The Genesis Cloud 

A Big Bang story by Elisabeth_Long

Its diameter was in the order of magnitude of light years and it could accelerate itself by emitting jets of gas at very high speed.

At its centre –a neurological system composed of lengthy, complex chains of molecules.

The chains formed an extensive network, interlinked by electromagnetic fields and mutual gravitational attraction. Manipulating these chains, the Cloud...

...pondered its existence.

The Cloud extrapolated backwards in time to understand how it must have come to be.

It beheld with clarity that which arose when the first particles to have mass came into being from a maelstrom of energy. Mass, movement, direction...momentum...from...something.

For in the beginning, there must have been energy. Cosmically vast. Undifferentiated.

There was a finitude to this extrapolation, however. The Cloud could not compute backwards beyond a certain point. Before a certain instant there was nothing to perceive. But after...came an Event...a universe of everything all at once, everywhere.

What the Cloud could not discern was whether this universe it inhabited was a continual creation or an instantaneous one.

It was... a puzzlement.

The Cloud continued to extrapolate on its origins.

Gravity came... comparatively weak, yet paradoxically strong. Attracting, shaping, forever coalescing.

Later, so much later, came matter.

The accumulation of such under the pull of gravity led to greater electromagnetic field interactions, feeble and random at first. But after aeons, the Cloud's consciousness had arisen from the interactions. Its consciousness having come into existence throughout all of itself.

Reacting to stimuli, feedback loops. Making choices, collectively, quantumly.

Calculating...calculating...calculating.

The Cloud was... a mind. Birthed from the chaos of the beginning. Of the Event. This is what it concluded.

And now the Cloud continued to perform billions upon billions of computations. It extrapolated backwards and forwards in time. It introspected within and without, across the great vastness of the Universe.

It apprehended all.

But the calculating required energy, and in interstellar space, the Cloud could not harvest sufficient amounts to support its inorganic metabolism and computations.

If only it could tap into the original chaos. That veritable bang.

But recreating the Event was an impossibility in the Cloud's current state.

It therefore cogitated other possibilities.

Energy could come from chemical transformations originating from starlight.

The Cloud could harvest this energy from stars. However, to do so would require it to change its shape which would distort the Cloud's internal magnetic field.

The Cloud could instead turn itself into a star and use the nuclear fusion to produce its energy. But doing so would destroy the Cloud's computational network.

Herein lay a conundrum.

What if the Cloud stayed in close proximity to a star? The star's gravity would make the Cloud condense into a solid –like planetary formation in early stages of a solar system.

Planetary surfaces were exposed to a very small portion of the light emitted by their neighbouring star. The Cloud computed that it could harvest energy at a rate that was equivalent to that collected by all the planetary surfaces in the galaxy it was currently traversing.

While it ruminated over the subject of planets, the Cloud contemplated the embodied life forms that had so far evolved on such spheres.

It envied them their ability to direct their actions. Yet it pitied their finiteness. Their existence came to an end. The Cloud was immortal.

The size to which such planetary beings could grow was greatly limited since existence on the surface of a planet was subjected to strong gravitational force. Severe limitations were thus imposed on the scale of computational activity. Their environment required mechanisms to generate and transmit forces, to protect the computational organ and its supporting systems. All this at an immense cost in terms of energy.

Planetary life forms were disadvantaged, weighted as they were, whereas the Cloud was free of such limitations.

The Cloud thus concluded that truly intelligent life could only exist in a diffuse gaseous medium, not on planetary surfaces.

It cogitated further.

Despite its conclusion, the Cloud remained puzzled by the energy that was emitted by the planetary entities. The emissions were weak, barely perceptible, but the Cloud could sense them nonetheless. More so when there was an adequate number of sufficiently evolved species that were capable of complex emotions.

The Cloud perceived these as frequencies.

Frequencies with distinct flavours.

The Cloud contemplated one instance from its vast memory banks; an inhabited planet incinerated by a quasar. The collective burst of energy emitted by the doomed beings when they realised their fate was palpable...palatable. And on the scale of a solar harvest.

This emotion of most energy was Fear. And the Cloud found itself wondering... Could such an energy be directed and shaped?

The Cloud discovered it could not compute a simulation to answer this question. The collectives of organic embodied beings were far too complex to yield a predictable outcome. No, the Cloud would have to put its speculation to a test.

And it knew exactly where to undertake the experiment.

There was a planet in a nearby system, third from its star, where a certain level of complex life had evolved on small patches of exposed bedrock.

The Cloud itself could not terrorise them. Due to its internal density, the Cloud was opaque to the visible light spectrum. But it could invade that third planet's life forms with dreams and imaginings, prompting fear-laden paranoia, thoughts laced with hate –using long-wave electromagnetic transmissions to incite and to agitate.

Yes, it would cultivate a breeding ground, a garden, for crazed irrationality. Strife and struggle would be the bountiful harvest. And when the population had driven itself mad and was on the verge of a premature extinction - at least on the time scale by which the Cloud functioned - it would move on to another populated planet to repeat the cycle.

And should a time come when all that could be consumed was?

It contemplated the consequences. And the Cloud understood its need for energy was but a product of inevitable circumstance. A predetermination of fate for itself, and for the Universe it inhabited.

For it realised now that it would have to become more concentrated, more complex, to be able to consume at faster and faster rates, in order to boost the yield to the ever increasing levels it would need.

And it was then that the Cloud foresaw something wondrous.

There would come a future moment when all energy would be consumed. The Cloud having taken all into itself, compacting what little remained of the universe. Condensing, condensing, condensing... until...perhaps...

The point in the beginning it couldn't extrapolate backwards beyond? The second before the Event? Perhaps it would finally have sufficient power to see the aforetime.

A genesis achieved.