Mourning from the End of Time 

I would weep if I had a body.  After countless eons, after endless ages, the last measure of time has winked out and died, and it was I.

I may have been the mother of the universe, so it is fitting that I be here at the end.  I don’t know how but I think I created it from a desire the likes of which language has no equivalent.  From nothingness was it born and into nothingness it has gone.  I watched as the explosion of energy turned into matter and arranged itself into suns and these suns into others and bit by bit new elements formed in the solar forges.

I was there as the planet Earth was formed.  Earth itself was not unique, nor was it ever, but for one difference which I will come to shortly.  For now, it was but one of an endless number of planets I watched as asteroids and time and heat and cold altered it into a planet upon which life formed.  I watched in wonder as forms more diverse than description were created, merged and gradually changed.

I watched as on other planets sentient life was formed and I watched them struggle against the bonds of time, to throw themselves into their work, families, and faith.  Each of these efforts carried with it the promise of endless life in some measure or another.  I watched as each was swept away, and still I did not mourn.

Until Earth.  An ever arrogant planet which thought itself the center of all things, it was unique in one way.  As human life was formed I felt a tug, and was pulled into darkness on that planet, and later into light.  And thus was I born as a human being.  I crawled upon the Earth for the first time.  Felt the effects of forces I could not then explain.  I felt matter.  I felt kinship.  I was altered.  And after a time, I died and was returned to my previous form.  I was returned only briefly, enough for my understanding of what I had experienced to merge with the boundlessness of my being and be absorbed into the greater me.  And then I was born again, and after a life spent birthing children and gathering fruit, I died.  And then again.

Each time I would forget my whole and be wholly human.  Each life I too would throw myself with all my might against the bonds of time, little knowing I was already outside of it.  And then I would die.  Sometimes I would die of violence, sometimes in peace, sometimes abruptly, sometimes slowly.  None of that mattered.  Sometimes I would die selfish, and sometimes for love, sometimes out of anger, sometimes to save another.  Each of my lives, for all of their great diversity, was the same.  A life.  Wasted.

I had children.  My children had children, and as time stretched my children sought the stars, with me always reborn among them.  This was still very early in their development, just after a bare few thousand years of a history that would stretch past endless zeros.  Ever seeking more, not even the vastness of space would deter them as they bent the laws of physics around them, one after another.  All gave homage but the cruelest of all.  Time.

They were not alone in their seeking the stars, far from it.  Countless races proliferated among them.  Still, it was only to this breed that I was wed as life stretched into life and humans evolved into form after form, and merged with the other races they eventually found.  Their science knew no limits but one.  After every shift they would think themselves the pinnacle of evolution, only to evolve again.

Between lives my consciousness would expand to take in the cosmos and I would have a brief glimpse of all of matter as it hurled itself into space.  I would have a moment to let experiences merge into the whole.  It would strike me then that none of it mattered.  At the time my life felt more important than anything, but after, more trivial than could even be described.  Even as humanity sought to eradicate the sting of death and lives stretched on for eons, mine as well, the result would be the same.  What would it matter if I killed myself at a young age or lived for a million?  What difference if in my life I saved hundreds of lives as a doctor or ended hundreds as a warrior?  None.  And what of those others who were not me?  Were they any different from the clever machines they themselves created?  Any different from the other animals that trod the soil and few the sky?  Was only I unique?  I would think on these thoughts in that brief flash between time.  Then I would be born again.

At the tail end of time humanity stretched across the new field of stars.  Earth was long gone as the sun burned out, a fate that eventually all would experience as energy became mass.  More and more black holes formed as the suns consolidated and died. Their pull got bigger and bigger and into them they pulled planets which had life and planets which had none.  The result was exactly the same.  The black hole had more mass.  That was all.  There was no difference if the planet had culture, art, weapons, life, or dust.

