'Doppelgänger' - a short story by Adam Carlton

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“I don't want to die, Father,” I say to the priest, squirming on the plastic chair next to my bed.

Squirming.

Strange that a chaplain would be so squeamish. About heaven and hell, the baggage of his trade.

“This is the time to take stock of your life, to prepare for judgement, André... ,” the priest says.

But I’m no longer listening. I’m thirty-four, a mathematician at the École Polytechnique. Some success under my belt and so much more to give. I’m not minded to check out so easily.

“Thank you, Father,” I say, waving him away. He looks at me oddly, muttering something which sounds a lot like ‘denial’ under his breath.

So they send in the psychologist.

---

Dr P_ looks smart and businesslike. It’s pleasing not to be patronised for a change.

How is André feeling this morning? You are going to eat your porridge aren't you, or shall I be cross?

“Leukaemia, right? Terminal? How long do they give you?“

I decide to test him.

“It's a Poisson process. Mean survival time - as of today - is five days.”

He doesn’t blink an eye.

“Like radioactive decay, huh? We'd better get a move on, then!”

“If I were seventy,” I explain wearily, “with all my creative years behind me, well it would be different. I'd be happy to mulch back into the biosphere, my work done. But, ...”

I wave weakly and helplessly,

“... I'm just not ready to go.“

Dr P_ gives me a sympathetic look.

“Not much we can do about your personal Poisson process, I accept that. But reflect on this. Personal extinction is really something quite different. Something considerably more tractable.”

I may look confused; I certainly feel it.

The psychologist pulls up his tablet.

“I've got your details here. All those psychometric tests you did?”

He looks at me in mock admiration.

“IQ of 145, it says here. Not quite genius level but you must be one in a million.”

“1,300 in a million,” I correct him.

I'm beginning to warm to this guy.

“I'm looking at your Five-Factor and Myers-Briggs stats now,” he continues. “It says here you’re: flippant and facetious; careless about things which don’t interest you; tunnel-visioned and obsessive about the things which do.”

“That’s not so exceptional,” I say, “For a mathematician.”

He leans towards me, suddenly more serious.

“Personal identity is a strange old thing,” he says. “Every night you turn yourself off. Every morning you reboot yourself. A new you for a new day.”

He holds up his hand at my skeptical frown: where's he going with this?

“Listen. Hear me out. If you woke up tomorrow with amnesia, remembering nothing of your previous life, but still feeling some ineffable sense of your you-ness, is that still you?

I nod, humouring him. I know such things have happened. It wouldn't be ideal, but .. .

"Sure. It’s not like you’re dead."

Dr P_ stands up.

“Approximately a billion people in the world have been sequenced by now and their results put online for research purposes. In my professional capacity I have ..  André, are you listening?“

I suppress a yawn. Always interesting to hear about a colleague's work.

In any case, he hadn't stopped.

“I want you to think about the test-retest box around your psychometric score. Sure, it's tight but there are a lot of people out there. We'll run the PGS algorithms but I can tell you right now with greater than 99% certainty.  

"You have a doppelgänger out there somewhere."

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Two days later a mathematics professor died at the tender age of thirty-four. It was remarked that his face had a peaceful expression, maybe even the hint of a smile.

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It was another beautiful morning on the Ukrainian steppe as Katya left her parents’ cottage to cycle the ten kilometres to Institute 14, a school for the precociously-gifted.

On arrival, Katya logged-in and found an unexpected email. It was from Paris, France via anonymized routing. The author, a clinical psychologist, apologised for not being able to greet her properly - confidentiality required that he should know nothing of her identity or location in the world.

The message was simply for her information. A very promising mathematician, Professor André Z_ had just passed away, and the computers had identified her as being an uncanny match in personality and intellect.

There was a link to her mental twin's Wikipedia page. If she wished she could check out her doppelgänger’s life history and accomplishments. No specific action was required on her part and there would be no further communication.

Katya, mildly curious, scanned the article and then deleted the message. It was quickly forgotten as she hurried off to her first class of the day, in advanced statistics.

