As I was watching one of the PBS Space Time videos about the end of the Universe I pondered what it would be like to be present that far in the future at those timescales. Imagine that somehow we transfer our consciousness into a different, more durable, substrate which can endure much longer than our biological bodies and that can be altered to adapt to changing cosmological circumstances.

The substrate, on which our consciousness would run, would continue to exist in the Universe. As the Universe continues to expand and runs out of energy, whatever process keeps us going will need to scavenge energy from further and further away. Signals between the future analog of our neurons would need to travel farther and farther in order to reach the next “neuron” to trigger a follow-on signal. These patterns of firings are what thoughts are. As the expansion continues… a mind with this setup would perceive the Universe around it “speed up”… while an external observer would see this mind “slow down” in its ability to react. As it takes longer and longer for this mind to have a “thought,” the end would never come, Zeno’s Paradox-style. The last thought would last forever O_O.