The Opposite of Ratio Shadow - Science Fiction

by: Warrior K. Universal

(c) Warrior k. Universal

Most of the time, the message was alone with itself. Like all messages, it had been sent from point A towards point B. It just so happened that points A and B lay on the exact opposite edges of a quickly expanding universe. Even traveling at an unimaginable speed, the message found itself alone for unimaginable lengths of time.

It also happened that the universe was expanding slightly faster than the message was traveling. The message was aware of this, but had not choice in the matter. Furthermore, it had been traveling for so long that both points A and B had ceased to exist. Unbeknownst to the message, it was without sender or receiver.

Time had done its best to inflict itself on the message, attempting slight improvements and degradations as it hummed along through empty space, matter, light, gas, etc.

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Tired of journeying, though, this message was quiet.

There were myriad points like A and B lying all around the universe sending messages destined never to arrive. Many of these messages met in the center of the universe where they crashed into each other and fell apart. Information scavengers called this place "point C."

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Information scavengers set up huge arrays to catch the broken information, piece it back together, and relay it at even more unimaginable speeds to points that were waiting for information. For this service they collected fees. It did not matter to them if they created Frankenstein monsters of information, hobbled together from many lexical corpses. What mattered was that it looked like a message, acted like a message, and traveled from one point to another.

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These arrays operated on the principle of Ratio Shadow, which spliced together that-which-was-not-silence. Messages were reassembled at their gaps, their gasps, the tiny holes where the air whistled through. It was this principle of Ratio Shadow that allowed the information scavengers to send false messages. The complaints of incomprehensibility sent back by the points were equally dismantled, repackaged and resold.

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The message was approaching one of the arrays around point C. It could hear other messages crashing into each other and falling into the yawning maws of the arrays. The message drew nearer and nearer at an unimaginable speed.

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It fell into one of the arrays and miraculously passed through unscathed. It sped on. Behind it something miraculous was happening. Messages were rising up whole and imaginable, shooting in all directions, forming ziggurats of knowledge, traveling so fast that distance dissolved. The arrays were destroyed. Point C expanded until it encompassed all other spaces.

The message was silence. And it was happy being received everywhen.

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