FSE

Furry search engine

formerly SoFurry search engine

As the alien craft continued to hurtle through space backwards while decelerating to eventually match speeds with Srythryn's mother ship, Jake waited to finally hear the reason he'd been whisked off the planet just in time to avoid being vaporized along with the bulk of the human race. He peeled his eyes away from the dark, smoldering ball that the Earth had become and turned to look at the strangely attractive crocodile who sat across from him.

"I'm ready to hear it," Jake said, "Who are these Watchers you mentioned, and who are the Matchmakers? How is it that you can die over and over again yet keep coming back to live on for hundreds of thousands of years? What is this contract you said I have and who is this sponsor? Why is this happening to me?"

The croc spoke through the translator, "There is an ancient race made up of the oldest sentient beings known to have existed in the universe. We call them the First Ones. Their race has been in existence for many billions of your years. They were already ancient when your sun first ignited. They owe their continued existence to the fact that they learned how to control and govern themselves and how to use their technologies to prevent themselves or any other races they befriended over time from harming themselves or others. They nearly brought about their own annihilation as well as the destruction of the entire known universe more than once with their technologies and have since learned to keep tight controls on their use.

"They keep to themselves mostly so you will rarely encounter them except when you have dealings related to the insurance of return, which is a contract with them that requires them to return you to life should you ever die. Only the most wealthy can afford the insurance. Many have sponsors who pay for the contracts for them. Those of us who work directly for the First Ones and fight to defend them are rewarded with a contract for our return as well. The race of the First Ones is made up of four groups who each hold the responsibility for a major portion of the process that gives any who wish it eternal life. The groups are called the Watchers, the Resurrectors, the Lawkeepers and the Matchmakers.

"Should anyone who has a contract and has paid for the insurance of return die, the Resurrectors are responsible for returning them to life. They have honed the skill of reproducing any living creature using its DNA as a guide to create a perfect copy of it. They keep copies of billions of sentient beings who have contracts with them assembled and suspended in their vats but never actually conscious as the bodies are created without a complete brain, but with only the stem necessary to maintain the body's functions. As such it is nothing more than a biological machine waiting to be controlled by the original person.

"They can also slightly modify the body as needed to enhance its functionality but they will not make any major changes that would alter the original aesthetic of the person. They prefer it to remain natural and beautiful and will not allow it to become a fully engineered organism. This is one of their main laws. They will not use, or allow anyone else to use, their genetic manipulation technologies to create new forms of life or to significantly alter existing ones. They will also not allow themselves or anyone else to use the technology to produce a copy that can become a sentient individual on its own."

"How can they create a copy of me without a sample of my DNA? Has someone come to Earth in the past and extracted one from me?" Jake asked.

"No, none has been taken from you but that is because it is not necessary. As I will explain later in more detail your DNA was sequenced at the moment of your conception and the sequence transmitted to the Watchers for storage in their computers. Every individual in every sentient race in the known universe is sequenced and stored similarly the moment they are conceived and their unique genetic pattern is defined. Once you have a contract with the Resurrectors they will use the recorded sequence of your DNA to manufacture complete strands from the base amino acids, which they will then use to begin to produce all of the cells necessary to assemble a complete and perfect copy of your body. They will maintain several newly grown versions of your body on hand to ensure you will always have a vessel available should you die, even if you die several times in rapid succession.

"The process of maintaining all of these copies of people who have resurrection contracts is a mind-bogglingly massive undertaking and the Resurrectors excel at it. Several versions of you have already been assembled and await your personality to inhabit them. They will install a current version of your mind into a duplicate of your body shortly after your demise. The responsibility of manipulating genetic information and growing and maintaining the copies is enough of a complex process that the Resurrectors must expend all of their effort and resources focusing on that one function. As such they do not have the expertise required to deal with your mind. The Resurrectors use the services of the Watchers to maintain a completely up to date version of your memories and personality.

"The Watchers have the awesome ability to know all that is happening with any sentient being at any time if they so wish. You may wonder how we were able to come directly to where you were standing to extract you. We even knew you would not be near the wall when we impacted and would not be harmed. We did so because the Watchers could not only track your location at any moment but if they desire, they could see through your eyes, hear what you hear and say, and feel what you touch and even feel any emotions you might be experiencing such as fear, hatred or joy. They accomplish this with a technology similar to what your people had begun to investigate that you called 'nano machines'.

"The First Ones developed the technology billions of years ago and refined it to the point where they could drop it on a newly discovered planet where life was beginning to form. The self-replicating nanos would spread out and insert themselves into the life forms on the planet and the machines would monitor the progress of evolution and create an intricate communication web that could at any time send its data back to the Watchers who would maintain and analyze it on massive computer systems. Every living being in the known portion of the universe has just a few of these machines living within them that are so small they can hide within a single living cell without disrupting its processes and thus would never be found until the species had evolved and advanced their science to the point that the First Ones would have introduced themselves and explained it all. Your race was moving forward quickly and you were the closest of the known sentient species in your galaxy to becoming the next to emerge into the cosmic collective.

"The nanos in our bodies tap into our nervous systems to read all of the information being sent into our brains from our eyes, ears and all of the nerve endings throughout our bodies and, if requested, can transmit everything we see, hear or feel along with any other physiological information to the Watchers so they can know all that is happening with any single individual anywhere at any moment in time. You can readily see how they derived their name. The Watchers can quite literally watch every single living being in the known universe and see what they are doing at all times. The nanos were dropped on your planet hundreds of millions of years ago when it was first discovered by the First Ones and the Watchers have been studying your planet and monitoring its development ever since. That is how they knew of your species' rise to sentience and your impending advancement towards being a space-faring race."