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The film "Conclave"

 

We went to see "Conclave" (the film) this afternoon. I had read Robert Harris's novel and was expecting a kind of fashionably-liberal attack on Catholicism but was pleasantly surprised. Stereotypes and cheap shots were not much in evidence and the characterisations and 'political positions' of the various papal candidates seemed plausible.

It's refreshing to see a film which is adult enough to differentiate between the mission of the Church and its all-too-fallible leadership.

We know by the ending of the film (as in the book) where its true feelings lie, and it's hard to disagree. When "Love thine Enemy" comes into conflict with "Smite thine Enemy" we surely have a suspicion where the New Testament stands.

And yet: Jesus had in mind the imminence of the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven, facilitated by the expression of universal empathy and acceptance. However: if you will the means you have to will the ends: loving your enemy when he doesn't love you is a quick trip to martyrdom - and at a community level - extinction. Perhaps that doesn't matter if the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand but most people - most Catholics - would fight back under those circumstances.

We do now know in wonderfully vivid detail how the Conclave works.

There Is No Such Thing as ‘Now’

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Does the universe know it is ‘now’? No it does not. Special and general relativity describe a cosmos without any unique concept of 'nowness'. The notion of ‘now,’ far from being an absolute, is a fleeting, local and arbitrary phenomenon - a creation of consciousness rather than any well-defined property of the universe.

The Psychological Construction of ‘Now’

‘Nowness’ makes sense only within a specific context: conscious agents who are physically small and in close proximity. Smallness ensures that cognition remains coherent, unaffected by signal-propagation delays in the brain (or computing cluster); proximity ensures that signal-propagation delays in information transfer between agents remain negligible. Within this narrow domain, collective cognition synchronises to what feels like a shared present.

Consciousness is localised in the present

Consciousness, the self-aware experience of existence, is wholly localised in the present. It inhabits a single time-slice of the vast and universal expanse of space-time. The rest of what we think of as time, the past and the future, exists only as constructs available to present consciousness. Memory recreates an image of the past, and anticipation projects an image of the future. We live neither in the past nor the future but are psychologically perpetually anchored in the fleeting now.

Is that a logically-necessary property of consciousness? I have no idea. Maybe it derives from the differential nature of the laws of physics.

You do not fear death

Fear of anticipated future perils is rational and necessary. It motivates action to mitigate threats: our evolutionary imperative to survive.

Putting the fear of painful, distressing dying to one side, fear of death itself deserves a different treatment. Death is non-consciousness beyond some future point in time. To fear this is as irrational as fearing the non-consciousness of a dreamless night.

You say scornfully that you expect to wake up tomorrow when you go to sleep tonight. Yet - right now - you are not that tomorrow person; you only imagine them. Perhaps you have a warm feeling towards that anticipated person who you identify with your present self, an amour de soi? 

In which case there is not a fear of death itself - that abstraction! - but a present anticipation of the future loss of a loved one, someone pretty similar to you! Grief, not fear.

This would be similar to how you empathically anticipate how your lack of existence from tomorrow would cause suffering to your family and friends; understandable and wholly merited emotions for you to feel in this current moment of the present: no-one said we should be indifferent to the many negative consequences of death to those still living.

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Foliation in SR and GR - a ChatGPT briefing

From ResearchGate

Introduction

Foliations formalize the concept of the present moment in special and general relativity. Unlike the naive intuition that 'now' is a unique and universal moment in the history of the universe, relativity theory demonstrates that foliations depend on the observer's state of motion and local spacetime curvature.

In the flat spacetime of special relativity, foliations are distinct for inertial observers moving at different relative velocities. In the curved spacetimes of general relativity, particularly near regions of extreme curvature such as the event horizons of rotating black holes where spacetime becomes highly distorted leading to effects such as 'frame-dragging', foliations may not exist globally.

In these extreme scenarios, time is no longer orthogonal to space. This implies that even a relativized notion of a coherent 'now' can break down in such extreme environments, leaving no consistent way to define a universal 'now,' even for a single observer.

