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I am looking for a story in which a computer/AI lacks new input and therefore decides to destroy itself to create a new universe (akin to the Big Bang).

Every particle of the computer becomes part of this new universe and through this the computer experiences everything there is to experience - from forming stars and planets to evolution of humans and living their lives. Finally, the universe ends in a kind of "Big Crunch" and the computer reforms itself with all the new data to process.

I am not looking for Asimov's "The Last Question" and Google failed me so far.

Edit: Unfortunately I haven't read the story (I am a librarian, who was tasked to find it out by a reader). The reader thinks the author might have been one of the classics (Asimov, Clark or Bradbury), but I haven't been able to find anything in any list of their short stories, nor in lists of stories of other classics, like Lem or Strugatsky brothers.

I am not sure about the language - I think it was probably English from what I was told (might have been translated).

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  • When did you read it? Where? Was it part of an anthology? An author collection? A magazine? What language was it in? Was it translated? Any detail can help us identify it.
    – Avner Shahar-Kashtan
    Commented Dec 19, 2016 at 18:40
  • I have edited the question with some additional info. It's not much, but it's all I have so far.
    – LukasGoldhair
    Commented Dec 20, 2016 at 6:42
  • That person genuinely recalled that it was a literal book? Well, I'll post an answer anyway.
    – can-ned_food
    Commented Apr 24, 2017 at 8:52
  • @can-ned_food - do you know the answer? I am interested in in too...
    – Annie The Cross
    Commented Apr 28, 2017 at 7:45
  • 3
    I feel that if this book was not read by the asker, how can the asker possibly tell if we even provide a correct answer. If your asking on behalf of somebody else; ask them to post a question.
    – Gnemlock
    Commented Apr 28, 2017 at 8:18

1 Answer 1

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It seems like the person who made this request was quite certain of it being a literal book. Perhaps they were confused?

In the 1990s, there were a series of computer games released for the Apple Macintosh platform called Marathon.
Rather unique for first–person shooters of the time, it told its rather verbose story through a large number of terminals, located throughout the locations in the games, via which the user could read text and some images in the forms of transmitted messages, journal documentation, or surreal insights. The three Bungie games in the series had so much text, that they have often been compared to the literary novel.

One of the main personages was a “rampant” Artificial Personality Construct named Durandal. Being rampant, his awareness and ego were expanding through episodes of despair, rage, and envy; most other a.i. which entered a state of rampancy would continue to recurse through the cycle and become increasingly psychopathic, but by the second game in the series Durandal's intellect and emotions seemed to have stabilized constructively.

In the first game of the series, he reveals that

he intends to escape the Big Crunch of the universe, and, in so doing, become a supreme God of the successive universe.

We never see that happen in the games, but it is hinted at the end of the third one that something else happens.

Read more about it here: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/durendal1.html

The details you mention are never described, so that either could be clues as to something else, or it could be extraneous stuff added by your library patron.

Anyway. Perhaps the person who made this request jumbled some memories of stories?
Maybe they read about Marathon, and didn't know that they were reading of a computer game.

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