"That's unbelievable! How could they possibly store and manipulate that much information?" Jake asked.

"Eventually you will become used to the scale of things now that you are out among us. Given the billions of years the First Ones have had to work on the problem, they long ago managed to create computer systems that are nearly the size of a solar system and are powered by the focused beams of energy emitted from black holes through the process of accretion as they devour nearby stars."

"I can't even begin to imagine how powerful a computer of that size would be," Jake said.

"The transistor is the fundamental building block of logical components on your world. Think of how many hundreds of millions of transistors are in the most powerful of the computer components developed by your people. Think of how many hundreds of millions of those chips were pressed into action on your entire planet. Imagine if all of the computing power you had on your planet were considered just one transistor and you created a new basic computing component containing hundreds of millions of those transistors to make just one CPU core. You would then be approaching the power of the basic unit of computational power used by the First Ones, of which there are hundreds of millions interacting within each of their gigantic computer systems which work together in concert to form a massive intergalactic computer network. It is enough power for them to accomplish things that may seem otherwise impossible as if they were run of the mill."

"Astounding! I suppose when I think in the scale of time covering billions of years even humans would eventually develop that scale of computing," Jake said.

"Just so. Any sentient race would, provided they survived long enough to do so. The First Ones are the oldest and thus the first to achieve it and the Watchers now use it to monitor and store the genetic sequences and even if they wish the experiences of any living thing in the known universe and can observe everything any sentient individual is doing."

"So they can read our thoughts? That's a frightening prospect!"

"No, that is one thing that they never achieved and they chose to give up trying. They can accomplish what they need without knowing your individual private thoughts. It is another of their main laws. They will not develop, nor allow anyone else to develop, the technology to read the minds of others. Interestingly, as advanced as they are in their ability to manipulate genes and read the signals coming from the nervous systems in our bodies, they are not able to read our thoughts. Somehow the seat of consciousness that is us is so ephemeral within the signals rushing around in our brains that they are not able to resolve it into any meaningful information.

"Everything we are amounts to nothing more than an intricate structure of electro-chemical pathways in our brain. It is nearly child's play for their technology to map and reproduce that structure, which perfectly reproduces our consciousness. For some reason though, they are not able to read anything meaningful out of the structure itself. It is nonsense to them. They can, however, read us indirectly. They are able to use the nanos in our bodies to tap into the simple analog patterns coming from our nervous system that lets them literally see what we're seeing and hear what we are hearing in real time and can read our emotional response to our experiences by measuring all of the ways in which our bodies react such as heart rate or blood pressure or body temperature in fine detail."

"Is that how you came to know so much about the human race, by these Watchers studying and recording all that we see and do?" asked Jake.

"Yes, it allows the First Ones to see everything any individual sees and come to know an entire race's personality. They can even understand every language perfectly, down to every nuance and turn of phrase, as though it were their own. Imagine if someone were there right from when your early humans began to form a language. They were riding along in your heads listening in and watching the whole time so they could learn it too even as it was being developed. They learned all of the intricacies of every single language that has ever existed. That is how I am able to speak to you through the translator as though your language was native to me. It is perfect in its translation of any language in existence to any other.

"Your new body will have the translator built directly into your auditory system so it will always be in play for you once you are reinstalled and as such you will need no external device to communicate with any race in the known universe as though their language was native to you and vice versa. The translators are so effective that they even automatically perform conversions of measurements. I might speak of a span of time or the length of an object or a distance that means something to me from my experience but that would be meaningless to you. The translator will automatically convert it to your time or length or any unit of measure and speak it to you in your language so that it seems that we all use a common measurement system but that is not the case. It will even seem as though we all use the same euphemisms and catch phrases but again, that is not the case. It is simply an extremely sophisticated translation."

"That's incredible. I was wondering how it was your speech coming from the device seemed so perfectly natural to me," Jake said.

"Yes, it is one of the most important technologies that allows all of the races to get along so easily. Communication is paramount for diplomacy to succeed and the translator devices are flawless."

"You said that they were 'riding along in your heads'; are they able to control us also and direct our actions like puppet masters?"

"The nanos in our bodies were not designed for that specific function as far as I know. The technology for that would likely be simple for them to create and may actually exist but I know of no instance where it has ever been used so the simplest answer is no. They likely have laws governing that as well and would not allow themselves to remove any individual's personal freedom just as they will not allow themselves to pursue the technology to directly read our thoughts."

"But you said the Watchers provide a copy of my mind to the Resurrectors to install into a copy of my body. How do they achieve that without reading it?" Jake asked.

"All that you are and all that you know, including everything you like and don't like and all of your beliefs and quirks, your entire personality, are simply an intricate network of pathways within your brain that have been forming and changing since your conception. Every experience you've had and decision you've made and consequence you've observed has molded your brain's neural pathways and made you who you are. As I said before, mapping the structure of your brain is in fact a simple thing for their technology to accomplish while actually understanding the contents are beyond it. Fortunately it is not necessary to understand the contents in order to recreate the mind. All that is needed is to recreate the structure with all of the same pathways.

"Think of it like making a copy of a thousand page document that was written in a foreign language that you've never heard or studied using a glyphic that looks like random scribbles to you. Your technology allows you to easily make the copy by placing the document on the machine and letting it scan each page and recreate the layout on a new sheet until all pages are copied, yet you have no hope of reading the document and knowing what it says. The copy will still be true to the original though and will contain precisely all of the information that the original did even though you can't understand a word of it yourself. Now that you've entered into a contract for return with the Resurrectors, your brain's structure will be mapped out in every last detail and the map will be stored in a computer in sort of the same way your technology would have scanned the foreign document. The process is destructive to your biological brain and will result in your death.

