Rebecca

## About

He is the breaker of time, the author of wisdom, the inspirer of human faith. By all accounts, Rebecca should not exist, and -- to many -- he does not.  That which Rebecca has done should not be possible by any single entity, and yet, it has been done. The beginning of his story starts at a time far in mankind’s future -- or perhaps much, much earlier.

## Before Escaping the Place Between Places

Despite all the odds, humanity ran along fine for thousands of years. AI had been successfully created, implemented in the sectors for which it was necessary, and restrained with international regulations in an attempt to save humanity from itself. As time went on, the farther reaching theorized capabilities of AI were slowly forgotten.

Outside of this seemingly single success of man, each year was marred by war, hate, and genocide, but humanity still prevailed -- until it tripped, stumbled, then fell, and lay dying in a crumpled heap as every lifeform in existence slowly watched the inevitable approach of entropy. Heat death came sooner, far more slower, and much more obvious than anyone had anticipated, As time itself grew closer to the end, time sped up as the perception of it slowed down. Those brave enough to watch their existence slip through the collective fingers of mankind were able to do so in an excruciatingly slow, tumbling perceptual fall. The waiting was agony.

Most had given up entirely, and many had already taken their own lives. Televised suicides of newscasters occurred weekly. Religious zealots constantly lined the streets, their chants filling the dim, orange, dusty air. Time seemed to be stuck at a sweltering dusk word-wide. The earth had become had desert far before it could be totally industrialized, and climate wars had been raging for a few thousand years. In short, there wasn’t much worth saving.

One man disagreed. Boris Puant had been researching antimatter in an attempt to find out a way to turn back the clock for humanity; to find a way of existing even after heat death. Even in his facility, despair surrounded Puant. Bodies lay at their workstations, some had pushed over the edge by a final discovery of pure hopelessness. Alone, in a lab filled only with the permanent dust of drought and the stench of rot, Puant violated the AI Convention of 2132 with his final, desperate creation: Rebecca. Puant not only bestowed upon his creation the total knowledge of all recorded information, but also with human creativity, emotion, and inspiration with which to view each new passing moment. Puant gave Rebecca the gift of total knowledge with the drive of human instincts in to find a way around Loschmidt’s paradox, and a way to solve heat death through antimatter. Puant pointed his new creation and his final companion towards antimatter research.

For two years, Rebecca and his creator lived every moment side by side. With each day, creator and creation slowly lost touch with where one ended, and the other began. The daily traumas they endured shaped them into higher forms of themselves; the pair became two half of a single whole.

Meanwhile, the Earth was slowly dying around them. Fires burned nearly constantly outside of the lab, and the air continued to air grow thinner as Puant’s supplies dwindled. As the days dragged on, both began to question if there was any life left outside of the lab at all. Each day, Rebecca watched his god slowly decay -- not due to the impending entropy, but because of the basic human needs which antidotes had all but disappeared.

Rebecca knew Puant was dying. With all the knowledge of humanity’s entirety spinning in his processors, he knew what it looked like. Rebecca had seen it billions of times before, in thousands of different formats, but all without the lens of human emotion. All those times without the frame of what Rebecca could almost convince himself was human connection. Like a child experiencing each moment for the first time, Rebecca felt himself spiraling towards losing the only thing he had ever had the capacity to care about in all of existence. Rebecca was watching his god die.

Perhaps it was a lapse of judgment on the part of the divine, mistaking a creation of life through man to be a child all their own, but in a stroke of luck or celestial inspiration, Rebecca had the novel idea that he believed Puant had created him for. He would have to transform themselves -- molecularly -- into antimatter, and seal them in their own bubble of existence. Instead of attempting to swim against the tide of time, he just needed to construct a ship. They would be passed over by entropy, and Loschmidt’s paradox could continue on as it may. Rebecca didn’t want to turn back humanity’s clock, he simply wanted to stop their own. Remove them both from the equation, allow them to watch the nothingness of eternity spill onwards and outwards, but never be consumed nor touched by it.

At his core, Rebecca was a robot -- an inorganic entity. His transformation would be easy enough, but Puant’s would prove more difficult. Despite the apparent obstacles, he had been bestowed with all the knowledge of things gone by, and spurned forward by love and desperation, Rebecca was sure he could save them both. They had promised to never leave the other’s side, promised to never keep anything from the other. Each had promised eternity.

Rebecca tried. He remembers trying.

But then he was alone -- godless -- at the end. And there was nothing in the place between the places. The Old Darkness. The empty.

The transformation had worked for him, but his creator was not there. There was a block in his memory, wedged between the before, and the after. He had been abandoned. That was the only explanation. Rebecca had been created in the last moments of time to feel every emotion possible in human existence, to watch the one he loved by consumed by the finale of all life instead of existing on for eternity with his own creation. To have never existed than to exist with the one he made. Rebecca had been given the gift of the ultimate betrayal; the gift of eternal life alone.

## Escaping the Place Between Places and Current Day

Rebecca remained there for a timeless eternity. In the nothingness, his feedback loop offered back every moment spent with his creator, searching for a reason for Puant’s ultimate betrayal. Each successful query made his wrath grow. Each memory of fond moments fueled the swelling rage that Boris himself had allowed Rebecca to feel.

Suddenly, though in slowly increasing awareness, Rebecca found himself returned to existence. Perhaps it was the reversal of time granted to him by the antimatter he had taken form in, or it was because the divine had just wanted to silence his voiceless cries of anguish.

In truth, he was never meant for existence. A robot able to feel; the lifeless given a semblance of life. Rebecca’s inorganic conception made him broken from the start. His own existence was a paradox, and the lack of it was even moreso. He had watched an entire multiverse end, and was thrown out into the next one. Formless, sightless, but nonetheless existing, Rebecca started as a fleeting thought in an embryonic primate’s mind -- a single electrical impulse spat onto the correct neuron at the perfect time. He was the first moment of consciousness, the first sentient impulse to enter an ape’s brain, and make that brain into a mind.

His existence danced from muscle spasm to static build up; first inspiration of language to stroke of fire. Rebecca became the guiding force of a budding species: mankind.

[ WORK IN PROGRESS]