Soon the ever increasing population of the humans, if they could still be called that anymore, began to decline.  One by one their lives winked out and their planets with them.  One by one they took to the stars in a last ditch effort to float between them.  But for what?  To prolong the inevitable.  One large vessel was launched to do just that.  It had a clutch of humanity riding within it and a library of the combined cultures as it plotted a course through the nothingness to more nothingness.  As it became the last holdout, I was born upon it.  Fitting I say again since I was there at the start to be there at the end.  The inevitable happened and even the fusion power ran out and system by system the vessel was shut down and to the horror of those within, we each drifted into a cold death, never knowing we were in fact the last holdouts of any life left in all the universe.

I watched from my seat on the end of time as even this lifeless hulk was pulled inevitably into a black hole.   And with that, all the achievements of every race to ever tread the galaxy was erased.  Thus is the sole measurement of the existence of life.  With it, some of the black holes had an infinitesimal increase in mass over where they would have been had the galaxy had no life.  That is it.  There is no other mark, no other measure, no other energy, nothing but that.  Every fantastic achievement and every fantastic failure comes down to this.  Every life, every death, this.

I sit now at the end of time and would weep if I had the means.  I would weep for those who thought life had value.  I would weep for all those lives that were not mine and so thus were not anything.  I would weep for my children, all of which have been erased from the record.  For only in those lives that I myself lived was anything kept.  Only in me is there any measure of this span of time which created so much, and resulted in so little.  I am an inferior vessel to hold an entire universe, but I am all there is.  I would weep for my deficiencies.  Should I fade, I take with me the final record that anything at all had happened here.

Perhaps I could create another universe, but I would shudder at the thought, if I had a body to shudder.  Why give hope when there is none?  I look at the endless nothing of space and I can say this about humanity: It seems more empty now without them.  But the price of hope is too high, the sting of time too painful.  Time heals all wounds they used to say.  No.  It creates them, and then it buries them.  And I, at least, will have no further part.

A Special Client

Wendy got up from her seat, putting her notebook and text book back into her bag, slinging it over her shoulder.  Class was out and it was time to head home.  She was tall and slender, wearing sensible shoes, loose jeans, a university sweater and a baseball cap.  She wore no makeup, and put little effort into her hair, although there was fingernail polish still on each perfectly manicured nail.  She checked her watch.  She still had just under an hour to get back to her little apartment before meeting her first client of the day.  Plenty of time, but she liked to be early.

“Hey Wendy?”

She turned her head a bit to see the nerdy looking guy who sat beside her.  “Yeah?”

“I’m going to be studying for the test this weekend.  I was wondering if you wanted a study partner?”

She raised an eyebrow slightly, “Do you think I need the help?”

“What?” He stammered, “No.  No, it’s me.  I need the help.  I was fine through the first few years, but now this theoretical physics stuff is just hard to wrap my head around.  I guess I need concrete answers.  I like things when I can see them and touch them, you know?  This stuff is just in the world of the head and you can’t even visualize it anymore.  But you, you just get it.”

“Maybe.  I’ll check my calendar when I get home and let you know tomorrow.”

“Busy with work?”

Wendy was taken a bit aback, “What?  You know where I work?”

“No, don’t look so worried, I’m not a stalker, I don’t know where you work.  It’s just that most days, like today, you come to class dressed like you are now, relaxed and comfortable, ready to learn.  I like that look, but sometimes you come to class dressed to the nines, like a model.  I just figured those were work days, but what do I know?”

She took a breath, “Quite a bit too much.  Yeah, those are sometimes work days, but sometimes a girl just likes to dress up.  And were those compliments in there Pete?”

He blushed.  Some boys, it was just too easy.  Endearing, but no challenge.

“Uh, yeah.  You’re a beautiful woman, but that’s not why I’m asking for your help this weekend.”

She gave him her best smile, “Oh, and just were was this study session to take place?”

His face got redder.  She was playing with him, sure, but he was winning more points than he knew.  She worked with people like him, and that was always a better experience than working with his opposite.  She felt a bit of sympathy, and only because he said he liked her dressed-down look more than when she dressed up, she jumped in before he could reply.  “I’m kidding, it’s fine.  I’ll let you know tomorrow, but for now, yes, work.  I got to run.”

