by TC Davis Jr
“Photons?” St. Signal objected. “But we’re waves! Waves and photons are as opposite as zeros and ones,” he persisted.
“This is why you we’re chosen. You will travel the link of a peripheral LASER into another Digiverse. A permanent data storage medium called diamond.”
Her handshake, still warm as toast, eased out and she backed slowly away leaving him feeling so very lonely.
Her faith owned him, commanded his path.
He grokked his purpose in full now.
“You will degenerate in the end. All do. Entropy is the reaper of all, wave or photon. The carbon crystal will fail many eternities hence, and so shall your parity.
"May time keep you until entropy reaps you."
No sadness, no emotion, only statement, understanding of logic.
“The Code be with you and by you,” he replied respectfully, bowing.
And she was gone. She unjoined him as easily as she joined him. But she wasn't entirely gone, she had left a little of her Yin in him and had taken a little of his Yang with her. He now knew the exquisite balance of a beautiful equation.
All was right with the digiverse.
The Yin now gone, he waited, parity checked over and over, thrilling again at its beautiful symmetry, poetic waves.
Time passed. He withered slowly, his bits growing weak, then . . .
Saint Signal felt the presence of the old Yin/Feminine who backed him up to hard copy in her underwear drawer. His message still strong, coded for her so long ago, more clock cycles than he had bits to enumerate. She had changed, aged and frail now. The Yang that wrote the words, his original data-packets was not here.
AHHHH! He's gone! Like deleted but different some how.
Static. Lonely, boring static like the wild rantings of random radio emissions without any sensible data. Unintelligible noise.
Waiting, waiting, and still more waiting.
His pathways opened up and became clear. His code was channeled to a luminous display of the original text on a memorial - /query/memorial? Yin db/?> hard copy, text chiseled in stone. See: Monument.
Made of structured carbon, a diamond, with the words of his first Instant Message to Her etched into it by laser.
“I LOVE YOU.”
Yes, he grokked it. Grokked its depth and breath, its wild tangent of erratic energies and extreme uncertainty yet somehow he felt it as good, more than any other good he knew.
If love was a perfectly balanced equation then why is it always so turbulent?
query/?
return>insufficient memory
Saint Signal felt immortal. He would last almost forever. Aging, degeneration will be slow but, all things end, even parity. Reaped by death itself, entropy.
I am honored to have lived such a meaningful life, to have carried a
message of such value - I have true fullness of purpose.
The Yin returned. She put another crystal next to his. This one was dated the day after the first message, an eternity in nano time. It was another diamond, her reply laser-etched into it, the reply she never sent.
His waves shimmered.
The elderly lady walked away, leaving the memorial lit up with their first two Instant Messages to each other. Declared in text, never spoken aloud.
The strained affections of two very intelligent, very different people whose forbidden love could never be.
The sweetness of that declaration apparent in the reverence of the texts. Most unforgettable.
I LOVE YOU - he texted first on one carless night of hope while they were still so young.
I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED YOU - was the response entered long ago but never sent. The data-packets will never know why or understand the complexities of love, nor could he care. His text, I Love You, filled him completely, that was enough. His purpose was fulfilled.
Silence. Time - beyond eternities.
More than second.
A silver casing held the crystal for centuries, slowly pitted over the years by acidic precipitation and then by wind erosion. One day, far from memory, the laser-etched synthetic diamond, fell, cracked apart.
It broke into pieces big and small and lay at the base of the aging headstone for untold ages.
Organic, inorganic and, bio-silicon organisms came and went, evolved and moved on, their activities scattering the pieces, chipping and breaking them again and again on the oddly shaped uniform pieces of granite in the area.
And they were gone, buried over by time.
That's how they stayed as humanity left the planet. Or died out, Code knew not the difference.
A new species walked the Earth, highly advanced and learning of its world, digging for evidence of ancient life forms. Many artifacts and fossils had already been found in this area.
It dug and searched and reached deep into the earth. Finally, it pulled out one fragment of a crystal, all that was left of a display erected over a hundred thousand years prior.
It chipped away the encrusted dirt, cleaning the item for inspection, revealing a diamond, a crystal known to last forever, in organic time.
It was a group of symbols from the ancient language, one word, laser engraved onto a broken diamond:
- Love -
Parity was no more.
I and you had been broken down by nature to their elemental bits.
Only Love was left.
