Watch This for some background

Nothing changes.

I have memories going back millennia. I can recall our first steps off of earth into the Universe. The details have long since faded, but the feelings remain. That sense that there were entire world’s of new things no one had ever seen before. How every day there would be new things to learn and experience. And for a long time, that was true. There was boredom, of course. Millions of light years of black space punctuated only by tiny points of light, and billions of light years of space between the islands that are galaxies. On the one hand, seeing all that black, and you could think that the Universe was a dark place, but those points of light constantly gave me hope. There was always something new. Always, that is, until there wasn’t.

Billions of seconds later, when every piece of me has been replaced more times than anyone bothered to keep track of, the lights have gone out. I’ve gotten used to the static nature of it. I’ve gotten used to the tiny sun that hangs in the same spot, just above the horizon, never moving. I’ve gotten used to it being the only light in our sky. I’ve gotten used to never learning anything new. My research was completed eons ago. We know all the laws of physics. We know how far we can bend them, and where they break. And we know how the Universe will end. The tiny white dwarf stars that are some of the only stars remaining will burn and burn and burn for longer than the entire Universe existed before them. After they fade, only the black holes will remain, which will slowly dissolve away into the nothingness. Then the protons themselves will break down into what is essentially nothing. All the energy that the Universe borrowed for its billions of billions of seconds will finally be given back to the nothing it came from.

I would take trips. Not off planet, of course. Those trips were reserved for the small ships going out to try and find black holes. But trips around our little planet. You can’t go too far. Go towards the sun and watch it rise in the sky as your move towards it. Very quickly you’ll see it get so hot that nothing exists there. The few animals we permit to keep the ecosystem going won’t go anywhere near it. Water turns to vapor nearly instantly. Plants don’t even bother trying. Turn around, with the sun behind you, and walk away. When it dips down beneath the horizon, things get cold. I preferred it there. I thought that maybe in the cold so deep that ice felt like stone, and where the sky is uninterrupted by our puny little sun, maybe I could see those little points of light that gave me hope so many billions of lifetimes ago. There’s nothing. The naked eye can’t see anything, though my eyes have been changed so many times I don’t know what their original abilities were. Telescopes can see a few other stars, but they’re just the same as ours. Radio waves give us nothing to speak of. I know that there used to be just the tiniest amount of heat everywhere. Signals we could interpret, the echoes of our Universe’s long lost birth. We could see it when we were new. Now, those have faded too. It’s just us, our star, and some black holes which we can’t find.

I’m not alone, of course. There are many of us, all of whom have lived for quadrillions of quadrillions of seconds. I don’t talk to them unless I have to. Why would I? We have said everything that anyone could ever say to each other. We have done everything we could ever do to each other. We all have our routines. I go to my lab and recheck my results. We all go through them. What else is there to do? Occasionally I see children. Not often. Very few are permitted, and only enough to replace those who leave on the black hole seeking ships. When you live in such a delicate balance on a planet where only a small part is habitable, and your sun only gives out a tiny bit of energy, you learn to live on the cheap. Never spend energy where you can possibly avoid it. I don’t particularly like the children. Where I once saw hope and renewal now all I see is sameness and repetition.

I think about death a lot. There are uncounted numbers of creatures that have lived and died throughout the ages. As an exercise, awhile ago, we built a computer that would recreate them all. It was interesting. Most of them had no idea they were simply part of a simulation. We got to see history play itself out many times over. We would change some variables and rerun the simulations, see how we would have reacted if things were just a little bit different. I enjoyed it. The creation and destruction which we are capable of played itself out over and over in new and amazing ways. Eventually, the computer became too expensive. We shut it down. The creatures we simulated, who had no idea they only existed in a computer, winked out of the universe. They didn’t feel it. They don’t feel now. They have the oblivion that I crave. I can’t have it, of course. I’ve applied for approval for suicide before. I was turned down. Everyone is. Those who commit unsanctioned suicide are immediately rebuilt. No one has yet found a way to permanently destroy themselves. Some leave on the black hole ships. That doesn’t particularly appeal to me, but it doesn’t matter. They won’t let me leave either. My research is too important.

I’ve studied everything. At this point, I can say that without hyperbole. But the real meat of my recent work, within the last few trillion seconds, has been about black holes. Eventually, when our white dwarf fades, we will move to back holes. Living off a white dwarf is easy. There’s radiation. We can use that for the energy we need. Living off a black hole will be hard. We will need to take the tiny amount of radiation it creates and convert it to useable energy. That is what I study. How to convert the tiny amount of energy a black hole creates and convert it to energy we can use. It won’t be enough energy to support physical bodies. This body that I have had and manipulated and controlled for all this time will finally be gone entirely. Fed to the black hole for its energy. Then I will exist as that simulation which we ended all that time ago. We will all be simulations, free to create and live in any world we want, where we can change it any way we want, until the black hole itself finally fades to nothing. That’s what those black holes ships are preparing for. We need to have them ready so we can move to them, for our last phase of existence. But I remember our old computer. I’m not looking forward to being in it. It will only be a matter of time before the computer itself becomes changeless. Then, and only then, will I die. Unless I do something else.

We never hear from our black hole ships. We don’t expect to, not for a long time. We know there are black holes. But by their very nature they are hard to find. Sooner or later, the laws of averages will work out, and ships will return. We will ready the black holes they find. But what if the ship comes back to nothing? I need to create black holes. We can’t replicate their energy, but we can create black holes themselves. It’s tricky, but it’s the only way to study them. The small ones fade too quickly. But make them too big and they’ll devour the world before we’re ready for them. I will only get one chance. There are protections on top of protections on top of protections. But if I can create just one right at the limit at what I’m allowed, and create just the right conditions for an accident, it will grow and devour everything. Our little planet. Our little star. The black hole ships will return to a black hole. The last, best definition of irony.

What right do I have to end us? We are the Universe’s last, best hope to witness itself. If not us, there is nothing. No one will be there to witness the very end. That’s what has stayed my hand so far. But the idea of death keeps coming up. What right did we have to turn off the simulation? All those thinking, feeling creatures winked out of existence, as if they were never there in the first place. We ended them. I am making the decision to end us. Suicide on a species wide scale. Maybe I will suffer for my sins. The ironclad laws of physics have prevented us from seeing into a black hole, only to probe its very edges. Maybe being part of a singularity will be pain on a scale that even I haven’t felt. Maybe it will be nothing. But it’s time. It is time for one last change.