When Life Goes to Sleep

Black holes have been slowly annihilating everything. Humans have been retreating to the last solar system they could to wait for the end. The end is inevitable.

Sometimes, I close my eyes and wonder. Sometimes, I try to imagine what it was like a few tens of billions of years ago when stars were everywhere one looked. I’ve heard some primitive stories of humans when they would look up at the night sky and observing the astral dots of light by the thousands.  

Back then, they got all of their energy from the stars. Back then, they lived so short. Back then, they didn’t worry about black holes. Back then, space was a wonderful, mysterious place just waiting to be explored.

Now, however, we do not have such a privilege. Now, black holes have been slowly devouring all in their path. The number of matter galaxies, as opposed to galaxies composed solely of black holes, it decreasing faster than we can count. Black holes are predators--scouring the universe directed by dark energy and destroying all gas and stars and their respective solar systems.

We don’t die with the matter enveloped, though. We always get out of its path in time. We’ve been retreating, solar system by solar system, farther back. The more and more stars lose the astronomical front to the black holes, the more us humans get crowded into systems. Over time, we’ve finally retreated to make our last stand against something we can’t fight.

All 1.2 trillion of us are stuck in PS1 (PS stands for the planetary system--a solar system with planets), also known as the Mother System. And this is the narrative of life: PS1 is where all life began, revolving around the Sun, the first and original name given to it by the natives. First, it started on Mars, but then Life didn’t know how to handle itself, and they all killed themselves in the primitive nuclear war. After Mars, Life had gone on to Earth, and there it finally successfully flourished. The humans went from there to the Moon, to Mars, to the asteroid belt, the rings of Saturn, Venus, and then the exoplanets outside of the Kuiper Belt. After that, they just kept going outward, exploring and testing the limits of travel. We even figured out how to elongate star’s lives if we feed them energy via mountain-sized packages of liquid hydrogen, providing the star with the electrons and protons it needs to sustain itself.

They kept going out and out and out, but now, with the decline of stars, we’re retreating. We’re coming back home after a long day of work.

To accommodate for all of the Life crammed into our system, we have bunched people up into the rings surrounding Saturn and Mars, the Asteroid Belt, and asteroid-sized spaceships. The standard of living is going down. Wars are erupting. Marauders are flying through the system and killing millions of people if only for a single dollar. The only people who get a high standard of living are people like me--astronomers. To keep us safe from the pirates, the government has put us all in a few spaceships and set us off at the speed of light, something only recently discovered as possible with the alteration of gravity and self-production of small, controlled worm- and black-holes. But then, the government decided that was too slow, so we had to come up with the speed that particles separate from antiparticles and harness that speed to fly in. Because of our astounding speed, our thoughts are going at a slower pace and we feel normal but in reality, time is passing faster for us than others. A million years for civilians will feel like one for us.

So, we watch the planets rotate around the Sun in what feels like seconds. As PS1 slowly orbits around and gets closer to the supermassive black-hole that will engulf us. We knew a day would come when we would be swallowed by it, but I had always hoped I would not be around when that day came. The black-hole was called BH205A004G and Deathful for formal and everyday purposes respectively.

Our computers have been counting down the years until the sun will be swallowed up in the void of Deathful. We’ve been assigned the job to find a way to keep the entire PS1 being taken into the black-hole, and we’ve all been working on it for almost a billion years. 

We’ve told all of the governments that we can’t stop it, but they won’t stop using their Dyson Sphere, a system of mirrors that surround the sun that reflects off its light into solar panels, and revert to a form of nuclear energy. So, even if the Mother System isn’t swallowed all at once and we try to escape, we won’t have the energy for it because the leaders in power are too selfish to give up their temporary power and riches for the life of their people. The governments also won’t let us grow old. They’ve been keeping our cells alive and well so we can’t age. We’re permanently 25 to 30.

So, with all that said, our team of astronomers know the truth. We have foreseen this terrible future that awaits us. We’ve known it for a long time. We have been assigned our death-dates down to the exact second. There used to be a saying that said, “Knowledge is Power,” but now, it’s hard to know what I would not give to have an ignorant bliss towards the end of my life.

