The Final Days

The two stand on an asteroid with their lightweight space suits being all that separates them from life and imminent death. Their space ship, the fastest of the fleet, resting upon the only surface of the asteroid flat and stable enough to support it. Countless lightyears separate them from the humble beginnings of humanity and where they are. Likewise, an unknown amount of Earth years have passed since all of humanity abandoned the planet in favor of finding another one.

They never did. Hundreds of thousands of years have passed since they went off in search of a new home. It has been hundreds of thousands of years since humanity gave up the search for a planet and decided to live on space ships in the vastness of space, and every few tens of thousands of years humanity found itself at odds with something that made them abandon their space stations in favor of safer areas of space.

Space, for all of its vast emptiness, is far more dangerous than humanity had ever imagined.

And the two standing on this asteroid managed to escape the last space station known as home for what is still considered humanity - though, anyone from the Earth would not even come close to recognizing this species as it is so far removed from what once was that these creatures would look at an ancient human as something of a remedial life form, more akin to something that would be considered more on par with an ant than anything of intelligence. Still, these two are the final two in the entirety of the universe, and in the entirety of the multi-dimensional existence.

"I am well aware that we are the last two humans remaining, but it isn't like we can repopulate all of humanity."

"But we could at least try! Or, at the very least, we could keep one another company for the remainder of our lives."

"Absolutely not. I refuse to settle upon a fucking asteroid," humanity has long since ceased making noise - in fact, their mouths appear only as the smallest of slits where human mouths once were, their noses have also retreated back to sit nearly flush upon their faces with flaps that open and close dependent on whether or not one would want to smell, and their ears have grown incredibly adept at hearing even the smallest of imaginable noises, the noise a common ant would make as it traverses the ground would be enough to alert a modern human. Instead, humanity developed telepathy and though the words don't traverse the air waves, radio waves, or any other wave forms at all, the two find themselves deeply embroiled in what the remainder of humanity should look like. "We were born to traverse the vastness of space, and I will spend the remainder of my life doing so."

"Humanity is gone. It is only the two of us. We are not meant to be alone. We will lose our minds. We will end up killing ourselves from insanity. Would you truly doom humanity to end in madness?"

"Is it not mad to believe that just because the two of us are together that we are avoiding madness? Every relative we have ever had, every friend and enemy whom has ever existed within our species, and in every iteration humanity has ever known is gone. It is mad that we even exist."

"We were lucky to escape."

"We were the least lucky out of all of humanity. The attack split every one of them into sub-atomic particles so quickly that they didn't even know their lives were forfeited. They just... ceased to exist in a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a second. We only exist because of the counterbalance to the black hole vortices enabled us to reach 99.99% of lightspeed, which was just marginally fast enough to escape the attack zone. And, if we stay here, that attack is going to expand enough to catch up to us in days from now."

"So why don't we spend our days at peace instead of on the run? Besides, it isn't like the ship is going to have enough power to run away forever."

"No, it won't, but if my calculations are correct then it can travel at a rate of 99.9% of lightspeed for at least one hundred and fifty-nine years then we should be able to get far enough away from the black hole attack to allow it to collapse in on itself."

"I understand the math. I am the fucking one who did the math. And I also know that the catastrophe that could happen if we traveled at that rate of speed for that long. And then what? We just exist there, at the end of the universe? Alone?"

The mental silence hangs between the two for what could have been hours on ancient, destroyed Earth.

"Correction. You would be at the end of the universe alone. I am staying here, and I implore you to do the same."

"In the ancient writings," which had been translated no less than 2,000 times since the days of terrestrial living, "it made it seem like humanity was always exploratory. They traveled from a single location out to inhabit an entire planet. When all the resources were used up by the wealthy, the wealthy left upon space ships to explore the galaxy. And from there, even the slave ships ended up breaking free of their masters to explore. When humanity ate the rich," humanity had misread this translation as a literal eating of the rich, which served all future generations a warning to always do right by those most impoverished les they be eaten by them, "and regrouped together with the slave ships, what humanity realized is that the slave ships became more advanced than the wealthy ones. Humanity again flourished as they continued traversing the galaxy and beyond."

"Yes, what is your point?"

"They chose, at that point, to settle. The first space settlement happened. They gathered up resources from a local planet to them and built a space station from those materials, and for eight thousand years humanity flourished there. That is, until contact with an alien species and they were forced to abandon their base."

"Yes, I know the history, as well. We all have to learn the hundreds of thousands of years of history as children."

"Yes, but did you know that while humanity stayed stationary in that settlement that technology didn't grow? That humanity stagnated? That suicides began happening more and more frequently within that amount of time?"

"No..."

"Of course they did. Humanity is meant to explore. Stagnation is devastating to the species as a whole. That attack was a fantastical thing to have happen to us. It wasn't for one hundred and thirty-eight thousand more years before humanity settled again. That time, it was within a decade before another attack took place and humanity, once again, had to leave."

"This asteroid is traversing through an entire galaxy, though. We wouldn't be stagnated. We would be seeing the galaxy X91738B301V677 for as long as we are alive."

"And we would see even more of it in that ship." They lift their arm that has multiple elbows and extends at least twice as long as their body to point towards their light-speed shuttle.

"Look, humanity fucked up when it was on its planet and we have been paying the price for hundreds of thousands of years since. Possibly even a million years by this point, humanity has been struggling more than ever before due to not having an inhabitable planet to reside on. This asteroid can be settled on. We have the technology. We have the ability to make this place a home," they say as they pull out a machine that begins scanning the surface of the asteroid, showing colors unimaginable to the human eye, but representing a difficulty level of 5 when it comes to terraforming. Not good, but not horrible. "I am tired of running."

On the rare times that humanity did try to terraform a planet that had already developed life on it, inevitably that life had a dominant species that was far better adapted and far more ruthless than humanity, and it would chase off the humans in favor of the easier lives they had upon their space ships.

"Then it is settled. Humanity ends more lonely than it could have ever imagined - with the final two human beings dying alone, light years apart." They walk towards the ship without looking back.

"So be it," the psychic link had been broken already, but they verbally say the words - which comes out in a muddle, incomprehensible noise - in the homes that it could be heard. It couldn't be.

They start the engine of the ship while allowing the body support to fully envelop their body. A neural linkage extends from the support into the space suit and the mental controls come to life. The ships AI asks, "Shall we wait for the other?" They stand in their body support, not responding. After several moments pass by the AI asks, "Are you ready to depart alone?"

They find the spot on the asteroid that seems most appropriate to begin the spread of soil and place the box onto the surface. A three dimensional holographic display appears above the box as a spike extends from the bottom of it into the asteroid, and the controls guide them into what kind of soil they want to start chemically changing the surface into. They look up at the ship as they see the thrusters powering on and really question whether it is worth it to stay here, or if they should join the other on the ship. Maybe, just maybe, they will come to their senses and stay, they decide.

The normal propulsion motors ignite, but do not cause lift as they still have yet to answer the AI. An entire Earth day could have passed within the amount of time the two have separated, and neither have changed their mind yet, and for the hundredth time the AI asks, "Shell we leave without the other now?"

"Yes. Yes, we shall."

-Dustin S. Stover