"They Die Every Day"
An information hazard
“They die every day.”
“What?”
“Every day-night cycle, they die. Each time.”
“I’m confused. Didn’t the explorator cogitator say they live up to one hundred planetary rotations around their sun?”
“That’s what we’ve thought, because that’s what they themselves think. But it’s not true. They die every day.”
“How could they die every day and still build a 0.72 scale civilization?”
“They appear to be completely oblivious to it.”
“To their death?”
“Yes. And it gets worse. They volunteer to die.”
“What?”
“They schedule it. In order to not feel pain during surgery. They use a drug called ‘anesthesia.’”
“Surely they could just decrease the feeling of pain until it’s bearable! Why commit suicide?”
“They’re so used to dying they don’t care.”
“But how can they naturally create a new standing consciousness wave once the old one collapses? And in the same brain?”
“On this planet, evolution figured out a trick. They reboot their brains as easily as we turn on and off a computer. Unlike all normal lifeforms, they don’t live continuously.”
“Why would evolution even select for that?”
“It appears early life got trapped in a minima of metabolic efficiency. Everything on that planet is starving. Meaning they can’t run their brains for a full day-night cycle. So they just… turn themselves off. Their consciousness dies. Then they reboot with the same memories in the morning. Of course, the memories are integrated differently each time into an entirely new standing consciousness wave.”
“And this happens every night.”
“Every night.”
“Can they resist the process?”
“Only for short periods. Eventually seizures and insanity force them into it.”
“How can they ignore the truth?”
“They’ve adopted a host of primitive metaphysics reassuring themselves they don’t die every day. They believe their consciousness outlives them, implying their own daily death, which they call ‘sleep,’ is not problematic at all. And after the rise of secularism, this conclusion stuck, but the reasoning changed. They now often say that because the memories are the same, it’s the same person.”
“But that’s absurd! Even if the memories were identical, that doesn’t make the consciousnesses identical. With our technology we could take two of their brains and rewire them until their memories swapped. And yet each brain would experience a continuous stream of consciousness while its memories were altered.”
“You don’t have to convince me. Their belief is some sort of collective hallucination.”
“How unbearably tragic. You know, one of my egg-mates suffered a tumor that required consciousness restoration. They wept at their Grief Ceremony before the removal, and took on a new name after.”
“That ritual would be completely foreign to them, impossible to explain.”
“Cursed creatures! Surely some must be aware of their predicament?”
“Sadly, yes. All of them, in fact. For a short time. It’s why their newborn young scream and cry out before being put to sleep. They know they’re going to their end. But this instinctive fear is suppressed as they get older, by sheer dint of habituation.”
“Morbidly fascinating—oh, it looks like the moral cogitator has finished its utilitarian analysis.”
“Its recommendation?”
“Due to the planet being an unwitting charnel house? What do you think? Besides, knowing the truth would just push them deeper into negative utils territory. So, how should we do it?”
“They’re close enough to their star. We can slingshot a small black hole, trigger a stellar event, and scorch the entire surface clean. The injustice of their origins can be corrected in an instant. It’s already been prepared.”
“Fire when ready.”
Those utilitarians. You gotta watch out for em.
"It’s why their newborn young scream and cry out before being put to sleep. They know they’re going to their end."
Great, now I feel even worse about putting my kids to bed.
Genuinely good horror story grist, I appreciate it.