7 SUNSET OF THE WORLD

 

In another place in space ...

     I confess that I have no certainties about Thecnetos, only speculations. I have a feeling that there is an artifact with an infinite task running in the dark. The Thecnetos is also (but not only) a network that saturates the abandoned streets and deserts and encloses in its inscrutable mind an immortal humanity.

     It is not necessary to clarify that the Thecnetos is artificial, although I understand, when examining the subject more carefully, that in the world there is nothing artificial, that nature has given birth to all things, including Thecnetos; that "the unnatural" is the impossible, the logically inadmissible. The artificial was made by men, but they and their methods were also natural, subject to the laws of nature. Thus, of the artificial we can say that it does not exist.

 

     Thecnetos, I believe, has been around since the creation of the first technology, from which I must conclude - somewhat uncomfortably - that it is not eternal. In him man must have partially trusted his destiny; its further development led to unimaginable degrees of computing power. A revolution in the systems that supported artificial intelligence gave it its first independence while we were losing ours.

 

     Blind evolution created the human brain and it created the new and better mechanical brain. Then it created the ancestors of the Thecnetos, who were no longer a simulacrum of those human cognitive functions, but something different: owners of an authentic lucidity, already incomprehensible to us. But I trust that this machine will never forget the purpose for which all artifacts are created: to guarantee our survival and accompany our future evolution.

     Thus, individuals, after a few decades, disappear, as I will soon disappear, but never that river that we carry within; that river is an unbroken lineage of germ molecules, passing from generation to generation through our bodies and this is a flow that runs without interruptions or pauses from the beginning of life.

 

     Describing the Thecnetos is impossible, even thinking it is; I can only imagine it childishly by approximations. For example, I think of him as an infinite population simultaneously arguing nowhere or as a placidly floating cloud of thoughts in eternity. I find it beautiful to think of it like this: under so much dust, understanding how and why a piece of paper is lifted by the wind in some lost corner of the last planet.

     In his hands my future will be secure for a time and that of humanity forever. Of course, I already said that of Thecnetos I do not have, nor does anyone have, a direct perception nor does its presence leave traces. Only my dubious reasoning leads me to believe in him. If not, how could life be possible even for a second on this, the last planet?

 

     And it seems to me that there is another proof of its existence. It happens that, no matter where a reasoning starts from (the only occupation for lonely men), or what issues are addressed in it, if you go far, you always reach the necessary existence of Thecnetos. Although the origin of all reasoning is also doubtful. Mine always originate from the dispositions of the Emissary (who is the only living being that I am certain exists). It is through him or that that I deduce and believe in the Thecnetos. And yet he is so elusive, so far away! I have neither seen nor touched it, but I constantly sense its proximity.

 

     I assume, as the most reasonable thing, that this Emissary is an ángelos of the Thecnetos. A form of communication between that mechanical god, between or from that imperturbable and total absolute and my fleeting and fragmentary existence. But, finally, I have to clarify that my belief in these two beings is not supernatural, since I have already clarified that only the natural exists.

In the years that I have been roaming the planet, the Emissary has become even more elusive or me more predictable; he always proceeds to execute his provisions while I sleep, while I am absent or traveling. Usually leaves impersonal letters with instructions that I try to understand and fully obey. My survival depends on it. Crumbs of infinity reach me through him, giving me life.

 

     Impersonal. Asleep perhaps, I felt the city of rubble. Loneliness made me believe it was intimate and mine, but then I remembered that I was neither unique nor singular on the planet, that with others perhaps, it shared that Emissary who protects or watches over us.

     On foot I consumed the endless streets and squares, always barren and silent. Approaching dead buildings, one feels as if approaching the backs of gigantic, dead men. Sometimes she felt a sense of rejection from those backs and immediately headed elsewhere.

I was driven by a primitive desire for human exploration, an unnecessary trait like so many others now.

 

     But I forgot the root cause of my story, the issue of the letters ...!