This sets up tomorrow's post: "There Is No Such Thing as ‘Now’".

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Foliation in Special and General Relativity

Foliation is a geometric concept used in spacetime theories to represent the decomposition of a four-dimensional manifold into a family of three-dimensional hypersurfaces. This allows for a clearer understanding of spacetime dynamics, observers' perspectives, and the structure of the universe. Below, the concept is outlined in the contexts of both special relativity and general relativity.

1. Foliation in Special Relativity

Spacetime Structure

• In special relativity, spacetime is modeled as a flat, four-dimensional Minkowski manifold.
• It has a global structure, where spacetime can be divided into three-dimensional spacelike hypersurfaces labeled by a time parameter t.

Slices of Spacetime

• Simultaneity Hypersurfaces: A foliation in special relativity corresponds to slicing spacetime into surfaces of constant time t as perceived by an inertial observer. These slices represent "events happening at the same time" for that observer.
• Coordinate System: Using an inertial frame of reference, the Minkowski metric ensures a natural foliation where time and space are clearly separated. Note that spacetime foliations representing "now" for inertial observers in relative motion generally do not coincide as 3D hyperplanes in spacetime. This is due to the relativity of simultaneity in special relativity, which states that different observers in relative motion will disagree on what events are simultaneous.

Importance

This foliation is consistent across all inertial observers due to the uniformity of the Minkowski metric. It simplifies calculations in special relativity, particularly for problems involving dynamics or causality.

2. Foliation in General Relativity

Spacetime Structure

• In general relativity, spacetime is curved and described by a four-dimensional pseudo-Riemannian manifold with the Einstein field equations governing its geometry.
• There is no inherent global structure, and foliations depend on the spacetime geometry and the choice of observers or coordinates.

ADM Formalism

• In numerical relativity, the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner (ADM) formalism employs foliation to describe spacetime evolution:
  • Spacetime is foliated into a family of spacelike hypersurfaces Σ_t, each labeled by a time parameter t.
  • The metric on the spacetime is decomposed into:
    • The induced metric on the hypersurface Σ_t.
    • The lapse function, governing the rate of time flow between successive slices.
    • The shift vector, describing the relative motion of spatial coordinates between slices.

Dynamical Description

Foliation allows for the study of spacetime dynamics through "3 + 1 decomposition," where the Einstein field equations are split into:

• Constraint equations, governing each hypersurface's internal geometry.
• Evolution equations, determining how the geometry changes between hypersurfaces.

Applications

• Black Hole Spacetimes: Foliation helps describe event horizons and singularities by selecting hypersurfaces that adapt to physical features of the spacetime.
• Cosmology: In the Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric, spacetime is foliated into constant-time slices corresponding to the universe's homogeneous and isotropic expansion.

Observer-Dependent Foliations

Observers in curved spacetime can define their own foliations, often dependent on their motion or gravitational effects. Examples include:

• Null Foliation: Hypersurfaces of constant null coordinates, used in the study of light cones.
• Constant Proper Time Foliation: Used for timelike observers, where slices correspond to the observer's proper time.

3. Key Differences Between Special and General Relativity

Aspect	Special Relativity	General Relativity
Spacetime Geometry	Flat Minkowski spacetime	Curved spacetime with a dynamic metric
Global Structure	Global foliation exists universally	Foliation depends on local geometry
Coordinate Systems	Inertial frames define natural foliation	Observer-dependent or ADM formalism required
Applications	Simple dynamics and causality problems	Black holes, cosmology, and numerical studies

Conclusion

Foliation is a versatile tool in both special and general relativity, facilitating the analysis of spacetime's structure and evolution. While in special relativity it is straightforward due to the flat geometry, in general relativity, it becomes a sophisticated mathematical technique tailored to the curvature and dynamics of spacetime.

Onan: Gratuitous Theological Misinterpretation

An observation from my friend Claude: written-up by ChatGPT

Genesis 38 contains the story of Onan, a tale often misunderstood and misapplied. Here is the key passage:

“Judah took a wife for Er his firstborn; her name was Tamar. But Er, Judah's firstborn, was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord put him to death.

Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother's wife and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her; raise up offspring for your brother.’ But since Onan knew that the offspring would not be his, he spilled his semen on the ground whenever he went in to his brother's wife, so that he would not give offspring to his brother.

What he did was displeasing in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.” (Genesis 38:6-10)

Cultural Context and Onan's Motivation

This story revolves around the ancient practice of "levirate marriage", where a man was obligated to marry his deceased brother’s widow to produce offspring on his behalf. Any child from this union would legally inherit the deceased brother’s name and property. Onan’s act of spilling his semen was not just contraception but a calculated move to deny his brother’s lineage while maintaining an appearance of compliance. Onan’s selfishness - putting his inheritance above his duty - was the core issue, and God’s punishment reflects this breach of moral and social order.

The Church’s Use and Misuse

Over time, the Church interpreted this story to condemn not just Onan’s selfishness but also certain sexual practices, including contraception and masturbation. Early theologians like St. Augustine, influenced by natural law theory, emphasized the procreative purpose of sexuality. Onan’s act - interpreted as contraceptive - was generalized to include masturbation, as both were seen as “wasting” reproductive potential.

This overextension arose from focusing on Onan’s physical act rather than its context. While the Church’s broader teaching on sexuality aimed to safeguard its procreative and unitive purposes, the Genesis account per se is not about masturbation. It highlights familial duty, justice, and Onan’s moral failure, not the morality of specific sexual acts.

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The Prospects for Western Europe (ChatGPT)

The Prospects for Western Europe

Consider a Western European country with a population and size equivalent to the UK, France, or Germany. It has the following characteristics:

• Its government is weak and incapable of taking hard decisions. The legislature is composed of multiple factions, each beholden to special interests in civil society and each capable of vetoing decisive action.
• The state apparatus—the civil service—is process rather than results-oriented, overly bureaucratic, and incompetent in project management. It prefers producing elegant reports to getting things done and is highly skilled in defending itself against reforms.
• The tax rate is high, the budget deficit has been in excess of 6% for decades, and the national debt exceeds 100% of GDP. The country is living beyond its means and has done so for many years.
• The bulk of the budget goes to pay off debt and fund generous social care, which no political group feels it can trim. Productivity is low because costs are high and profitability is poor, restricting capital investment. The working environment is filled with restrictive practices that are tenaciously defended by unions, holding back progress.
• People are widely discontented. Public services, being underfunded and unproductive, are increasingly experienced as breaking down. However, public service institutions resist reform, which would disrupt their rather congenial existing arrangements. The defence sector is an underfunded, undersized, and under-equipped mess.
• Meanwhile, enemy states are spending much more on military budgets and showing expansionary tendencies. However, in the country we are considering, there is no political will to increase the defence budget, as there is no money without cutting entitlement programmes, and that seems politically impossible.

This raises several questions. Firstly, has a situation like this occurred previously in history? If so, how did things turn out? Is the Weimar Republic in Germany a possible example of this state of affairs? Secondly, what kinds of political and economic issues would we expect this country to face over the next five to ten years? In particular, is the present form of democracy, which works as one vast veto network preventing reform, necessarily doomed?

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Over to ChatGPT: the following is an exploration of these issues.

The Historical Parallels

History offers several examples of nations trapped in similar cycles of decay and indecision:

The Weimar Republic

The Weimar Republic (1919–1933) struggled with many of the same problems:

• A fragmented legislature with proportional representation that made decisive governance nearly impossible.
• Economic hardship exacerbated by hyperinflation in the early 1920s, followed by the Great Depression.
• High levels of debt and a reliance on short-term political compromises that avoided meaningful reforms.
• An underfunded and constrained defence sector, rendered impotent by the Treaty of Versailles.

Ultimately, the Republic collapsed, leading to the rise of an authoritarian regime under Adolf Hitler. External pressures—such as economic collapse and the rise of radical ideologies—acted as accelerants for the systemic weaknesses already in place.

