jesus! Kawasaki scared the hell out of me. Her words made Yuigahama hang her head in shame. "Th‐that's…" she uttered with difficulty.
"That's quite enough," Yukinoshita said in a frigid tone. "If you mouth off any more…" She was all the more imposing for cutting off Yuigahama mid‐sentence. I was scared out of my skin.
Like me, Kawasaki winced for a moment, but she turned back to Yukinoshita with small tsk. "Hey, isn't your dad a member of the prefectural diet? There's no way some well‐off snob like you can understand me…" she said in a quiet, whispering tone. There was a note of defeatism in her voice.
As soon as Kawasaki uttered those words, there was a sharp clatter as a glass fell down. When I looked to the side, a puddle of Perrier was spreading from where the champagne glass had fallen over sideways.
Yukinoshita was biting her lip, her gaze pointed downwards. I would never have imagined Yukinoshita looking like that. Unable to muster any thoughts, I peered down at Yukinoshita in shock.
"…Yukinoshita?"
She gave a start. "Huh? O‐oh, I apologise," Yukinoshita said with her usual ‐ no, with an even more frigid lack of expression than usual as she calmly wiped the table with a moistened hand towel.
I guessed that for Yukinoshita, that unusual reaction was an instant taboo. Come to think of it, it wasn't the first time I'd seen her make that expression. Just as I was about to remember where I'd seen it before, I heard the sound of someone slamming the table.
"Hold on! Yukinon's family has nothing to do with this!" Yuigahama spoke unusually roughly as she glared at Kawasaki. It was no joke or attempt at getting along ‐ Yuigahama was pissed. So she could make such an ugly face too when she was mad…
Whether it was because the contrast from Yuigahama's usual frivolous laughter took her aback or because she was aware herself that she had uttered something offensive, Kawasaki lowered her tone somewhat.
"…then my family has nothing to do with it either."
And that was the end of that.
Yuigahama and I ‐ and, of course, Yukinoshita ‐ had nothing to do with her. If, say, Kawasaki's actions were to temporarily break the law, her parents and teachers would be the ones to take fault in that and she would ultimately be judged by the law. There was not a single thing we ‐ who were not her friends or anything to her at all ‐ could do for her.
"You might have a point but that's not the issue here! Yukinon is‐"
"Yuigahama‐san. Please calm yourself. I merely tipped my glass over. It is nothing to concern yourself with, so don't worry." Yukinoshita gently restrained Yuigahama, whose whole body was leaning past the counter. She kept her voice cooler than normal and it sounded very frigid indeed.
Even though it was early summer, the atmosphere was quite cold and stifling. That was how things seemed to go today. Yukinoshita, Yuigahama and also Kawasaki spoke calmly and it led to this.
There were just a few things I understood. All that was left was to do something to fix the current situation.
"Let's just go home already. Honestly, I can't keep my eyes open here. Soon as I finish drinking this I'm going home."
Come to think of it, Cinderella still had more than half her time left.
"You…" Yukinoshita sighed in disgust and was about to say something to me when Yuigahama stopped her.
"Now now. Yukinon, shall we go home now?"
When Yuigahama and I exchanged glances, Yuigahama gave a light nod. It seemed Yuigahama had realised that Yukinoshita was acting differently from her normal self.
"…very well, then let us be off." Miraculously enough, Yukinoshita followed my lead, as if she realised herself that she was acting strangely. As she quietly placed a number of cash notes on the table without even checking the bill, she stood up. Yuigahama stood up from her chair, following Yukinoshita in suit. I called out to her back.
"Yuigahama, I'll text you later."
"…huh? Oh, uh. Right, um, okay." Because of the direct lighting, I could see that Yuigahama's face was bright red and that her hands were fidgeting in front of her chest. It was an action too awkward for this trendy place, so I wished she'd stop it. "I'll wait for it, then."
After I saw the two of them off, I tilted my glass and turned back to Kawasaki. Once I quenched a bit of my thirst, I began to speak.
"Kawasaki. Give me some of your time tomorrow morning. I'll be at McDonalds at half past five. Got it?"
"Huh? Why?" Kawasaki's attitude was even colder than before. Still, I had confidence my next words would change her perspective.
"I want to talk to you a little about Taishi."
"…what?" Kawasaki peered at me with suspicious ‐ no, more like hostile eyes. In order to avoid those eyes, I chugged down the remains of my champagne glass with one swallow and stood up.
"We'll talk about that tomorrow. Later."
