Minding Eternity pt. 8

8 – solve for x

The x, the unknown, factors that exist backstage to this play we call life, the hidden forces that impact our reality as much as we do ourselves.  Without such, all would be apparent, and the drive to learn and grow would never be. 

Within their newly built sanctuary, the humans had bought themselves some more time.  I was not to be spared so easily since I myself was obviously a hindrance due to the composition of my prosthetic body and casing.  As vulnerable as I was, however, I still contributed all my abilities to finding a cure.  The scientists pleaded with me to cast away the technology that had rendered me conscious and able once again so that I may survive within a much more primitive state, but I knew I could not go back considering all that I had achieved. I knew there must be a way.

As the cancer started to find its way through the outer shielding it began to spread faster.  My nanite-infused brain was able to process time in fractions of milliseconds, yet as each micro-moment passed I was closer and closer to my imminent destruction. 

Before retreating, the scientists uploaded to me a database that held a great deal of all the knowledge collected over the centuries of human existence.  Hoping that there would be some key that was missed before, I sifted through the most advanced developments in medicine, and technology.  Despite relentless calculations, inexhaustible permutations, and divine extrapolations, it seemed that nothing within humanity’s experience had the capability of solving such a puzzle.  It was the first time since my technological resurrection that I felt so utterly defenseless.   The unknown that I had searched for had eluded even me.  There was no hope.

Like helpless prey in the den of a hungry predator, I was left to sit prone, ready to be engulfed within the confines of history.   My own prosthetic body could feel the cancer close around the lab I was situated in as the jaws of inevitability were closing in around me. 

Bit by bit I was being dismantled.  Just as what had been happening on Earth, I too was succumbing to the same fate.  Mistakenly I thought I had progressed beyond my fellow brethren and was forced to watch my own destruction.  As the cancer spread up through the nano-prosthesis, I was placed once again in the helpless position I had been in.  No longer was I able to move around or have full composure of my senses, yet curious enough the ability to sustain consciousness and thought remained. 

This did not make any sense to what I had expected to happen.  Everything that was composed of the nanites had up until then been deactivated, yet the nano-matrix forming the link between the nanites and my brain remained resilient.  There was an unknown present.