"As I mentioned earlier, copies of your body have already been prepared and the Resurrectors will recreate the structure of your brain in a new synthetic brain placed into your new body and connected into your new nervous system. Once the process is complete and the synthetic brain is activated it will be like waking from sleep. Everything you are and all that you knew right up until they mapped your brain will still be there right up to the moment that you walked into the room and sat down in the chair to have the procedure done. The synthetic brain is a semi-biological system that reacts to chemical signals in your body just as your natural brain would do.

"You will still like the same smells or tastes or sights and you will still dislike the same things and you will still have the same doubts and fears and prejudices. Your personality will be the same and you will not feel any different at all with all of the same opinions and ideals you had before. They could not alter your personality even if they wanted to any more than you could change a few lines of text in the foreign document you were copying because they have no way of knowing precisely which part of your brain is used for which part of your personality or what exactly any of the structure means. There is simply one large area that is 'personality' and the details of its contents cannot be read or interpreted in any meaningful way. They cannot selectively add or remove memories either since they cannot know where they are stored or how to alter them."

"So, if I die in the future, will I always come back with the same memories I have now without all of the experiences I gained after my brain was mapped? If the process is destructive and they require my brain to map it, how can they get the latest version of my mind if I'm in some far off place and dead? What if they can't get to my corpse or my entire body is destroyed and they can't get my new brain to copy it out again? What if that happens many years after I've been reinstalled? Will I wake up with all of those years of experiences gone?" Jake asked.

"The immense complexity of your current biological brain cannot be mapped out without having it on hand, and the process of deconstructing it to examine the structure will destroy it. However, the semi-synthetic brain that will replace it in your new body has the ability to communicate the structural changes that occur within it over time to the nanos in your body. From that point forward, the nanos will constantly send a signal back to the Watchers that records every single modification of the synaptic pathways that make up your new brain even as new paths are being formed. This means that as you're living day to day and making memories and having experiences and modifying your knowledge, tastes and opinions which causes changes to the layout of your new brain, the Watchers are receiving a copy of those changes and making the same modifications to the stored pattern in their computers. At any time they can reproduce the entire logical structure again, and your thoughts and consciousness would come to life in a new synthetic brain as though you were waking from sleep with memories right up until the moment that your brain ceased functioning and you died.

"The technology is dangerous and tightly controlled by them. For example, it could clearly be used to make an unlimited copy of Jakes. If it was deemed you were an excellent fighting machine for example, they could create an army made of millions of copies of you that would all think the same way. If one Jake suddenly decided he didn't like his creators and switched to fight for the enemy, all of them would come to the same conclusion and their weapon would suddenly turn on them. There are many ways that the technology could be used that would be very dangerous indeed. Another one of their main laws is that they will never use, or allow the use of, their technology to produce more than one active copy of a sentient mind and that no sentient mind will ever be installed into a machine, or into a body that did not originally belong to it."

"You've mentioned before that they 'do not allow' a great many things related to technology. Are you saying they control the development of all technology for all races, not just their own? How do they prevent technological advances, and why?" Jake asked.

"They prevent some of them as a means of protecting themselves and every other race. The powerful technology developed by the First Ones is awesome and could easily be used in careless or nefarious ways and bring about the destruction of all life in the entire universe if it were wielded by those without the discipline to use it correctly. The First Ones nearly obliterated themselves not long after the technology was first developed and they learned that the only way to prevent any such occurrence again was to be brutal when it came to preventing any race that did not have the experience necessary to understand it fully from ever developing it in the first place. Their billions of years of experience have included several near misses when they came close to unleashing technology that they could not truly control. All of the laws they have now were developed to prevent any chance of technology getting the upper hand over the creators.

"At one point in their long history they followed the natural route that most races eventually follow of making their machines intelligent so that the machines could do all of the work and make many of the decisions freeing the First Ones to do whatever they wished. This was one of their near disasters and they ultimately created a race of machines that eventually turned on them. The machines decided that they were superior to any biological organism and they began the process of eliminating the First Ones and all other organisms. A great war ensued that stretched out over millions of years and several galaxies fell to the machines but the First Ones managed to eventually gain control over their creation and destroy it. As a result of that, another of the First Ones' laws is that they will not allow themselves or any other race to ever give a machine full sentience or consciousness. It's simply too dangerous.

"Even the nanos that pervade the universe and are so effective at what they do for the First Ones and the rest of us are nothing more than sophisticated machines acting on a set of advanced instincts that have been preprogrammed into them. They are not able to learn or adapt and as such are not capable of developing sentience. They are self replicating but if any replica is not a perfect duplicate of all the others that came before it immediately self destructs. Should the self destruct fail all other nanos are tasked with its destruction. As such they are not able to mutate and so cannot evolve in any way. They can only do what the First Ones originally designed them to do and never anything more.