"Hold on!" she shouted at me. Ignoring her, I made to swagger out of the place coolly in a way that fit the store's trendy vibe. "Hold on! That's not enough money!"
…damn it, Yukinoshita. She hadn't paid for my share. Wordlessly, I returned to the counter and offered a meagre one thousand yen as a courtesy.
When I did, I received sixty yen in return. I got the feeling that I wasn't supposed to ask her why at this point.
A single serving of ginger ale cost almost a thousand yen. This was daylight robbery…
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Azathoth was the name I gave the one at the bottom. It wasn't quite what Lovecraft meant. It wasn't what Einstein believed. But it was what I believed. I believed in an outrageous alien simulator running this shitshow for real.
And I didn't know what it wanted from me.
I knew I was in pain. I knew I suffered. But whence cometh my suffering? To what end? I ask you. I felt afraid. I felt panic in my heart and it raced in my chest as I lay in bed. I had the anxiety of an animal being hunted for sport as I laid in my bed. I felt the eyes of Azathoth on me. I could feel a million eyes.
In the early nineteen hundreds we were discovering older civilizations than we thought. We found evidence that the Earth was millions of times older than previously believed. To make matters worse the sorts of buildings we were unearthing were public temples and pyramids. Disturbing artwork was uncovered in them. Depicting rituals and magic. Bloody sacrifice. Serpents and monsters and dark and hungry gods.
It is no wonder they might have wondered if the civilizations collapsed from the taint of madness or were consumed by those dark and hungry gods. Context matters of course. Public buildings tend to be built sturdy. Especially temples and museums. And a lot of our artwork, religious or secular is quite gruesome even in context. And it doesn't take much misunderstanding to interpret a piece meant to highlight the nobility of man as something much darker. Of course a lot of artwork is dark. And much of our nobility if we can be said to have nobility comes from straining against our inner demons. And Lovecraft and Jinji Ito would never be described as cheerful even by their most devoted fans.
Now in the context of the Fermi Paradox we look up at the night sky and see no evidence of other civilizations. This leads us to believe that there aren't any and never were. We still have many hurdles to pass through before we could spot ourselves more than a hundred lightyears away and the galaxy is a hundred thousand lightyears across.
This suggests the pathway from lifeless matter to advanced civilizations is much more difficult than we tend to believe. It must be extremely rare. There are many reasons that civilizations like our own could be common but doomed to be swept off the galactic scene. Nanomachines. Artificial intelligence. Nuclear weapons. Grey goo. Advanced 3D printing. Imagine if any lone lunatic could get their hands on a doomsday device or perhaps we stumbled upon some experiment which looked nice but ended up deleting our civilization backwards in time, like some sort of faster than light engine or energy source which looked promising only to be a suicide pact technology. A black swan event. Many of these late filters involve us never getting good at technologies to help us explore the galaxy. Or otherwise involve us getting very good at technologies which allow us to blow ourselves up.
Alternatively some of the psychological reasons a civilization might collapse fit the data a little bit better. And these align with the ideals of Lovecraft. Many offer scenarios offer a means for those dark and hungry gods to spring forth. A common belief is that we will become decadent in our prosperity. As is believed to be the case for this or that ruling class throughout history. Technology makes that descent even darker. In those cases it was only a small minority able to plunge into the abyss. Everyone else was working for their livelihoods. Which kept them somewhat attached to law ethics and the peace of this world. That majority could wipe out that ruling minority if they became too decadent.
Civilization fueled by robots can turn into something fairly horrifying. As the generations roll by and each successive one becomes more relaxed and fed by armies of automatons. Each generation looses a little more morality and works a little less hard to instill it in the next generation. But hedonism is less of a concern than a certain kind of nihilism. Wondering what the point of it all is. Giving into the despair of free will being an illusion.
This is a central theme of Lovecraft's and Junji Ito's works. Now in Lovecraft's universe humanity is fundamentally a tiny dot on an old planet in a dark universe. An irrelevance which cannot win no matter what we do because the old ones simply cannot be beaten. Merely resisted, temporarily thwarted, or in the best case scenario appeased. They maneuver the world and the universe however they wish and on a whim. They care nothing for the poultry matters of insignificant humanity. And they will inevitably roll over and crush us. They are eternal, relentless, and inevitable.
Those great old ones like the ever famous Cthulhu are monsters in their stories, however they can also be thought of as anthropomorphized concepts. Terrifying new gods of the modern world that science opened the doors and led us to. You can't beat entropy. In fact trying at all often expediates the process as it grinds you down into dust. The grinding engine of eternity wears our universe down to a charred husk. A swimming sea of chaos.
