A note from the author.

A few days ago my girlfriend complained -again- about the open ending of one of my stories. So, I wrote this short story about the end of all things. It is also my first text in English, because the end would not have the same meaning in my native tongue. There’s a better version of this same idea, called «The last question», by Isaac Asimov. This is, also, a little bit of homage to that great text.

The end

The space was flickering with the light of the stretched dust cloud, as it fell into the heart of the black hole. The last vapor of the Universe, dying… slowly.  A large highway of light, almost one light year long. The dust particles, accelerated by the gravity pull of the massive black hole, where burning by the friction between them. The variations of that light, like those of a small flame in the wind, rippled across the emptiness.

I looked as the last fraction of the last galaxy fell into the darkness. The Universe got dim at first and, then, pure black. There was nothing else except for me and the gravitational singularity that ate the Cosmos.

I floated there, in the void, hell knows for how long. Images of my centuries of existence where played by my memory: the people I’ve knew, the planets where I stayed, the wonders I’ve witnessed.

The humans knew that I was going to be the last thing to disappear. They built me to endure the end of the Universe and be the only thing that remained. They explained to me that they were incapable to survive the end of all things, so they built me, as a way to tell the entropy: you will not win. We refuse to let you win. We’ll build something that you cannot destroy. At least, not easily.

So here I am. The ultimate expression of human stubbornness. Condemned to exist for millennia, long after everything else had perished.

I’m observing the black hole die, slowly, evaporating in an imperceptible cloud of Hawkins’s radiation. Soon, the singularity will disappear to.

And so it does, in time. Millions of years have passed. The emptiness gets infinitely cold. All radiation and energy falls below any perceptible amount.

The Universe has ended. Is time to destroy myself. But, before that, I have to fulfill my propose.

I open the valves and let a cloud of hydrogen fill the space around me, because I need some kind of air around me for the sound to exist. Then, I turn the volume up and play the last song in a dying universe.

It’s a new composition, made in collaboration by hundreds of humans. It’s a combination of classical music, rock, opera and military anthem.

It is called “Fuck the end”.