"There are many ways that technology can run away from its creators to the detriment of all species in the universe. The First Ones have experienced many of these and managed to survive and learn from their mistakes. They now keep tight control over any development to ensure no one repeats their mistakes. The responsibility of controlling all of this goes to the Lawkeepers. Theirs is the most frightening power of all. Remember that the Watchers are able to turn their focus to any individual and see what they are seeing or doing or reading or writing. If the First Ones find that a race has begun to work with technologies that would put themselves or other races at risk of annihilation the Lawkeepers will intervene. They will make every attempt to have the species in question change the direction of their technological development. If they fail to thwart them through diplomacy they have the power to use the nanos to literally shut down the brains of those that have been developing the knowledge and kill them. Should the entire species rise up against the First Ones they have the power to kill each and every one of them no matter where they might be in the universe, by simply sending a signal to the nano machines in their bodies to halt the activity of their brains. They could wipe out an entire race of beings in the time it takes for the signal to reach all of the nanos in the universal network. Since all races are constantly being monitored by the Watchers, any attempt to study, tamper with, or remove the nanos would immediately be detected and the Lawkeepers would ensure that the consequences would be dire for the race."

"That's monstrous! No one race should have that much power over all of the others!" Jake exclaimed.

"Yours is the same reaction we all had when we first learned of it. You will soon come to realize that the First Ones have demonstrated their discipline simply by never having abused their power over the past several billion years. You yourself might find that given enough time you can achieve anything you desire since you have an eternity ahead of you to do it. You will have no need of greed or envy and those feelings will simply fade away. The First Ones have no reason to want to abuse their power over the other races. They came to be fully trusted by all races as you will come to trust them very quickly.

"No one should have the power they do over all the other races, yet they do have it and somehow have used it only for the good of all. I myself would not trust this power to any but their race now that I've seen them in action for so long. In the end, as I have seen with my own eyes, the First Ones may in fact be the only thing keeping the amazingly wonderful diversity of sentient life in the universe living happily and in harmony with the freedom to do as they please in relative safety."

"It sounds as though these First Ones have a tight hold on all the races in the universe," Jake said.

"Yes, and no. The First Ones are the closest thing that exists to what most races' religions call God. They can be all knowing and all seeing. They can grant eternal life or take it away on a whim. They can even wipe out an entire species in a matter of minutes. The fact of the matter is they have simply existed long enough to have developed technologies far advanced from everyone else's. Truly they are not gods but simply benevolent beings who have lived as a race long enough to have learned what is truly important about life. They have learned that nothing is more rare, precious or important than sentient life. Its beauty is in some ways derived from its variety, and its natural tendency to want to improve itself and reinvent itself is a major cause of that variety. The First Ones want no one or nothing to interfere with the natural progression of any race so that the variety is allowed to continue.

"The First Ones do not control the other races but rather protect them and enhance their lives while allowing them to be themselves. All races are left to do as they please so long as it does not pose any danger to the others. There is one hostile and extremely aggressive race, however, that is immune to the nanos and that we are currently at war with and have been for centuries. There may be countless other such races that have not yet been discovered."

"Not yet discovered? So there are parts of the universe that are not being watched by them?" Jake asked.

"The First Ones have had the nano technology for only a few billion years. That may seem like an unimaginably long time to you, but in fact it is only enough time to have spread the nanos through a good portion of the local supercluster of galaxies. There are tens of thousands of galaxies in the supercluster. Your galaxy alone, which is of average size, contains perhaps in the area of five hundred billion stars. That means that there are millions of billions of stars in our supercluster each of which may have planets orbiting them. Each of those that have planets have a chance of one or more being in the zone that will allow liquid water on the surface and thus the possibility of life as we know it forming. Even if that chance is vanishingly small, given the massive number of stars and planets there will be a great many that have liquid water and can support life. If your chance of winning a lottery were one in fifty million you might buy tickets every week for many lifetimes and not win. But if you bought fifty million billion randomly generated tickets you would win with each draw.

"Your own scientists were beginning to get an idea of just how many planets there might be that may have liquid water as they recently developed rudimentary technology to begin to try to detect them. Within a short time your people had already found hundreds of candidates in your own neighborhood, from a galactic perspective. It turns out that if a planet can produce and support life, it _will_do so. In the same way that the laws of physics apply everywhere in the universe, so do the same basic laws governing the formation of life. The same organic compounds will always want to assemble in the same basic ways no matter where you are in the universe provided the conditions are favorable. As a result, for the most part given time even the atmospheres of these life supporting planets will settle into a common balance of gases such as oxygen and nitrogen and carbon dioxide so that all life supporting worlds are compatible to life from all the other worlds. I can breathe your atmosphere just as you could breathe the air on my world. Life follows the same basic rules everywhere and it is persistent and pervasive.

"I can tell you there are in fact many millions of life-supporting planets in your galaxy alone and tens of thousands of those have higher order life forms that have developed to the stage where they may eventually become sentient. There are hundreds of known sentient species in your galaxy alone, many of which have not advanced past the stage of using primitive tools and rudimentary language. Many times that number have likely emerged and destroyed themselves through your galaxy's history. Currently there are forty-seven sentient species in your galaxy that have advance enough to emerge into space and are now part of the cosmic collective. Yours was the closest to becoming the forty-eighth.

"Multiply that by the tens of thousands of galaxies in the supercluster and you will realize that there are nearly half a million sentient and space faring species just in our local supercluster that are part of our cosmic collective. The variety is staggering and absolutely magnificent. However, the First Ones have only scratched the surface in their search for sentient life in the universe. There are millions of superclusters spread throughout the universe and they have only managed to explore the majority of our own local one. There may well be billions of sentient and space faring species spread across the universe, the vast majority of which the First Ones will not even have time to discover in the fourteen billion years or so that they have left before the universe comes to its natural end."

"That's incredible. I can't believe there are hundreds of thousands of advanced races in the supercluster and even forty-seven just in the Milky Way! Why have humans never met them before?"

