Monday, April 25, 2011

Prologue III (part 1)


Planets work very much the same way in the Qniverse as they do in our universe.

A planet suitable for life must be abundant in resources. Resources are made of thoughts in the Qniverse, but a creature of the Qniverse would perceive them much the same way we perceive water, food, and other material.

Gathering up resources to make a planet was much easier than making a sun. Arky did that pretty much by himself with little or no input from me (I actually did it since I am Arky, but that's a technicality, which my therapist refuses to acknowledge)

Arky put the finishing touches on what we would call the biochemistry of the planet before we started the big task of creating life.


"So are we making something like me yet?"

Not yet! Be patient. Let's start with things that are barely sentient, like plants.

"A plant?"

A plant is something that, as part of its somewhat routine function, takes energy from the sun and convert it to more usable forms for other life.

"How would it get used by other life?"

Well, other life could consume it, and integrate the parts of the plant into themselves.

"But what would happen to the plant?"

Umm, well. It would stop being a plant. It would die. Or at least part of it would die. It could probably regenerate itself from the sunlight. Why do you look so horrified?

"I don't want the plant to die."

It doesn't actually die, it sort of lives on inside the things that eat it. Umm, kind of. You'll probably figure that out yourself eventually.

At this point, if Arky had tear ducts, I think Arky would have burst into tears. I didn't expect him to take it so badly, although I should have known, really.

"Can we please make it so that the plants don't die?"

Okay. How about we make the plants store various resources in fruits and leaves that they form out of the sunlight we collect, and other life can eat the fruits and leaves? I'm sure the plants would like that better too, and I'm sure its what they would have done eventually if we had left them to their own devices.
(There was a lot more explanation involved here, as to what fruits and leaves were, but I suspect you have enough of an imagination to understand what they would be in the Qniverse, and I'm omitting the explanation)

And then we proceeded to small animals, which were easy enough to make since Arky had already established the basic biochemistry of the planet.

But as I anticipated, Arky became bored of it within a few hours.

"These are nothing like me!"

They are sentient!

"But they have nowhere near as much thoughts as I do."

We'll work our way up, Arky. But I intend to put you in charge of this place, so it's best if you have the most thought in this world.

"Why?"

If you're lucky, you'll never have to find out.

"Why can't you tell me now?"

You haven't learned enough about yourself and the world for me to tell you yet.

"Why can't you-"

Because I swore I'd leave things like this to your choice. The burden of autonomy, Arky, is that you actually have to do things yourself.

"... Fine."

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