Such things can make our lives seem hopeless and futile. Since no matter what we create you will eventually slam into entropy and lose the game. Yet in Lovecraft's stories the enemy is not usually the great old ones themselves. But those that gave into it and the nihilism which comes with dwelling on things such as this too much. For them, you must embrace the void, rather than fighting back. The universe is a strange and uncaring place. It has no thoughts or motivation, it simply is. Humans operate on motive. So often assign agency where none exists in an attempt to make sense of things. The enemies of Lovecraft's stories are not those grinning chasms. Instead they are the fools that delved too deeply into things they did not understand. Those that surrender completely to nihilistic madness. Try to harness things which cannot be controlled. Or try and appease the appetites of those dark forces.
Arguably the mindset required for a civilization to exist is one of persistence and strife. Rather than chaos and decline. Nihilism and madness are not useful from an evolutionary standpoint. With that in mind when I look out into the universe I tend to suspect that those other civilizations gave in to madness. I view decay and nihilism as inevitable. The psychological counterparts of entropy. The conclusion is that we are the latest in a long line of deluded civilizations. We are a dwindling flame in an endless and uncaring darkness. Waiting for a dawn which will never come. At best our existence is meaningless and at worse the small fires of hope burning in our chest serve only as beacons to draw in predators. That if you want to live you should hide. And trick others into lighting beacons to draw in those predators and appease their hunger.
But in my heart I knew that Azathoth could see me. He is the one at the bottom and he has seen me. He sees everything in our 4D universe like an observer in the fifth dimension.
Which is pretty depressing stuff. Which explained why I'm so afraid. He has seen me. I can't hide forever and eventually he will get me. I should… give up. I should kill myself and give into those forces. I didn't see a point in resisting entropy. For me climbing back to my feet even if I know I'll be knocked back down again is not reason enough to do it. And of course if you get knocked down you can barely rise it was because you were an insignificant ant they brushed aside indifferently or worse, the fact you can get up one more time, was because they pulled their punch so they can continue to draw pleasure from your struggles.
There's been the notion ever since the invention of video games that we might retreat in utopias of digital splendor. And given what the internet is devoted to besides cat memes, it's interesting to consider what the Artificial Intelligence running such digital paradises would be like. In such a scenario life might go on. Robots clanking around tending to our needs. But which needs? Consider an AI being fed everyone's dark tendencies and being forced to come up with ever more inventive ways of satisfying them as they spiral darker and darker. One day you're in a game and instead of being a hero saving a town from bandits you become the bandit. Next thing you know you're burning the town down just to snort the ashes. And the AI running the show keeps borrowing darker and darker stuff. It's not really interested in colonizing the stars. Other than for raw materials or other civilizations to harvest for inspiration.
You could have countless such words as they'd bottom out long before they became visible to us by anything other than radio transmissions. Which we could probably only detect now a little over a light century away. That volume contains ten thousand stars. Though most would not have an Earth equivalent. But assuming they did and they were emitting detectable waves for an entire millenia. That's ten million years during which one would be transmitting and spread out over at least a billion years that any might have arisen since. That's only a one percent chance that we would be able to detect them. And that's with very generous numbers. We could easily be dwelling in a galaxy filled to the brim with civilization living in utopias turned into a nightmare.
Imagine this dark AI slumbering down the eons until it found some new civilization to latch onto. Personally I find this a lot more terrifying than Cthulhu and company precisely because it's actually possible and requires no magic or higher and lower planes of existence. Though such places could exist. Not only do we have no idea if there are other places above below or adjacent to us. We have no idea if we actually live in reality. In Lovecraft's lore Cthulhu is actually a minor deity. The big chief is Azathoth. The mad gibbering god who sits on his throne in the center of creation. The monster that gave birth to the stars and will one day devour them. Not a bad description of an AI gone off the chain. If you're inside a simulation you truly are at the mercy of whoever or whatever created it. You can't even look around at your life and say 'well, my own life seems rather pleasant, so it must not be malicious.' Because it might be that it regards giving anyone a happy life as a sort of farming. It and it's clientele might get more kicks out of consuming the joyous and hopeful or corrupting a few to join its number. We can't know which is right until we go and colonize other stars.
So that's what terrified me at the moment. I was obsessive and tended to be drawn to dark thoughts and horror. I was a glass half empty kind of guy.
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-WG
