Very Old, and Very Tired - A Story of Who We May Yet Meet at the End of Days

See that man there, the one walking beneath the empty limbs of what might be
a winter-blasted forest?

He doesn't flee anything. He's old, he's seen many things, and few of them
engender fear in him. Especially not here, not now.

He instead walks toward something. Something, some feeling, an urge that
has bothered him lately.

And by lately, I mean, for all of this particular lifetime. Since his birth
on this planet around this dying sun, he has his whole life felt, heard...

An urge. No, a song. One of regret, and perhaps, exhaustion.

The universe is dying, you see. And that man there, the one walking through
trees that will see no spring?

He is the last being of consciousness left in the universe. For this is the last
star yet burning, and the last planet left to feel its rays.

The people of his world left, decades ago, when their oracles
told them that the sun was in its last great cycle. It was the most grand of
gestures; the entirety of the planet, every last soul, gathered themselves
and their energies, and built the greatships necessary to evacuate the
masses.

Unlike some other worlds, there were few holdouts. Watching the stars wink out,
one by one, focused the attention of all but the most hardened. Survival
instincts eventually kicked in.

When the last boat lifted, and the last greatship boosted beyond the gravity
field, there were only a bare handful, perhaps thousands, left of a population
that had been verging on a billion. Not a large world, in the old measure,
but not a small one, either. The politicians were justifiably proud of
themselves.

Until their oracles spoke prophecy, data, again. When the
data revealed the gaping emptiness of the universe after the stars winked
away, the politicians wept, and beat their breasts in collective, and demanded
that the oracles return them all to their homes.

Unfortunately, the technology of their greatships required a gravity well to
boost from. So the last of the Flying Dutchmen sailed as a fleet
into the blackness, with a collection of politicians and disgraced
astrophysicists as figureheads, wired to the front of their ships.

Somewhere around the time the last of their reaction mass fluttered from their
gasping engines, their old sun entered its last major fluctuation period. The
waves of heat and energy plastered the old planet.

There were no more growing seasons. And only the creatures of the deep water,
and the caves, survived the radiation storms.

The less-old man watched and monitored from a cave he had moved himself to
as soon as the greatships left. He wasn't an oracle, but in times past he
had worked as a scientist. And he'd known all too well what the result of
staying on the ground would be.

But the empty starfields, and the basic engineering of the greatships, had
harmonized with the song of regrets in the back of his mind. And he'd chosen
the less sure path.

And the caves. There was no question about the type of star, and how it would
die. There had been far too many of them to study over the past centuries. The
oracles, before the madness of the end took over, were well studied. So
he took to his cave, and tried not to think about the others, the ones who'd
stayed, but didn't seek the shelter of the caves.

And when the radiation poisoned survivors of the first wave began attempting
the shelter of the caves at last, the few yet left alive were far too
delusional to survive the lack of food, now that there were no more plants
to grow.

But eventually, the fluctuating stage passed, and the now-old man could come
out of his cave.

He wanted to watch the end. The timing was well known. There would be only
just enough time to witness. No need to worry about radiation poisoning.

Not when you'll die, one way or another, so very very soon.

The song was a memory. A chorus of old lives and memories, stretching perhaps
back to the beginning of things.

As a younger, more cynical man, he might perhaps have sought some bit of
psychological assistance for this affliction. Hearing voices is rarely
considered a rewarding pastime, in civilized times.

Alas, even his computers could no longer help him. Not that he'd have asked.
He was well familiar with the hum, the ever present babbling. That noise
was part of him, now and ever.

He just didn't pay close attention to them. Not if he wanted to get anything
done. And right now, what he wanted to get done was find a nice place to set
a fire, and spend the night.

Preferably, with a good view. You know, sparks overhead, maybe a nice beach
with surf booming below. Like that.

He'd chosen his path well. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a collection
of sailors stretching back eons thrilled to the sight of black cliffs
and rolling surf. Gathering tree limbs for firewood along those
cliffs was a habit familiar to many lifetimes.

Long back in the queue of memories, admittedly. It had been eons of eons
since firewood was anything other than an affectation, in any part of the
universe. But the habits of the ancients surged to the fore; when his mind
searched through the memories, the knowledge was there.

It always had been, when he'd needed knowledge and assurance.

Striking the fire alight, flint on steel, was another old feeling new again
beneath the red of the dying sun. He blew the faint spark to life amidst
shavings and old dry bark, and the oldest of friendly enemies roared to life
beneath his breath.

