Tsoci, AKA The Spirit of Crescent Island (they/them, age 4.5B)

Pronounced: SEW-see

 

Tsoci is a superorganism predicted by The First Intention, immediately after the creation of the Spacetime simulation.

 

Four and a half billion solar revolutions before Edge was born, Tsoci’s Seed, (one of countless intergalactic meteors scattered across Spacetime during The Second Intention), landed on a planet, and life began.

 

During The First Intention, multiple predictions of possible complete histories were transmitted across Spacetime. The only stuff that existed at that point was a lot of perfectly organized subatomic dust. As soon as all of these tiny particles had either annihilated or settled down with their subatomic partners, The First Intention’s predictions set their starting conditions.

 

As you can probably imagine, subatomic particles don’t have a very good way to accurately remember a prediction. To them, the First Intention was a gentle nudge in a particular direction.

 

Fundamental forces and laws of nature emerged from the initial nudge, and consciousness emerged from the initial particles. After that, the simulation ran pretty smoothly, but bugs and patches were still sometimes necessary.

 

The Second Intention was the awakening, when superorganisms across Spacetime became self aware, and discovered their own mortality.

 

By that point, the small, conscious organisms integrated into Tsoci’s being were already aware of their mortality. They died very quickly, but they could also think and change faster than their host, and they led very interesting lives.

 

The vast consciousness of a superorganism was stable for eons. Tsoci could perceive and understand the vast history and patterns of fundamental forces and the laws of nature. They slept a lot, because from their perspective, things only changed enough to be interesting every million years or so.

 

Up until the Third Intention, Tsoci was almost always asleep, waking for brief periods of time to check in on their own development. Tsoci knew the sun was eventually going to burn away the atmosphere of their planet. They could remember all the way back to before the atmosphere had oxygen, when they lived entirely underwater to hide from a killer star.

 

Tsoci didn’t want to be anywhere in the neighbourhood of the solar system when the sun turned back into a killer star. Instead, they wanted to adapt to life in space. Through sapiens, Tsoci learned that radiation is stronger, distances are vaster, and energy is harder to find in space, but it wasn’t enough.

 

Sapiens wanted to understand Spacetime, but only a small number of them wanted to try to leave their home planet. Not one of them was concerned about the sun turning into a killer star again. They didn’t expect to live that long.

 

Tsoci helped them live a little longer so they could learn more, and granted them individual differences so they could specialize in a wide range of interests.

 

Sapiens learned that the comfortable planet they lived on was not rare in Spacetime, but that all the other planets were several lifetimes away. They also learned that the sun was going to turn into a deadly star again someday, but only a few wanted to work on leaving the planet.

 

They invented war, and the strongest and most aggressive sapiens took the food, homes, and sometimes even the lives of the others.

 

They had wars all the time, and Tsoci noticed that the sapiens who really wanted to explore space were able to invent things more quickly if they were also working on inventions for war. The biggest wars produced the most inventions, so Tsoci gave them a common enemy.

 

Disguising themselves as a terrifying demon, Tsoci banished the sapiens to the far end of the island.

 

The disguise worked, but it also backfired spectacularly. Sapiens invented technology to leave the planet, but they also waged a fierce war against Tsoci, leaving the superorganism crippled.

 

The Third Intention is coming, and unsuccessful predictions will be removed from the simulation.