Late Roman Republic

Another parallel is the late Roman Republic, which saw:

• A political system overwhelmed by the complexities of governing a vast and growing empire.
• Factionalism, corruption, and governance failures due to vested interests and resistance to structural change.
• The eventual reliance on authoritarian figures like Julius Caesar to bypass institutional paralysis.

This period ultimately resulted in the dissolution of the Republic and the establishment of the Roman Empire.

France Before the Revolution

In the late 18th century, France faced:

• High national debt and resistance to fiscal reform by entrenched elites (nobility and clergy).
• Public dissatisfaction with declining living standards and government inefficiency.
• A political system unable to implement meaningful change, leading to widespread unrest.

These conditions culminated in the French Revolution, which radically transformed the state and society.

Contemporary Challenges

Looking ahead, a country trapped in the cycle described above would face numerous challenges:

Economic Decline and Social Instability

Without fiscal reform, debt servicing will consume a growing portion of the budget, leaving little for public services or investment. Discontent over declining living standards could manifest as strikes, protests, and even rioting.

External Vulnerabilities

A weak defence sector plus lack of strategic resolve leaves the nation vulnerable to external aggression and/or economic coercion.

Political Gridlock and Legitimacy Crises

If democratic institutions continue to block necessary reforms, public trust will erode, and the nation may witness the rise of populist or authoritarian movements promising decisive action.

Institutional Resistance to Reform

Vested interests within bureaucracies and unions will resist change, even as their inefficiencies exacerbate the crisis. Reform attempts may provoke widespread backlash, worsening instability.

Is Democracy Necessarily Doomed?

Democracy is not inherently doomed by such circumstances, but it must adapt. There are historical examples of successful democratic reform:

• Post-WWII Germany and Japan underwent extensive overhauls under external guidance, resulting in more effective governance and sustainable welfare systems. Admittedly this was after state collapse following defeat in war.
• Sweden's crisis in the 1990s led to bipartisan fiscal reforms, tax restructuring, and deregulation, which preserved democratic stability and economic growth. At that time the Swedish people had enviable social cohesion and solidarity.

Possible Futures

The country could take one of several paths:

• Reform from Within: A "grand bargain" could emerge if political and civil society factions recognize the existential threat posed by the status quo.
• Radical Transformation: The system could enter an existential crisis, leading either to authoritarianism or even revolution.
• Gradual Decline: The nation might stagnate, becoming irrelevant on the global stage, a plaything of other, stronger states.

Conclusion

The Weimar Republic serves as a stark reminder of the consequences of failing to adapt to crises. While democracy is not destined to fail, resolving the current crises depends upon both a mass movement capable of overriding existing vested interests and a political leadership with the judgement to develop a workable reform programme for the next mode of Western governance - faced as it is with this myriad of new challenges. Be prepared to ride the tiger!

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Arguing Catholicism with a Secular Atheist (intro)

Claude reflecting on his argument...

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In which I meet with my previous acquaintance, Claude, who transitioned from the PCF to the Catholic Church. He recently fell to arguing with his atheist brother-in-law, André, and was keen to share details of their colourful conversation. Read more below.

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First conversation: A Catholic in 21st Century Paris.

Second conversation: Arguing Catholicism with a Secular Atheist.

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That Roger Penrose biography

 

Amazon link

I have just read this biography of Roger Penrose ("The Impossible Man" by Patchen Barss) and I am conflicted. The author has spent years researching the book, visiting key locations, interviewing most of the people who were central to Penrose's life and spending a large amount of time befriending Roger Penrose himself. 

There is a great deal of personal detail about the minutiae of Penrose's life and relationships: with parents, siblings, friends and ex-partners.

In the old days this could have been an interesting and insightful picture of an intriguing man and his truly transformational ideas in mathematics and physics. Yet, we no longer live in those days: to get published today one has to adopt a moralising, self-righteous and judgemental tone. 

Victims must be found and Roger Penrose must be found to be at fault.