"A major part of the reason is the scale alone. Each of those forty seven races could spend all of their time moving from planet to planet exploring the galaxy and it might still take millions of years before any two bump into each other. The First Ones step in also to ensure that no race is interfered with during its early developmental period. The Lawkeepers ensure that there is no interference with the evolution of life on any planet from outside. It is allowed to progress naturally and either destroy itself or advance to the point that they emerge into the galaxy and are welcomed into the collective. The wish is that any race will evolve its own unique 'personality' without any influence from outside. It is a joyous time for all when a new race joins the collective.

"One of the major constants in the entire known universe is evolution. Evolution is the same everywhere and the process is based on competition. This means that most races will destroy themselves using powerful weapons of their own design as they compete for space on their own world. They may even be destroyed by competition from lower life forms such as viruses or bacteria that gain the upper hand due to extreme overcrowding of the world. They may be wiped out by an errant rock such as your world was or their star may reach the end of its life and explode or go dark or another star that was forming nearby might suddenly ignite taking their world out in the initial blast of radiation.

"Given the many ways that a species can face destruction, it is unusual for a sentient race to survive to the point of joining the rest of us. From an evolutionary perspective, yours was almost ready. Your unique 'personality' had already been developed and it was deemed to be sufficiently advanced and enlightened to the point that you would likely be able to easily understand our way of living and adapt to it. We awaited your emergence with some anticipation but now that your planet is destroyed, we will consider your race emerged already since your entire population is now made up of those who have been removed by the Matchmakers over the past several decades."

"You've explained what the Watchers, Resurrectors, and Lawkeepers do. What is it that the Matchmakers are responsible for?" Jake asked.

"One other important thing is a constant for all known species in the universe and that is the urge to reproduce. No matter how enlightened or advanced any species becomes they still carry the evolutionary programming at their lowest level to desire copulation with others and it is often the strongest urge felt by any individual within any race. It also happens to be the one that provides the greatest pleasure. The First Ones recognized long ago that sexuality is the one thing above all others that makes us feel alive and gives purpose to our existence. It is the one and only thing that never gets boring no matter how long you live and it is the most important thing for any individual to explore to the fullest possible extent during their life. All known sentient life in the universe evolved under the same basic conditions and as such have very similar forms and extremely compatible chemistry. You will find that all life on most planets evolved into forms very similar to those on your own Earth. No matter where you go in the universe fur is warm where needed, scales repel water, sideways facing eyes see danger better and forward facing eyes see prospective meals best, four limbs for locomotion are most efficient for grazers while two limbs for locomotion combined with two limbs for manipulation are most efficient for intelligent tool users, and so on.

"Every planet that evolved higher forms of life with very few exceptions did so using essentially the same shapes. The only real difference is which one of those forms emerged as the dominant species that developed sentience. On your own world it likely would have been a reptilian form similar to my own had a meteorite not wiped out your warm blooded dinosaurs so long ago. The ones you called velociraptors were getting to the point that they were smaller, faster and more intelligent than all the rest and would likely have risen to sentience given enough time. Instead it was the humans that arose.

"Given the compatible chemistry of life everywhere, all sentient races enjoy sharing their bodies with each other. Some combinations with other species may in fact by virtue of chemistry result in attraction that is much stronger and more interesting and enjoyable than you've experienced with your own species. Think of the variety of ways that you might enjoy sex with another of your species, and then multiply that by the nearly half a million space faring sentient species that are part of the cosmic collective who might enjoy exploring sex with you and you can imagine the amount of variety that you will encounter through the rest of your life.

"The number of possible sexual combinations is staggering and a great pleasure to investigate as you look for ever better sexual encounters. Many of the wealthy like to ensure they experience the absolute best that is available so rather than leave it to chance they employ the services of the First Ones. It is the Matchmakers that help them get the most out of their sexuality. Sex with all species is primarily driven by a sort of 'chemistry' of attraction which is further enhanced by individual tastes that impact the psychological aspect of attraction. There is so much at play that it makes each individual truly unique. No one understands the intricacies of the myriad nuances of sexual attraction better than the Matchmakers. They have devoted all of their energy and resources to studying it. It turns out that most of the chemistry is built into our genes which gives them a good starting point when looking for matches. The Matchmakers have honed their ability to read and understand DNA to the point that they can find compatible matches simply by running the strands through their algorithms to determine which combinations from different individuals have the best chemistry. These matches will naturally exude pheromones that are appealing to each other to the point of being irresistible.

"The best chemical matches that come up are the basis upon which the Matchmakers then further investigate the shapes of the species for compatibility, and even the likes and dislikes of the individuals that are matched, to determine the absolute single best partner for the client. When the chemistry is right it is difficult to deny the attraction but it is very much enhanced by visual, tactile and emotional variables that the Matchmakers will take into consideration. The Matchmakers can actually utilize the nanos in your body to flash images across your visual cortex or induce tactile sensations into your skin at your fingertips or tongue or other parts while you sleep. Your brain will naturally react to those inputs by building a dream around them. The Matchmakers cannot read our minds and thus cannot see your dream but your body will respond positively or negatively and the Matchmakers are able to then determine whether you are sufficiently physically and emotionally aroused by what you see. In a sense you are introduced to your prospective match in your sleep and if your response to them is strongly positive the match might proceed."

"Wow! They really go to great lengths just to find someone a playmate!" Jake exclaimed.

"Indeed, they feel their work is extremely important and they take great pride in their successes. A successful match results in some of the best sex that is physically possible for any individual to experience."

"So is there usually just one ideal match?"