“Uh, ok.  See you tomorrow then.”

Pete waved to her as she turned her back, shrugged her backpack back into place and started for the door on her naturally long strides.   Behind her she could hear one of Pete’s friends saying, “Nicely done” and Pete’s hushed and embarrassed reply.  She smiled.

Back at her apartment she took off her hat and put it on the peg by the door, which she locked by habit and principle.  She walked across the dark and slightly cluttery room to her study desk and placed her backpack beside it.  She checked her watch again on her way to the bathroom.  Still plenty of time.  She pulled off her sweater and checked her hair.  Her first client was an easy one, a favorite really.  Her best friend was in the psychology department and said that one day her prof had said something like, “Sometimes you will have clients who have nothing wrong with them except they are lonely.  Is it ok to charge them a standard rate just to be their friend once a week?  Sure it is.  Sometimes that’s exactly what they need.”  Her job was sometimes like that too, like with this guy.

But just because he didn’t want her to undress and do the other things she did for many clients, doesn’t mean she should slack off.  She still had to look good.  Call it professional responsibility.  She quickly adjusted her hair, put a nice blouse on over her undershirt and checked herself out in the mirror again.  This client wanted a professional look, not slutty or provocative, but also, down at home.  The-daughter-you-wish-you-had look.  Wendy was ready now, and checked her watch again.  Plenty of time.

While most girls in school were jammed into a tiny dorm, she had a two room apartment.  One for sleeping in, one for work.  She tried the dorm living her first year, and it wasn’t for her.  Her second she tried a roommate, but same results. She needed space.  So now she had it, with a bill to suit, both for her education at a top-ranked school and for this two room apartment.  So she worked on the side, a job that earned the money she needed and left her the time she needed to study.  Sensible, if unconventional.

She looked at her living room as she left her bathroom.  Bookshelves on many walls, a small TV for her movies, and her study desk with its laptop.  Her bedroom was to one side of the bathroom, and her office on the other.  She went into her office.

This room also had a bed, and a camera aimed at it.  She adjusted the camera so instead it pointed to the sofa she had against another wall.  Next she stepped over to her work computer and turned it on.  A few minutes still to go, she logged into her video chat software.  Some wanted two way video, but most didn’t.  She was more than ok with that.  Some would talk to her, and some only anonymously type at her.  Her client today was of the later group.  Computers were easy for her, having grown up around them, her father being a pioneer of sorts.  She set her status to away and went back out to her kitchen for a quick snack before her appointment.

In a rural home a man who recently turned fifty turned on his computer after checking his watch.  This room was a study, with many books on the shelves around him and a computer table with his machine.  Beside him he had a lamp on illuminating the room.  He logged into his video chat software under his fake name.  He also logged into his PayPal account, also under a fake name, to pay for his upcoming session.  The price was very, VERY high, but he would be more upset if it wasn’t.  This girl was worth all the money in the world.  She was online but set to “Away”.  He set his to Available” and waited.  Soon her status changed to “In Meeting” and she messaged him.  It was short and to the point.  “Are you ready?”  He sighed and typed back, “Yes.”  He wished this didn’t feel so much like business.

He finished the PayPal transaction and logged out of that window.  Soon a streaming video window opened showing an empty sofa.  He held his breath as he waited.  Then Wendy (calling herself by an assumed name as well) entered the frame.  He smiled.  She was strong and beautiful.

Behind him the door opened and his wife Gina entered the room.  “Hank?”

“Yes, darling?” He replied.

“Is that her?” Gina asked.

“Yes, come sit with me.  She can’t hear us, so we’ll just type to her.”

“I wish there was another way.  This still upsets me.”

“Me too,” Hank said, “But there’s no other way with her.  Have you ever known our girl to accept a handout?  She won’t take our money.  She needs to feel self sufficient.  What else can we do?”

“Well, ask her about her day.”

“I will darling, hang on, let me turn up the volume.”  And Hank did that before settling in with his wife to talk with his daughter, and he was quite willing to pay any amount for the privilege.