He sat on a log, pulled a backpack loose from his shoulders. Among other
things, it contained a six pack of beer, tobacco and a pipe. In a distant
part of the universe, on a planet the oracles had long ago dismissed as the
home of humanity in the face of so many more interesting theories, both items
marked stages of civilization, the beginning, and the beginning of the
industrial and technological reach for the stars.

In his other life, the old one had never much had the time to really dig in
to the reasoning the oracles used to dismiss that long-gone planet as
humanity's cradle. But when he popped the wire and ceramic stopper loose from
the glass bottle, and puffed his pipe alight, a gentle sigh across lifetimes
accompanied the smoke drifting aloft, and the sip of fermented beverage. And
the debates he'd followed at laughing remove dissolved in the contentment
of fire and sunset and a good walk now finished.

The beer and the pipe were soon enough gone; he drifted, in and out of sleep,
there where the only light now, with the moon in its new phase, was from
the fire. The spark rising on the wind played against a black screen, no
starlight.

Midnight came, and with it, something unexpected. A figure sat down across
from him, cloaked and hooded. Tall, almost his height, skinny beneath the
covering robes.

The old man pondered the darkness, wondered what face his interlocutor wore
beneath its cowl. Working up the energy to ask was difficult. But
eventually, he sat up, pushed himself into something like a vertical seat.

And asked, "Does this mean I need to make some coffee? I don't have all that
much, I was saving it for tomorrow morning, really."

"I apologize for interrupting your nap," the figure responded. A neutral
vocal range, neither tenor nor alto.

"If you've a good story to share, I'll not begrudge you." He set about
putting a kettle together, and stirring up the fire. There was enough and
more than enough wood; he'd spend some time tomorrow building up the burn
pile.

The figure gestured at the kettle. The fingers waving at the end of the
hand reminded the old man of someone...

His memories, all of them back to the beginning, thrilled in response to
the shape of those fingers. They all of them remembered someone whose hands
resembled those of the stranger. The old man ignored the feeling though.

He'd practiced not thinking about the person that the figure's hands reminded
him of. Even here, and now, there was no mileage to be had going down that
road. She'd made her decisions, and he'd made damned sure that there was no
depression for him to fall into as a result.

Practice, and plenty of other things to do. And yes, family of his own.

Every memory calling in his mind seemed to have some version of this loss.
Male, female, young old didn't matter. There was always a person missing, a
love not love, friend moved on, aggravating pain in the ass who dropped off
the face of the earth, gambling partner who quit showing up for the Vegas trips.

Some friend whose loss always seemed to leave a hole in the ether that the
past lives spent the rest of time working around.

"And here we are, at the end of days. Drinking coffee." He sipped from the
cup, watching the steam rise to obscure the hooded figure across the fire.
"I don't believe you're here, though. I think you're just a figment of
an old, tired brain's imagination."

His companion accepted this without comment, focusing on holding the cup
in companionable silence.

"If you're not a figment, there's a good chance you've chosen an unfortunate
form to visit me in. She died many years ago, before the greatships left."

The figure opposite passed the cup within the hood. He listened closely for
a sound of sipping, but there was only the crackle of the fire. The hand
withdrew an empty cup, then set it aside.

His companion crossed arms beneath the robe, leaving only the
image of Death, reclining against a rock.

A dim memory bubbled up through the lifeline to the top of the old man's mind.
"Aren't I supposed to offer you a game of some sort? Maybe play for a bit more
time? There are places where you're supposed to be amenable to persuasion."

The figure seemed to sigh. Then it pulled the hood free, and the old man
was staring into his own face. Younger, maybe? No, just more full, less
stressed and drawn against the past few years of loneliness. This Death image
stretched his hands to each side, wide and wider. Then he said to himself,
"Look. What you say might well have been true, in other times and other places.
But here, where even the stars have passed beyond ken?"

"Even you're dying, then?"

"Aren't I you? And you, me? Of course we're dying. As is our mother. This is
the end of things. And it is our turn."

"Don't we need to watch? Shouldn't our mother, this universe, have someone
to bear witness?" The chorus within thrilled to this. They had built, lifetime
by lifetime, one small deed after another, to something.

To be here, and know that some small amount of that work was left yet to
do... unified the memories, the good and the bad and the indifferent.

His other self, Death, forever companion, reached out to grasp his shoulders,
and turned him then to face the rising sun. "Look, and see."

The old red orb cleared the horizon. For the last time. As the hands released
his shoulders, the red sun grew and grew... long minutes passed as the wave
of energy grew to encompass all.

And the last sun grasped the last witness, and the universe passed on.