Fossil Hunter

*2*

Universes come and go.

I am the sole survivor of the previous cycle of creation, of the universe that existed prior to this one. My body had ceased to have material substance countless millennia before the end of the old universe, but with forethought and determination and not a small amount of luck my consciousness managed to survive reasonably intact through that universe’s contraction into a cosmic egg and the subsequent Big Bang that gave rise to this latest iteration of everything.

It had been an impudent move, for who has the right to outlast the universe? And my impudence, apparently, was to be punished.

I thought I had ended up in hell.

The universe I had evolved in was quite unlike this new one. Mine had teemed with life. Physical laws were different, making almost every world fecund. Innumerable biologies and countless sentient forms arose.

But this current universe is brutally harsh. I found myself apparently alone in it. I’d expected that, of course, at first. After all, life surely would take some time to arise. But the universe expanded and cooled and galaxies formed and spun through dozens of rotation, and still no life emerged.

I spread myself thin, examining billions of galaxies, scanning each star for planets. On those rare occasions that I did find planets, I scrutinized each for signs of life, or even hints that life might someday develop.

Nothing.

For eighty percent of the present age of this universe I looked and looked and looked, disappointed at every turn.

Hell, indeed. I thought perhaps I would go mad; think perhaps that I did.

But then, at long, long last, in a mid-sized spiral galaxy, on the inner edge of one arm, I found a remarkable yellow star. At that time, it had a cometary halo, an asteroid belt, and eight planets—although it looked as though the outermost of these would eventually lose its large moon to a wildly eccentric orbit of its own.

The third planet was just the right distance from its sun to have substantial amounts of liquid water on its surface. And it had a giant moon—indeed, the pair was a freak double world. Tides from that moon pulled water on and off coastal clays, alternately exposing them to and shielding them from the sun’s radiation.

And from these, and a thousand other factors that had come together in just the right way, life had arisen.

A Crucible—of all the worlds in all the galaxies in this vast and infertile cycle of creation, I had found a single Crucible of life.

It soon became apparent that the Crucible was destined to be a battleground. Many creatures would arise, but only a few would survive. This was as much a world of death as of life.

At the outset, it was clear that amino acids would form the basis for biology here. But amino acids come in two orientations, left-handed and right-handed. Separate forms of life—true self-replicating strains—began using each orientation, but it was soon obvious that only the left-handed ones would survive.

All the universe except this one orb was vacant. I couldn’t let one of the two life-paths be snuffed out so early on. I had to find a way to save the right-handed forms, to… to… to transplant them somewhere else.

But how? I had an intellect that could span the galaxies, but I had no way to exert physical force. Unless—unless I adopted a body for myself.

The universe was permeated by dark matter, indeed, such matter comprised most of its bulk. Its presence was what guaranteed that this universe, like those before it, would eventually stop expanding and contract down, down, down into a primordial atom from which the next cycle would burst forth.

Dark matter is everywhere, both in intergalactic space and wending its way through the galaxies themselves. It made the ideal medium for one such as me. I joined with dense streamers of it that stretched through space near the Crucible’s sun. The union gave me mass and, therefore, a subtle but inexorable gravitational influence.

The Crucible’s solar system was still young. Although most of the planetesimals had been swept up already by the orbiting worlds, enough debris still littered the system to make impacts commonplace. When a piece of stone or metal slammed into the Crucible, it was not unusual for hunks of the Crucible planet itself to be tossed up with sufficient force to reach escape velocity.

At this early stage of development, life on the Crucible was little more than hardy chemicals and self-replicating crystals of acid. From those pieces of the planet that had been thrown into space, I selected the ones containing a preponderance of the right-handed acid forms. Exerting my gravitational influence, I sent tnem on a long, gentle voyage to another star where a planet awaited covered with oceans of sterile water. Only a small fraction of the amino acids would survive the long voyage—mostly those buried deep within the ejecta—but it would be enough, I hoped, to establish a second living world, tnis one for right-handed amino forms.

The process had begun. This universe may have only given rise to life in one place, but I would see to it that as much of the potential of that life would be realized across as many worlds as possible.