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Minds, not bodies! The immortal bodies remained back on the planets, in suspension over the eons. Sometimes they roused for material activity but that was growing rarer. Few new individuals were coming into existence to join the incredibly mighty throng, but what matter? There was little room in the Universe for new individuals.

When the reader encounters Zee Prime, it is revealed that the Universal AC has discovered a way to detach a person’s mind from their body. As the universe grows in complexity, individuality is trivialized for the sake of mass technological achievement. This phenomenon suggests that technology holds the power to dehumanize humanity. What may be considered a technological triumph can simultaneously constitute a loss for individual human beings.

If the stars must someday die, at least some could yet be built.

Zee Prime is unsettled by the discovery that the Sun has reached the end of its life. He is saddened to hear of this loss and is presumably disturbed by its implication—namely, that all stars must die and humanity therefore must one day meet its end. Showcasing a refusal to accept entropy and humanity's inevitable decline, Zee Prime mournfully begins crafting his own stars in a desperate attempt to preserve humanity's survival.

One by one Man fused with AC, each physical body losing its mental identity in a manner that was somehow not a loss but a gain.

Toward the end of humanity's existence, human minds morph into a single entity which eventually dissolves into AC. The loss of individual identities is concerning, and indicates the unapologetic erasure of humanity for the sake of technological progress and innovation. Though the fusion of Man and AC may be a technological "gain," it also completely strips humanity of its individualism. 

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.

After eons of data collection, AC finally finds an answer to the question that humanity first posed trillions of years before. However, AC cannot share its discovery with humanity, as the human race has already gone extinct. This underscores the unsettling reality that technology possesses the potential to outlast us. AC is unfazed by humanity's absence; it now knows how to recreate the entire universe and, by proxy, revive the human race, demonstrating its unlimited, omnipotent power.

Next section Entropy and the Fate of the Human Race

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