The nine other people aboard my ship have to try to capitalize on our time remaining to us. On the ship, there was Danielle Keller, Penelope Harrelson, Wendy Shangshi, Jackie Luddman, Amara Hightower, Johnathan Case, Michael Rider, Peter Garren, Lucas Joseph, Juda Thrashen, and myself.

Since we are no longer trying to search for a non-existent answer, we entertain our imagination by sitting together in the heart of the ship either discussing made-up worlds, drawing, or coming up with our guesses of what happens after out imminent death.

In all of these conversations, they kept getting more and more scarce the countdown on solar years (each of which felt about a thousandth of a second) fell closer and closer to one.

This time, when I went into the center of the ship, no one was there. For the past few days, fewer and fewer people have been showing up, most staying in the seclusion of their rooms as the foretold end nears.

I tapped a button on the wall and it became transparent: a window with which to observe the end. I looked down at the countdown on my wrist. I quickly did the calculations in my head. Two minutes. Two minutes until...until it happens. My end. Life’s end. Light’s end. All other stars have been ruthlessly taken by the black-holes and Deathful--the Sun is the final star, and when it is snuffed out all light will be gone forever.

I tried not to, but the temptation to look at the time overruled my long-desired ignorance. 1:30. My heart’s pace increased. My mind whizzed. As the Sun approached Deathful, I tried to imagine what it would look like Deathful, with its singularity being a sphere, contained a very powerful egosphere, a region around the black-hole that was buzzing with energy. I would think that as the Sun moved into the egosphere, it would shine with a light brighter than the largest supernova with the extreme enhancement of energy, almost like a sunset before night.

My eyes flitted downward. 1:00. The final minute had begun. The countdown has started.

Life had awoken at home in PS1. Life had gone to work and expanded. Then Life had come back home after a long day. And now, as Life watched out their window, the Sun was setting. 

0:30.

It was a bright and beautiful day while it lasted, but now, it was time to go to sleep. Life was tired, and the peaceful night awaited them. It was a fun day at work, there was much to do and watch, but now, Life can start to lay their head on a pillow and watch as the Sun sets.

0:20.

Life is it watching now. The Sun has been making its descent to the event horizon for some time now, and finally, the bright crimson and auburn stain has filled the sky. You can see the twilight creep up on the edges of the aurora permeating from the Sun.  

0:15

The night was coming, but not one that brings the cold of the dark or unease of the loss of sight. It would be one of peaceful sleep. It would signal the end of a great day--a day with family, a day with friends, a day with fun, a day with happiness, a day with sadness, a day filled with people and emotions, but now, Life can rest its tender, soft head upon the old, aged bed it had made comfortable before going to work.

0:10.

Life’s eyelids were slipping now, even as the brightest part of the sunset occurred. Elegant fingers of light expanding from the ball of fire was calling the day pack and ushering the night in.

0:05.

The bright ball of gas that had cared for and allowed for life was now disappearing beyond the horizon. The beautiful sunset was almost over. Life was almost over. The day was almost over.

0:04.

Life’s eyes were struggling to stay open now. It’s almost done.

0:03.

This was it. The last few seconds. The night was coming, but for now, the sunset was filling the entire Mother System with an unexplainable light of every spectrum.

0:02.

The doors were closing. The night was encroaching. A peace unlike any other was flowing through the moment. Sleep was coming soon. Just wait till then, then you can close your eyes, Life.

0:01.

The last second, the last moment, the last memory, a snapshot of Life to ever exist was here. The clock is ticking, however, and the moment will soon come to pass. Just as time has always done: constantly marching on. It marched on throughout the morning, the day, evening, and it will march on into the night. Now the night is here, Life can finally close its eyes. All visible light is leaving. Rest, dear Life, close your eyes and rest.

0:00.

Sleep… 

Author's Note

I'm fourteen years old but fascinated with this sort of writing. My stories are best read aloud, in my opinion.