Apocalypse Watch

There was no place. There was no time. A human observer would have recognized nothing here : no mass, no energy, or force. There was only a rolling, random froth whose fragmented geometry constantly changed. Even causality was a foolish dream.

The orderly spacetime with which humans were familiar was suffused with vacuum energy, out of which virtual particles, electrons and quarks would fizz into existence and then scatter or annihilate, their brief walks on the stage governed by quantum uncertainty. In this extraordinary place whole universe bubbled out of froth, to expand and then to dissipate, or to collapse in a despairing flare.

The chaotic cavalcade of possibilities, this place of non-being where whole universes clustered in reefs of foamy spindrift, was suffused by a light beyond light. But even in this cauldron of strangeness there was life. Even here there was mind.

Call them monads.