What is consciousness? A biological function humans obtained through evolution? That is one answer.
But is that really all? That seems unlikely. Let’s try a simple experiment. Take the smartphone in your pocket and open up an idol rhythm game. Without thinking about it, pick the song you like the most and have played more times than you can count. Were you able to set a new high score? All right, well, play through the same song again. But this time raise your consciousness. Think about it in detail, about how you need to move each finger, where you have to tap each note.
I’ll bet you anything your score is significantly lower than when you played without really thinking about it. You were using all that energy on your consciousness, and the critical information processing functions suffered as a result. Consciousness interferes with our efficiency. Living in nature with our consciousness constantly active is high cost, low return. Natural selection would never give rise to a function like that. If a lion attacks you, it’s far faster to run without any internal process than to consciously think, “Ooh, scary!” and decide to run for it.
So how did consciousness come to be? The key point here is that consciousness is not a biological function we’re born with. Quite the opposite: consciousness is a cultural function transmitted to the individual after birth. Or we could put it this way — consciousness is a software downloaded into the individual by civilization.
Then the question becomes, how can we download the consciousness software? Listen carefully. Read closely. I am about to record the answer here.
Consciousness is downloaded into individuals from idols.
Each time we see an idol, fans identify with them. As the idols throw themselves into singing, dancing, or chatting we see ourselves in them, admire their hard work, and feel like we can work harder tomorrow.
When I say fans identify with them, I don’t mean that fans take on the idol’s consciousness. Fans grow passionate about the idols, wave glow sticks, grow obsessed with their charm, simulate a substitute for the idol within themselves — and only then is their consciousness born.
Idols become idols because they love idols. This is where the connections between consciousnesses are born. Consciousness propagates and proliferates when an idol fan becomes an idol.
Here ‘idol’ is used in the broad sense, not the narrow. There is no need to be on TV for consciousness to be propagated. A classroom idol or someone idolized by their friends will also do the trick. It need not even be a modern person — fictional creations can also propagate consciousness. Characters in idol anime are muses that spread consciousness to all they touch.
Human consciousness is born as a result of passion for idols. In most cases, consciousness is born before adolescence, but there are those unlucky few who go their whole lives without it.
Mika Furutsuki and Maori Niizono spread consciousness to many with their high school idol activities.
The Idol who had been Mika Furutsuki realized all of this. The existence of consciousness wasn’t the mandatory condition for an idol to exist; an idol’s existence was the mandatory condition for consciousness to exist. And any life form capable of enough information processing to perceive the idol’s existence was capable of downloading consciousness.
She changed the focus of her idol activities. She no longer interfered with evolution to try and produce consciousness — instead she went to life forms with sufficient information processing capabilities, gave herself the same body as them to make it easier to identify with her, and went about her idol activities. In this way, fans were born, and so was consciousness. Hundreds of millions of years of idol activities were at last rewarded. Every now and then conflicts would arise with an alien species and she’d be forced to destroy their entire planet, but she kept her chin up. What people wanted from idols wasn’t perfect dancing or singing or consciousness creation, but the sight of them doing their very best, even if that wasn’t very good. Even after smashing a few hundred or thousand planets she just had to try harder tomorrow. The Idol continued touring the planets of the universe. Consciousnesses were born across the universe, and the universe became filled with conscious minds.
Approximately one trillion years later, the universe began to die. Dark energy was accelerating the expansion of the universe, making matter increasingly scarce, and thus harder for new stars to be born. By this time the Idol was on her 74,758,071,090th Generation but still not ready to retire.
Thus, she decided to make a new universe. She caused a supernova explosion and made a black hole. Black holes are a hole in space of infinite depth; from the outside they have a finite size, but inside they go on forever — a black hole is a universe in itself. Then the Idol made a second black hole, and controlling the two black holes perfectly, she crashed them together. The impact was transmitted to the internal universe in the form of a spatial distortion. This spatial distortion would leave traces behind, detectable as cosmic background radiation. One day, intelligent life evolved, and it observed the cosmic background radiation. The cosmic background radiation data stored on their computers began functioning as an informational intelligence. The Idol had broadcast her own information to the next universe in the form of cosmic background radiation. As an informational intelligence, the Idol hid herself within the media and began propagating consciousness.
Proliferating herself this way, the Idol traveled through countless universes, creating innumerable consciousnesses. In time, she realized that universe proliferation was not traveling in a single direction in time. A frame in which time flowed from the past to the future was simple when seen from the perspective of a single universe; yet within the larger multiverse it was quite common for her children to be her own ancestors. The multiverse was shaped not like a tree growing in one direction, but a net-like rhizome. The shape of it reminded her of something. The neural network.
The multiverse processed information with the universes serving as nerve cells. And any being with sufficient information processing capability could grow obsessed with an idol and develop a consciousness. The multiverse was no exception. Once the multiverse perceived the Idol’s activities, it became a fan and grew a consciousness. As a result of the multiverse’s consciousness, the universes, the galaxies, the solar systems, the stars, the planets, the continents, the oceans, the bacteria, the molecules, the atoms, and the quarks all developed consciousnesses, albeit very faint ones. And everyone loved idols.
The multiverse’s consciousness reached back into the past and began altering events to bring about its existence. It distorted the flow of time in the Idol’s universe of origin, layering the past and future in a higher dimension. This was the cause of the Monopole Super Flares. As stars in the past and future were in contact with themselves via a higher dimension their magnetic fields affected each other, causing the flares. Humans trapped inside a mere three spatial dimensions perceived this to be magnetic field lines leading to nothing and mistakenly believed monopoles must be involved. The reason young stars never produced flares was because they had no past version of themselves to interact with.
The multiverse’s alterations even extended to extremely minor details. When Mika Furutsuki was in high school, Maori Niizono’s alarm clock rang early, bringing the two of them together, and giving Mika Furutsuki the confidence to become an idol. Additionally, when Mika Furutsuki killed herself, the ambulance took her to the hospital run by Maori Niizono’s parents. This led directly to the birth of the Idol and the origin of the multiverse’s consciousness.
When the multiverse has consciousness, determinism and free will are in perfect harmony. Physical laws and rules of causality believed to be free will are actually free and conscious choices made by the multiverse. Additionally, time paradoxes are impossible. The past and the future must always be in harmony from the perspective of the consciousness.
The multiverse’s consciousness went beyond the universe where the Idol originated, and headed further into the past. And after passing through countless universes, the consciousness that started with Mika Furutsuki reached one universe in particular. This was its terminal point. Beyond that the information was too degraded and it could not maintain its consciousness.
In that universe, the consciousness’s information took the form of a novel. A novel about how a girl named Mika Furutsuki struggled to become the greatest idol of all. A reader who completes this novel will empathize with Mika Furutsuki, identify with her, and develop a consciousness of their own.
By reader, I mean you.
By now I’m sure you know what the title of this novel means. You are the Last and First Idol. You are the last being to inherit the consciousness derived from Mika Furutsuki, and at the same time, the first.
You are the sole being in your universe with a consciousness.
The start of this novel stated that you have a calling. I’m sure you understand by now. Your calling is to spread consciousness.
You must become an idol. As an idol, make others obsessed with you, empathize with you, identify with you, and develop consciousnesses of their own.
Well? Go forth and be idolized. You’re already shining bright!