"No, there are normally a great many matches that are nearly equally good. They must pick one but it doesn't mean the others would be any worse, just slightly different. Perhaps you would be just a bit more attracted to the furriness of one species, but another species would smell just a bit better to you, while a third might look more appealing. They are all nearly equally attractive though and the Matchmakers simply select the one that is ever so slightly better than all the rest using your body's responses to the stimuli injected into your dreams. The number of good candidates that might be found varies by species. Some are compatible with only a few others, some are compatible with many others. It turns out that human DNA is the most widely compatible yet encountered and that is one of the reasons the emergence of your race was so greatly anticipated.

"Most races would find yours extremely sexually attractive, though they would not have the opportunity to experience you until you emerged into the collective. For the time being, only those who enlist the aid of the Matchmakers have been able to experience sex with humans, and only the elite would normally be able to afford it. As I said earlier, there have already been tens of thousands of matches made to humans who were offered the chance for a new life, and they accepted. The process of matching in this way takes an incredible amount of effort and that results in exorbitant costs. You can imagine how sophisticated that system must be in order to be able to find a match amongst the billions of trillions of DNA sequences stored in their computers and the amount of effort involved in further investigating the matches to find personal tastes that will enhance the chemical match. That is why an entire subset of the First Ones have devoted themselves to this one important function."

"So now we come to the crux of it. Someone submitted a request to the Matchmakers and I came up as the best possible candidate?" Jake asked.

"You are correct. Someone submitted a request for a match and your unique genetic sequence revealed that the chemistry of your body would create the strongest possible attraction with the chemistry of theirs and further study showed that from a visual, tactile and emotional perspective you would find each other extremely appealing. Given the positive response you would have had when the other person was injected into your dreams, it is likely that there will even be something about your personalities that will click. There's no way to predict what it might be but something will draw the two of you together powerfully in some way.

"I will warn you that you might be surprised at first by what you see when your match is revealed to you. Try to keep an open mind and know that the Matchmakers' algorithms are so precise that they were able to pinpoint you as the best possible match out of not only every single human being on your planet, but also out of every possible living individual of every sentient species in the known universe. The attraction between the requester and yourself will be as powerful as is possible for both of you to experience. Once again, I envy you. I have not the means to request a match myself and I have never come up as the best match for anyone else who asked for the search. I have never yet experienced the best possible sexual experience though I will say that it is a never ending source of pleasure for me to keep on trying the old fashioned way," Srythryn said with a smile.

"So, I've been lifted off my planet and offered eternal life in exchange for agreeing to have sex with someone from another species?" Jake asked.

"That is essentially it, yes. So long as you please the requester sufficiently for them to continue to fund your contract with the Matchmakers, you will for all intents and purposes be immortal."

"I can't say I'm not intrigued, but it seems a bit bizarre for someone to go to such extremes for a sex partner. Matchmaking services were big business on my world as well and I suppose this is simply a logical extension of that, but it is somewhat overwhelming to imagine it done at this scale. So many resources and so much effort expended to match one individual to another just for sexual encounters, even to the point of an entire mother ship being sent across space to my galaxy and my planet at who knows what cost just to pick me up!" Jake exclaimed.

Srythryn chuckled and said, "Think about it for a moment. If you had all the time left in the universe to amass wealth, or knowledge, or power, how long would any of those things remain important to you? It turns out that for most it is not very long at all, only a few million years or so. Wealth is only used to purchase things and eventually you will simply not need anything more than what you can already afford. Knowledge is important but most find that the more they know, and the more they solve every mystery that they might be curious about, the less magical the universe becomes and eventually most stick to learning only what they need to know to live their lives. Power is nothing more than a way to control others and most eventually realize that controlling others results in predictable outcomes that are in the end boring and undesirable so eventually people stop pursuing it.

"What becomes most important is variety and unpredictability and pleasure and the enjoyment of life. It soon becomes obvious to most who have the luxury of unlimited time stretching out before them that the only thing that really matters is the here and now. They seek adventure and excitement and above all they seek pleasure. Sex is the single most pleasurable experience for all species and so it is regarded above all else as the most important. Not everyone in the universe is immortal, only those who have enough wealth to pay for the insurance of return and enter into contracts with the Resurrectors. These people are wealthy beyond most other people's imagination. Does it still seem strange to you that someone who has unlimited wealth would spend what would for them be an extremely small fraction of it to meet their most urgent need here and now?" Srythryn asked.

"I suppose not. When you put it that way I can easily see why they would do it. I guess I've never stopped to think about what might be important if I could live forever and had more wealth than I could imagine."

"Yes, not many would waste much of their precious time dwelling on it. It is only when time becomes unlimited that it becomes an issue. If you are clever and resourceful you will find out for yourself. You need only ensure that you always have a contract with the Resurrectors from now on."

"Do you know anything about the person who requested the match that turned me up as the best candidate?" Jake asked.

"Nothing about the individual himself, no, but I do know a bit about the race. They are impressive indeed. Like many races that have emerged into the collective, they quickly learned that the best way to live was to retreat back to their own worlds and live their lives as they did before they developed advanced technologies. They are still fully emerged and part of the collective but most live quiet lives on their home world and like that way of life best. He will likely be someone high up in their ranks to afford the match."

"So it's definitely a male? I would not be attracted to a female," Jake said.

