HOME ............................BACK to 'Space'

 

ASIMOV’S summarized version of his own short story:

The Last Question

'The Last Question traces trillions of years of history beginning in 2061 when, with the aid of Multivac (now spread out over many square kilometres), all the power utilizing machinery of the Earth has been hooked up directly to the Sun. All power is free as long as the Sun lasts.

Two of Multivac's technicians, half-drunk, are disturbed that energy will be available only as long as the Sun lasts. They ask Multivac if there is any way of turning the Sun back on once it runs down; that is, if there is any way of massively decreasing the entropy of the universe. Multivac replies: 'Insufficient data for meaningful answer.'

Centuries later, interstellar travel is a reality and the expanding population of humanity is spreading rapidly to planets on other stars. Each planet has a huge 'planet­ary ac' which guides its economy and solves its problems. On each ship is a Microvac, a much-miniaturized computer that is, in itself, far more advanced than the ancient Multivac with which the story opened.

One family on an interstellar spaceship asks the same question of Microvac and gets the same answer: 'Insufficient data for meaning­ful answer'. Over and over again that ques­tion is going to be asked, with the same answer.

Millions of years later, mankind has spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy. Men are now immortal and are looking outward to the colonization of other galaxies. There is now a single 'galactic ac' for all mankind. It is on a world of its own, and each man can reach it through an 'ac contact' he owns. The galactic ac has long since passed beyond any human control, however indirect. Each generation of computers is capable of spending vast periods of time painstakingly designing a computer better than itself, of gathering the raw materials through robots it controlled, and of building the better computer to replace itself. And the better computer promptly undertook the long task of designing a still better one. But even galactic ac could not explain how entropy might be massively decreased.

Hundreds of millions of years later, mankind has spread through all the galaxies and no longer hasphysical bodies. Men consisted of radiating energy which somehow represented their identity and personality. The ‘universal ac‘ is a two foot globe, difficult to see. Much of it does not exist in space at all, but in a multi-dimensional 'hyperspace'.

The influence of the universal ac spread out everywhere and no physical device of any kind is needed to reach it. It intercepts the personal energies of all mankind and answers all questions wherever the individual questioner may be located.  Even the speed of light is no barrier, for in hyperspace (whatever that is) the rigidities of relativistic space-time do not apply. And, even so, it cannot answer the question.

Billions of additional years pass, and mankind has lost all individual identity. It is a single personality, the fusion of trillions of trillions of human beings, all of which it felt within itself.  This fusion of man filled the universe from end to end, but nevertheless it still depended upon the gradually thinning energy supplies of dying stars. The computer had now become 'cosmic ac' and none of it was ordinary space. It was entirely in hyperspace which meant that it was nowhere, yet everywhere, for   hyperspace touched space at every point. And with the stars dying, man still asked if entropy might decreased and there was still no answer.

Trillions of years later, the last stars were fading out and the ultimate heat death was coming upon the universe. Little by little man fused with the computer which was now simply ac—changeless, eternal, omnipresent and omniscient—yet not quite omniscient, for as the last bit of man was about to fuse with ac, it asked once more that old, old question and even now ac could not answer.

And then comes the last scene of all, which goes like this.

“Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even ac existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never answered from the time a half-drunken technician ten trillion years before had asked it of a computer that was to ac far less than was a man to Man. All other questions had been answered, and until this last question was answered also, ac might not release his consciousness. All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collec­ted. But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships. A timeless interval was spent in doing that. And it came to pass that ac learned, at last, how to reverse the direction of entropy flow. But there was now no man to whom ac might give the answer of the last question. No matter. The answer by demonstration would take care of that, too. For another timeless interval, ac thought how best to do this. Carefully, ac organized the programme.

"The consciousness of ac encompassed all ot what jiad once been a universe and brooded over what was now chaos. Step by step, it must be done.

"And ac said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light."

--------- // ----------