To Subatomic Particles You Shall Return

Alpha Memento Mori was a special universe. Like every universe, stars moved out of their neighborhood seeking new beginnings. But they strayed too far and consumed all their resources in their journey. Without hydrogen, they faded out, or collapsed in on themselves. The light dims in this universe. It's cold and gets colder by the eon. They cling onto life for as long as they can, bleeding out radiation and subatomic particles. Those stars that consumed the most resources outlast their peers and became black holes. Over unimaginable amounts of time, they too bleed out radiation until they succumb to the same fate as the other stars. From this point, only low energy photons exist from the radiation. But the ever expanding universe spreads the light so thin, it's effectively pitch black. Nothing will ever happen in this universe ever again. Alpha Memento Mori is dead.

But this story isn't about death. It's about the cycle of life. Because every black hole a universe managed to form, bore a new universe. The goal of a universe, as is with any living being, is to pass on its genes as much as possible. While genetics are irrelevant to a universe, it is the most apt comparison to explain how universes communicate with each other to develop certain characteristics and strive for reproduction.

Alpha Memento Mori is special because the divergence of universal behavior is traced back to it, as though both a primate and a crustacean branched from the same origin. The universes from Alpha Memento Mori developed two extremely unique methods to maximize their black hole production.

Method one, practiced by the Angra Mainyu lineage of universes, leaned into natural chaos. It recognized black holes were products of immense amounts of density caving in on itself, so it evolved to mash as much material in its universe together as possible. The violence was passed down through its black holes until the universes from this lineage lived fast, chaotic lives that burnt out relatively quicker than its counterpart, Ahura Mazda.

The universes born under Ahura Mazda were quite different. They evolved to be more predictable. Disciples of natural law. Many things were still chaotic, but each generation pacified the violence a little more. One eon, Ahura Mazda discovered something worth risking their reproduction efficacy on. Life.

At first, the universes didn't recognize it. Single celled organisms were found in abundance but were inconsequential products of planets. To the universes, planets were considered malignant. A waste of resources because they never collapsed into black holes. The creation of planets was universe's greatest mistake. But some universes noticed two cell organisms. Universes under Ahura Mazda began catering to the expansion of these two cell organisms, because if a one cell organism can become two cells, why can't it become two trillion cells. Two trillion cells working as a single unit could be capable of incredible feats. This idea, would eventually start the war between Angra Mainyu and Ahura Mazda.

It started slow. Planets often burned, fell into stars, or got hit by rogue asteroids before becoming anything substantial. But finally, one universe created a species that invented a tool to pick debris from their nostrils. This was a promising sign of the capabilities Ahura Mazda bet on.

Then, On a planet called Arth, a species that referred to themselves as humins thrived. They developed their own, intricate language. They built tools to assist them in their tasks. Not just plucking their nostrils or organizing their sustenance production methods, but also creating the tools to measure how their universe behaved. One of these tools was a particle accelerator. And for the first time, a universe gave birth to an artificial black hole. The universe had no mediums to express it, but this was the greatest day of its life. After generations of universes trying to mass produce black holes, this universe finally unlocked the secret. Intelligent life.

This universe was the first universe to be worth a name since Alpha Memento Mi Morti. It did not, however, receive one. Many intelligent species, though not achieving such impressive feats as the humins, gave the universe its own names. Without a uniform consensus, it would only ever be just a universe.

Henceforth, every black hole spawned from that universe understood its new primary directive. Create the conditions for intelligent life. This required further controlling the chaos and developing planets akin to Arth, as its conditions were already determined to be hospitable for intelligent life.

With the Ahura Mazda lineage exploding in population, Angra Mainyu could not sit idly by and be happy for its counterpart. Generations of emphasizing its chaotic tendencies caused it to be hostile and malicious. But with the black holes connecting it back to Alpha Memento Mori fizzled out supereons ago, it had no connection to the Ahura Mazda line. With severed ties, Angra Mainyu's plan would take an amount of time inconceivable even to a universe. But, generation after generation, this distance to realizing its plan eventually did become conceivable. And one eon, it arrived.

Angra Mainyu, through trial and error, developed planets to house intelligent life itself. The laws of these universes were still relatively unpredictable. The speed of light wasn't consistent, allowing it to escape black holes. Gravity's dependence on mass fluctuated. Entropy did not occur at a constant rate. Like their universes, these planets also lived fast lives that burnt out quickly.

The species on these planets were still driven by a desire to extend their footprint in the cosmos. Because of the relatively unpredictable conditions of their universe, building particle accelerators was not an option as physics did not behave consistently. Instead, they invested their resources in trying to communicate with neighboring universes.

The idea was that if they sent out a message in all directions, the direction in which they received a response would be the direction of a stable home. If the responders were able to target their message directly back to its source, it would mean their universe is predictable, thus establishing both the existence and stability of a new universe. A new home.

These species eventually discovered a necessity of multidimensional communication. All universes to ever exist, or ever will exist, occupy the same space. If you cup your hands, this represents the space all universes live in. Had another pair of hands been cupped next to yours, housing another set of universes, there would be no possibility for them to communicate. But because all universes live in your set of hands, it only needed to be discovered.

And when it was, the Ahura Mazda lineage of universes were terrified. The intelligent species in its domain were receiving transmissions they could not even fathom. Species earlier in their lifecycle believed it was a miracle. A sign of an all powerful being. They dropped all pursuit of progress to beg for the signals favor. They showed appreciation to it differently, some more disturbingly than others.

Other species, more attuned to the happenings of their universe, interpreted it as a threat. The technology was so far from comprehensible in their current state that they feared it. They tried shielding themselves from the looming presence. Most species just up and left their planet, jumping ever few centuries to throw a phantom predator off their trail. Other invested all their resources into defense, leaving the lands barren. One civilization slowed the speed of light emitting from their planet to become invisible to anyone that might be watching them.

In one way or another, every intelligent life form, across every Ahura Mazda universe, succumbed to madness or isolation. All except for one civilization in a stunted universe. Humans on Earth. Because they were the only intelligent species in the universe, they got to name this meager universe. They called it, "The observable universe." Not as glamorous as its predecessor, but it was the second universe ever to be given a name. With Ahura Mazda's reproduction dominance in the hands of the humans of earth, this universe was indeed observed.

Humans weren't the most intelligent, but they tried their best. Some of them at least. But it was those that fell short, even amongst human standards, that gave Ahura Mazda its best chance at survival. Because the mass majority of humans already devoted their lives to fictional stories, they were resilient towards outside influence. When the signal crossing universes finally came, it didn't frighten them or drive them to madness. It did, however, spur a peculiar effect.

The human's fictional stories were generally centered around one or multiple imaginary friends. Although no one ever met these friends, they were fiercely loyal to them. So much so, that when they finally received the signal, everyone attributed it to their imaginary friend. Instead of determining where the signal actually came from, the humans decided the truth would be ascertained through a violent ceremony. Those that were left standing, got to choose which imaginary friend sent the signal.

This ceremony, in relative terms, lasted for a fraction of a blink of an eye for the universe. However for the first time ever, a universe evolved to experience an emotion. Impatience.