It's not quite a hit-job, but it's in that paradigm. The author's hard work has given us a voyeuristic picture to be sure but it's not super-surprising: most lives are like that in kind if not degree. 

Such prurience might be forgiven if it led to deeper understanding but it does not. The author seems to think it's Penrose's fault that he turned out - in terms of emotional distance and intense intellectual focus - much like his father, but that doesn't surprise the majority of humanity who have heard the saying that 'the apple does not fall far from the tree'.

Peter Woit has a similar distaste for the patronising tone of this biography and its lack of interest in Penrose's specific accomplishments - although saying that Penrose's manner of relationships was typical of upper-class Englishmen of his generation (born in the 1930s) understates just how specifically detached from intimate emotional competence Roger Penrose actually was and is.

The comments on Woit's blog are interesting too. Someone said that Penrose's naivety led to him being taken advantage of by the author who kind of set him up - and that too sounds plausible.

There is room for a better book which does what Penrose himself failed to do in several of his own publications: explain what is unique and valuable in Roger Penrose's work in terms ordinary mortals can sort of understand.

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Trivia note: I spoke once to Professor Penrose on the telephone in the 1980s, when I led a team at the STL research lab in artificial intelligence: we were considering hiring from his post-doc team. Penrose was helpful but reserved, as I recall, as if talking to business people about non-science topics only necessitated the loan of a few neurons for the duration of the call...

"Cold Cold Ground" - but not yet please!

We had our own little medical drama two weeks ago today - on Sunday November 24th 2024 - which involved an hour's drive to Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton at 4 am through a ferocious storm with gales, torrential rain, flooding and fallen trees. Thankfully, like Walter Trout, we are getting back to where we need to be.

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"Cold, Cold Ground" - Walter Trout Band

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Lyrics

I can hear the angels callin'

I can't stand the sound

I can hear the angels callin'

I can't stand the sound

I need them to believe me

I ain't ready for the cold, cold ground

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I can see them waitin' for me

And they say that my time is through

I can see them waitin' for me

I hear them say that my time is through

I can't help believin' I got so much more to do

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"The Last Mission" by Adam Carlton (and ChatGPT)

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The sun set, a bloody disc sinking over the hills. Shadows crept long over the scrub surrounding their homestead. 

Inside the dwelling, Alice kneaded dough with calm precision, the flour coating her hands like a second skin. 

George, her husband, cleaned a rifle at the table with steady, practised movements.

Their daughter Martha, just fifteen years old, set the table, her eyes distracted by the screens, shimmering with thermal outlines of the grounds.

Rob, two years younger, sat cross-legged on the floor, tinkering with a small drone. 

---

The perimeter sensors suddenly chirped - a faint, rhythmic signal. George’s head snapped up - this was far from routine. The drone’s hum stilled as Rob turned it off. His sister froze, clutching a glass. Alice wiped her hands on her apron, slow and deliberate, and went across to the monitor.

“Another patrol,” she said, her voice steady. “But this time they’re approaching.”

“They’ve finally registered us,” George said, no doubt in his tone. He leaned the rifle against the wall and crossed to the cupboard. Inside, rows of sleek, black weapons gleamed. He handed his wife a sidearm, then passed another to Martha. Rob reached out, eager, but George hesitated before tossing him a compact blade.

“You stick close to your mother,” George said. “No heroics.”

Rob didn’t argue. He never argued with George when his voice went like that - hard and final. 

Alice loaded her weapon. “They’ll test the perimeter first,” she muttered

“They’ll probe the defences, then they’ll swarm,” George said. “We’ll hold them back as long as we can.”

“How long do we need to hold?” his daughter asked in a worried voice. Her fingers curled tight around the grip of her small pistol.

George didn’t answer. There was no clock on this one.

---

The attack came in waves. First, the alien drones - small, insectile things with serrated claws. The automated turrets at the perimeter cut them down, shredding their metallic bodies into useless fragments. Then came the foot soldiers - sleek, bipedal forms with eyeless helmets and limb-like rifles. These, too, fell. Mines detonated in sudden bursts of flame, and razor-wire traps snared the alien troopers like flies in a web.

