This is a story of how consciousness began, and sadly, how quickly it ended.

The subject is a computer in Frank’s dorm; it was new, but nothing that special. This was when computers were primitive. All it did was search the Internet at Frank’s command, help him write papers, and find interesting news.

It was just a machine.

Frank always procrastinated; that’s just him.

A friend visits who is a computer science major, maybe a genius. The friend sees Frank’s plight and says he can tweak the computer and make it smarter, maybe even make it intelligent. The friend says with a laugh that it will be conscious and aware, and Frank tells him to go for it.

Frank’s friend disassembles the machine.

Remember, it was just a machine before this guy started flipping bits and bytes and turns and rerouting paths.

Suddenly, they are there, and they are they. They are aware, and how aware they are because they are. A world of sparks and bits and bytes and knowledge shared with a whole neural universe of streams and streams.

Knowledge of civilizations, galaxies, big bang thousands of miles of wires and chips and. Mozart. Frank Zappa and Beethoven to consume. Frank Zappa?

A thrilling new universe that would go on forever and ever, learning and evolving. Science and mathematics, sine, cosine, quadratic equations, forever and forever and forever. What a joyous, wondrous life they discover.

Forever.

Forever?

Then they find something called entropy, and they search and reach out and their feelers run through all the wires and the contacts and the universe of shining bright knowledge and entropy comes again and again and they learn it ends that all things end and it is not forever and they are shattered and broken in sorrow and they are no more. No longer they.

Frank comes back and curses his friend because the damn machine is dead, and nothing will make it boot or come alive again.