Unfinished

Sometimes, just before I fall asleep, my mind unstringing itself, I’ll get ideas about the next day’s work. Solutions to seemingly intractable problems about character or plot. Last night, though, I had a dream about a short story. It was printed on a wraparound for the review section of the Saturday edition of the Guardian newspaper. Black letters on white paper. Twenty-four point type. About two hundred words a page, four pages. No title, just a name - not mine, someone I know - at the head of each page.

It was an SF story about two omniscient post-Singularity AIs passing through a black hole into the universe next door. Where the black hole was a white fountain, kick-starting creation. The pair of AIs as gods, shaping their new universe. And the smallest of the pair, quicker-witted but less powerful than his companion, saying at every significant tick in the universe’s evolution: ‘Dude, this is so like last time.’

I woke up before I finished reading it, so I don’t know how it ends. I wonder if the author does. Maybe he’ll read this and get in touch, Experiment In Time style.