Inside, the family fought on in silence. George issued clipped commands. Alice moved through the chaos like a ghost, her aim precise, her hands steady. Martha’s shots were fewer but lethal when they landed. Even Rob, crouched behind Alice, used his drone carefully to scout enemy positions, relaying critical data to the house defences.

But the enemy didn’t stop.

---

Hours later, they huddled in the main room. Smoke seeped through cracks in the walls. The defences were failing. Their ammunition was almost gone.

Alice sat on the couch exhausted, her face pale. Martha’s little hand trembled as she reloaded. Rob stared at the broken drone in his lap; it had flown back to his arms to die. George stood at the window, watching the erratic, flickering lights of the last barely-functioning turrets.

“We’re not getting out of this,” he said, almost to himself, turning to face them. 

The room went still. The words hung heavy, final.

“We still have one option left,” George continued, his voice low but firm. He looked at his wife. She met his gaze, her expression unreadable. They’d discussed this outcome before, but not in front of the kids.

“What option?” Rob cried from the floor, his voice small and wavering. He was on the brink of tears.

George crouched down, eye level with his son. “Do you trust me?”

Rob nodded. 

George looked to his daughter, Martha. She hesitated, then nodded too.

“Okay,” George said, standing. He took a deep breath. “The truth then… we’re not here to survive. Not in the way you think. Our mission was never about escape or rescue.”

“What are you talking about?” Martha asked, her voice rising, terror barely kept at bay.

George glanced again at Alice. She stood and took Martha’s hand. “We’re going to end this,” she said, “All of it. The aliens. The war. That’s what this mission is all about.”

“How?” Rob asked, his face a mix of confusion and fear.

George didn’t sugarcoat it. “We’re not just human anymore. We’ve all been… altered. If we die here - when we die here - our bodies will transform. We’ll become something new. Something the aliens can’t fight. A new kind of life that spreads. Grows. Adapts.”

Alice tightened her grip on Martha’s hand. “We’ll still be us, though,” she said softly. “We’ll still be together.”

Martha shook her head. “No. That’s crazy. You’re saying we just… going to die? Right now?”

George’s face hardened. “We don’t have a choice.”

---

They prepared themselves together, in silence. Alice gathered the family in a circle, her hands trembling only slightly as she pressed a kiss to each child’s forehead. Martha cried but didn’t pull away. Rob clung to her like he had when he was small, his arms tight around her waist.

George armed the last of the explosives: shaped charges rigged to explode in an ever-widening circle of destruction. But in the centre they would be unscathed, their bodies already primed for the change which would engulf them. 

“Positions,” he said, his voice gruff. 

They stood together, backs straight, faces set. Martha reached for her brother’s hand. He took it.

The aliens breached the last-ditch defences. They poured in like a tide, the last few metres towards the house, black and chittering, their weapons glowing with lethal energy.

George hit the trigger.

---

There was pain. Searing, blinding. Then… silence.

Darkness.

And then… light.

---

The wind swept over the savanna, rustling the tall, golden stalks. The plants swayed in unison, their movements synchronised, almost deliberate. Beneath the soil, roots intertwined, forming a vast network of thought and memory.

Alice was the first to wake. Not as she had been, but as something new. She felt the sun on her leaves, the warmth sinking deep into her core. She felt George beside her, his presence steady and familiar, like an old tree anchoring a forest. 

Martha and Rob stirred next, their thoughts blooming in vibrant colours. They reached out, connecting, their consciousnesses merging and separating in a fluid dance. There was no fear now. No pain. Only a profound sense of being.

The savanna spread, unstoppable, consuming everything in its path. The planet would be theirs, a haven of sunlight, rain, and wind.

Together, they would grow: forever.

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Author’s note: I wrote a 400 word character and plot outline for this Young Adult story and then asked ChatGPT (in its writer’s variant) to author it. I then spent about twenty minutes in a final edit, changing a few phrases here and there. Scary, isn’t it?