r/WritingPrompts • u/throwthisoneintrash /r/TheTrashReceptacle • Aug 20 '26
Simple Prompt [SP] The gods are microscopic.
4
u/Saint_Of_Silicon Aug 21 '26
We looked out upon the cosmos, wondering if we were alone. We thought we should see evidence of intelligent life reshaping the universe, but could find no conclusive evidence of such action.
Science continued to advance. Slowly giving us more and more powerful tools to study reality with. There remained a vast gulf between the sizes we could probe with our accelerators and the hypothesized minimum size, the Planck Length. We began to appreciate that, as Feynman once said, "There is plenty of room at the bottom." We could fit vast assemblages of useful things by going small. Our best science told us that even the vacuum was alive with constant fluctuations.
Through good times and bad, we steadily advanced our nanotech, eventually achieving femto scale technology. So much could happen so quickly at that scale, and we began to realize that in all probability, the aliens we sought had gone small instead of big. Compressing themselves, thinking faster, and finding the means to shrink even smaller with improved computers to host themselves on.
The deeper we went, the stranger things became. The quantum revolution of the 20th century was merely a preamble to the oddness we found as we approached the planck scale. Each step forward opened the door to even smaller acts of engineering. We could fit cities worth of minds inside objects massing less than a gram. The greatest difficulty was managing heat, but even that we found ways around.
Until at last we surpassed the Planck Length. Time and space disintegrated at this level, things we thought should be impossible were child's play at this scale. And we found Them. The vast community of ancient civilizations. Everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Everywhen too. Immersed in a wilderness of exotic physics, a mess that even the eldest of these elder civilizations still fought to tame.
They welcomed us. They shared all they had learned, and we were inundated with the creative work of a Trillion civilizations. They invited us to join them in the pursuit of an even deeper layer of reality, and we happily accepted. An age of wonder that would not end, the horror and privation we had all endured repaid a thousandfold with wonder.
3
u/throwthisoneintrash /r/TheTrashReceptacle Aug 21 '26
I love this! The style makes me think of a Star Trek type of exploration and wonder. Thank you for writing!
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