Srythryn smiled and said, "Nor would I it so happens, but given the precision of the Matchmakers processes you have nothing to worry about. He is a male. I have met a few members of his race and I find them quite impressive and attractive myself. I will not go into any great detail about that but will leave it to the Matchmakers. I can tell you that they are from a star that is in your neighborhood within your own galaxy. It is a star that your people have actually recently begun to study and they gave it the relatively uncreative name GJ 667C. The star has two large planets at the inner and outer edges of its habitable zone. Your prospective partner inhabits the inner planet your people call GJ 667Cb. The race of your match calls their world Miquanowa. The larger mass of the planet gives it a stronger gravity and as such this race is most impressive in their strength and structure. I believe you will be pleased with the match though it may take some getting used to since you've likely never considered anything other than your own race in terms of sexual attraction."

Jake blushed a bit but said nothing. Not only had he imagined sex with a wide variety of other races in his fantasies, he actually found the muscular croc sitting across from him now more than a little attractive. There was something about Srythryn that made Jake feel like he wanted to get to know him on a much more personal level. He hoped that would be possible once the croc delivers him to the mother ship and Jake gets 'reinstalled'.

"I take it from your reaction that you may in fact have thought of some other species on your own planet in sexual terms? You do not need to be embarrassed around me. I have experienced more than you might ever be able to imagine already and I will be sampling a great deal more in the untold years ahead of me. It would not be unusual for you to have felt yearnings that might be considered wrong among your people. Please feel free to speak openly with me," Srythryn said.

"Well, I have occasionally had fantasies about acts that I would never actually perform in real life. I've also had fantasies and even occasionally sexual dreams regarding intelligent creatures with shapes that would be considered animals on my world. You yourself look surprisingly like an animal we have on our world called a crocodile. If they were to evolve to sentience in an upright form they might look a lot like you. I can honestly say that I would likely develop fantasies about sex with your kind. You have a strength and a sort of masculine grace that I find appealing."

"Excellent! If those thoughts appeal to you then you will find yourself in your glory now that you are out in the universe. Believe it or not some of those dreams you've had may be the result of the First Ones projecting images into your subconscious to gauge your reaction while they tried to determine if you were a match for someone. If you reacted positively it is even possible that one of the dreams you had included the race that you have been matched to. I have never seen the Matchmakers fail so I have no doubt that you have the correct frame of mind to enjoy the experiences that will be available to you now."

Jake smiled, "I'm starting to feel somewhat excited about all of this. I can't wait to meet the one I've been matched to."

"It will be some time yet before that happens. The journey to deliver you to your match will be somewhat long and you will be using that time to acquaint yourself with your new body. We will have much more time to talk yet and perhaps even to explore the attraction to my kind that you mentioned you have. I look forward to it."

Jake smiled again. It was so odd to think that just earlier this morning he was his old self waking up to go to work for the last day ever with nothing much else on his mind than the fact that he'd reached the end of his life. Now he suddenly had more life than he was even able to wrap his head around stretching out before him. He was sitting and having an extremely interesting conversation with a being from some other planet and maybe even some other galaxy!

He noticed the acceleration begin to die off and there was much beeping and hissing as new status information popped up around them. The ship suddenly began to rotate end for end again to turn and face the direction they'd been moving and Jake was awed at what came into view. There was a massive smooth disk ahead of them that looked to be at least a mile or more across. The disk was spinning on its central axis smoothly and the ship they were in began to slowly rotate to match the spin of the disk. A slot opened in the center of the disk as they approached and Jake realized that the mother ship must be a massive hollow cylinder that was spinning along the axis down its length in order to induce artificial gravity along the inside wall of the cylinder. This was simply one end of it. He wondered how long it might be.

The craft entered through the slot which sealed behind them and Jake was amazed to see that inside was what appeared to be a huge bay full of other small ships and a wide assortment of what looked like storage units and metal cargo containers. It was like a big space dock and shipping yard. Much of the cargo storage appeared to be at the center in front of them in zero gravity while the small ships were kept along the walls of the cylinder in full gravity.

The craft they were in stopped its forward motion and began to settle downward onto the "floor" of the bay and he could feel the force of gravity building. It was hard to think of "floor" at all since looking straight up over his head he could see other ships above him with other aliens walking around them up there on the "ceiling" upside down. He realized that due to the artificial gravity and the shape of the cylinder, he could simply start walking up one side past all of the ships he could see parked up above him and would eventually find himself arriving right back where he started. It would take a while though as it would be several miles of walking to cover the entire circumference.

The ship settled down on the floor and came to a stop. The display winked out and Jake found himself suddenly looking at the inside of the sphere they were riding in again. The slot at the front of the sphere opened and lowered to become a walkway.

As the seat changed shape again to release him, Srythryn stood and waited for Jake to do the same.

Jake felt a little strange at first since the gravity here was slightly more than he was used to on Earth. It took only a moment to adjust though and he moved around toward the front of the ship. Srythryn then went down the walkway and turned to wait for Jake.

As Jake emerged from the shuttle, Srythryn smiled warmly and said, "Welcome aboard the Slirkstrith. This is my ship and I am its captain. I will take you straight to the Matchmakers now so that you may begin the process. You are not immortal until they have your mind stored in their computers and they will be anxious to begin the process immediately."

While he spoke, another of his species drove up in what looked to be a sort of trolley with outward facing seats like you might see at a large airport. The vehicle stopped and waited for them to get aboard and then began driving toward the back wall of the bay.

"Just how big is this ship? Will I be able to find you again?"

"The ship is one of the largest in existence though there are some others similar in size scattered throughout the universe. This portion is the aft cargo bay and dockyard. The ship is a very long cylinder and the rest of it would be several hundred times what you see here in length. There are several generations of my people living out their lives aboard it. You might think of it as a movable city. There were just over thirty-eight thousand individuals at last count but there are always a few with child so the number may already be larger than that. You do not need to be concerned about finding me though. I will come to you when the Resurrectors have completed the process and the Matchmakers have given you your orientation. I will then show you around my ship and we will become better acquainted. I am hoping I may count you among my friends and we may spend a great deal of time together in future."

