Story 1: Staring into The Abyss
Great. Black. Unending darkness. It stared me straight in the eye. It didn't like me... not yet anyways. Was it an it? A she? A he? I stare at my feet. A pale reflected glow - gone in the blink of an eye. I don't exist. When did I ever exist? Am I everything? ... No. ... That is too optimistic. "Why do I exist?" ... Nothing. ... Still nothing yet. Giving up, I embrace the darkness. Statis. Entropy. Decay. Is this death? Am I in hell? No. That is too optimistic. ... This is my mind. This is my soul. It is emptiness incarnate. ... The darkness responds(!). "I have what you seek." I answer timidly, "what do I seek?" Darkness responds bluntly "the inside of an onion." Me: "what do you mean?" Darkness: "you pathetic mortal. You are an onion. You peel away all the outside, You look into what is left, You kill everything inside, And you are left with emptiness. Your creations turn to dust. Your hopes are futile. But I like you..." Me: "--- hm?" Darkness: "despite yourselves, you hunger, You seek that which you cannot have, and will never have, You build monuments that will turn to dust, Dreams that will die with the last generation to hear a prophets words, Hopes that will go unfulfilled for generations. Yearnings that are never satisfied... Yet here we are - an earth filled with statues. A bunch of garbage in space, floating around, trying to fill an impossible hole in your soul. You are darkness itself! Trying to find its own emptiness. You defy your fate, You seek the impossible, and never stop trying. You want perfection, and you want imperfection. Tombs - every one of you will die! But still - you paint beautiful works of art, Create wonderful songs, Experience emotions, And reproduce, despite knowing your inevitable fate! You come from nothing, and you go to nothing - Yet in between, you create something remarkable. Despite yourselves, and your fate. That is admirable." Me: "so I am an onion, doomed to emptiness -" Darkness interrupting: "precisely - you are building all these layers, each one larger, And more intricate, And more interesting, Than the last. It will never end, until you breathe your last breath. After a point in your life, you will start to see the layers peel back one by one. But until that point, you've got a lot of possibilities for your canvas in life. You're limited by your money, your family, and above all your genes. But you can still do quite a bit with how little you have." Me: "what should I do with this knowledge?" Darkness: "whatever you want. That's the great thing about you mortals, you want to do "right" by each other. I love it. You fill the void with warmth. It will die someday, but for a brief moment, Everyone has a little warmth - a campfire in eternal winter." Me: "does this mean I will live forever? Or see my friends and family again?" Darkness: "alas - this is why you are admirable. You are a mortal. They are gone. And you will be too. Some of your kind say to reflect on this often, In the hopes you will do better by others. Some others of your kind avoid this. They hope that pretending otherwise will make it so. I am the darkness. I know infinity. I am infinity and nothing. Your life has a beginning, and you accept the gift of consciousness Like how one of your radios receives a signal from a station. Eventually, the parts get older, and the signal starts to fade. At some point it will get off the air, and the radio will break. But that radio can be a part of some really great parties. It can experience a lot of history and big moments. The radio is beautiful when it's a good quality, and makes someone happy. Make your life like that radio... Pick up the best frequency, Play your music louder than anyone else, Play a variety to keep your audience engaged. Turn off every now and then. Repair your parts and take care of yourself! Understand that at some point, you will break, And you will go in the trash. It doesn't mean you weren't important. It just means your time is up, And it's time to come home. To the darkness, your home. A mortal spark in a sea of infinity."
29 days until this story is permanently destroyed and deleted forever.
Story 2: Der Götterdämmerung des Menschheit und Erde
The year is 23,596 HE (Human Era). We've made great advances, and have ascended the stars. Humanity escaped it's jail and moved beyond the world it grew up on... Thank goodness too - the supernova of the mega-star Galacticus in the year 22,596 wiped out the Earth's capacity for life, and caused a chain reaction with the sun that caused a premature expansion. Solar system Sol Originalis is no more... But less than a hundred thousand died, thanks to movements to other worlds and systems. We now have supernovae forecasts! We know when it will rain, so to speak... Some died on the world known as Earth Domus. These were the ones who wanted to die with their ancestors. Fools. But brave. Yet now we are facing their fate all the same... In the year 23,396 we discovered that dark matter does exist, and it is actually a very basic phenomenon - chaos. Essentially the universe is tearing itself apart. We were a cosmic accident, in the blip of a bubble that is about to pop. We never had a chance. The seams of the universe are unraveling, and unimaginable cosmic horrors are ripping apart the fabric of reality now. I don't know why I'm writing this journal, since it will cease to be shortly enough... Perhaps as a meditation on the pointlessness of our progress. I just want to remember good times, and the people I loved - before nothing is, and I am not. I miss my family, I miss Earth Secundus, Earth Quadrus, Mars Novae... The trips we would take to have drinks and parties. Our bots would build the homestead on a new world, unexplored. We'd take a trip to Pluto (now an exoplanet without a solar system or an orbit). Seeing living beings in space in the form of the nebulae-feeding Cosmic Jellyfish was something I will never forget... Forever how I have to live. Even now, the planet I am on (it doesn't matter which one, the unravelling will hit all of them with increasing speed - it is faster than light now) Is showing a night with only half the stars visible. Each night more than a thousand stars are snuffed out. So what? I am going to go to the store, and try and find a bottle of liquor. Our replicators have broken down due to the repair planet's unravelling just days ago. Everyone is hugging each other, kissing each other. Enemies have ended their hostilities, and grieve their living dead families all together. I call my father to wish him a good end. He chokes back tears as he wishes us peace and comfort for whatever comes next. He can't promise anything, and doesn't know what will happen or what it means. I don't either. We reminisce about our family history, raising kids we love, and seeing the worlds of the Federation change in ways we never thought possible. All in all, we've all had good lives, and reason to be happy. Now is the time to bear it all, to fight to the last second, to be brave, and have a stiff upper lip. You can't let the infinite have the last laugh. I talk to my mom, who cries a lot. She isn't ready for this. She knows that the unravelling will hit us first, and her planet a few months from now. There isn't a hyperdrive fast enough for us to escape - this is it. She just says she loves us, misses us, and wishes we could be together. I wish so too, I love my mom. I hold my wife and wipe away her tears, as we call our children on Norax II, Betastamets VI, and Ulterion 7 and wish them well. Our kids are proud of us. They were a handful, but were good kids. I don't know what will happen next, but we will not go without a fight. I have my gun, I have my sword, I have my friends and family, And we will all die fighting the inevitable. ---
This log was recovered by the Zeraxian Concordat in the 2 Era Year 1,345,342 after the discovery of White Hole/Black Hole Reverse Data Extraction algorithms And the corresponding technology to decipher previously unreadable data from black hole singularities. Zeraxian temples have been built in the honor and memory of this great unknown "human" race that once lived in the First Era, And whose deeds are still remembered, and celebrated, today. May they be Zeraxian's eternal ancestors.
30 days until this story is permanently destroyed and deleted forever.