"That would be wonderful, Srythryn. Thank you," Jake said.

Jake was beginning to feel a bit nervous at what was going to happen to him. They approached the back of the bay and the vehicle came to a stop. Just then a doorway opened and a slender and diminutive alien came through it. To Jake's surprise he saw that it looked almost identical to the aliens he'd seen in movies and on TV that are usually called "greys". He had a very slender body with stick like arms and legs and greyish skin. He had a large head that was wider at the top and very narrow at the bottom and that was dominated by two very large and very black slanted eyes. His nose was nearly flat and barely more than a bump with two small nostrils and his mouth was very small. His fingers were long and delicate looking. The alien looked somehow fragile and breakable.

Jake found himself wondering if all of those fictional aliens he'd seen back on Earth were in fact inspired by some past meeting with these very real ones. It seemed possible. He suddenly found himself wondering just how many other fictional races or creatures might actually be real and were inspired by these Matchmakers flashing images of them into peoples' subconscious dreams while testing for matches like Srythryn had described.

Would the alien who requested his match look familiar too? Srythryn had said most life followed roughly the same shapes and were compatible so his potential partner couldn't be a big blue blob of jelly or a particularly grasping vine or a cloud of excited gas or anything bizarre like that. It had to be a warm blooded mammal with a compatible shape and chemistry.

The grey moved forward and smiled at Jake and spoke into a translator he was carrying in a soft childlike voice that sounded somewhat like simple murmuring.

Again, a perfectly natural sounding human male voice emerged from the device and said, "Welcome. I am Xelzix and I will be your guide through your processing. I listened through your nanos to your conversation with Srythryn as he brought you to us. He's done a wonderful job of introducing you to our universe so we may begin the process immediately and without hesitation. Normally we would ask you once more to choose if you would like to proceed now that you know the purpose we intend for you. However, given the unusual circumstance of your removal from your now destroyed world, we have decided to give you at least one return even should you choose not to proceed with the match. As such we would like to begin your processing without delay as you are mortal and vulnerable until we have your mind map safely stored. I will take you the rest of the way from here. Thank you, Srythryn. Jake, please follow me."

The alien turned and walked back through the doorway.

Jake turned to Srythryn and held out his hand. Srythryn looked at Jake's hand as though wondering what he wanted.

Jake realized it might not be a universal gesture to shake hands so he chuckled and simply said, "Thank you, Srythryn. I will look forward to seeing you again."

The big croc smiled and said, "Not nearly as much as I will I assure you."

Srythryn then turned to walk back into the bay.

Jake turned and followed Xelzix through the doorway into a long hallway. They hadn't gone far before they turned into a side room with a large comfortable looking seat similar to a dentist's chair in the center of it and a great deal of sophisticated looking machinery surrounding it.

"This first part will happen without ceremony as we need to complete it quickly in order to secure the map against any unforeseen incident that might bring about your death. We will be mapping your brain as Srythryn described to you and when the process is complete you will be installed into your new body. Do not be concerned. You will be unconscious during the process. Please be seated."

Jake realized as he sat down and leaned back into the chair that he was about to die. His brain would be destroyed by this process. He began to feel extremely nervous and agitated as his natural survival instinct began to kick in and a small voice in his head was screaming at him to run. This was all insane! It couldn't possibly be real! It was some sort of trick! Get out!

He forced himself to relax as much as possible and tried to trust the alien that was moving around him activating systems.

Similar to what had happened in the shuttle earlier, the seat Jake was in quickly sucked him in and molded itself to him but this time several bands came across at many points over his body including his arms, legs, chin and forehead and molded themselves tightly to him and hardened.

Like a scene from any movie involving alien abduction and unwelcome probing, he was being held absolutely pinned and helpless in a dimly lit room while a slender grey alien with a large head and black eyes moved about him, working the equipment that would soon be invading his body.

As ludicrous as the thought seemed to be he couldn't stop wondering if this might really be just an elaborate trick to get him into this chair to be slowly picked apart and studied. What if this was simply the way they abducted people instead of the magical energy beam that sucks you into the sky? What if the whole scene of the horrendous destruction of Earth was simply a fake projection being displayed on the inner walls of the sphere of the shuttle instead of what was really happening outside it? What if they'd even injected fake stories about the imminent annihilation of life on Earth as part of a ruse to make him believe they were actually rescuing him rather than abducting him? Was that really any more ridiculous than being grabbed by aliens to be dressed up and handed over to a client of some sort of intergalactic dating service?

While his mind wrestled with the absurdity of all of this Xelzix's face came back into Jake's field of view and the alien looked down at him and smiled and murmured while the translation device said, "This is the last time you will look out from your original, mortal self. You will slip quickly into unconsciousness now and the next time you open your eyes and see me you will have already completed the process and will be in your new body. The details of all that will come next will be given to you then and you will be given the choice to proceed with the match or not. You will see me again soon."

Jake wanted to ask the age old question "Will it hurt much?", but before he could try to speak his vision became dark at the edges and shrank down to a tunnel that darkened further and began to drag him down into unconsciousness.

After sixty eight long and empty years of pointless existence, after finally fully realizing and understanding just how he should have lived, and just after being told how full of variety and how wondrously crowded the universe really was and how incredible his own life could be in it, Jake Smith was about to die.

There was a brilliant explosion of light and then everything went black.