The End of Things

“Upon the canvas of utter nothing, the little light danced, its distant rays breaching the cosmos, spiralling through the endless void as one last distant cry to anyone that would listen.

The crimson hue was lost at this distance, the far-off, surface bound array of sensors and scopes gazed greedily, barely scraping this meagre display of arrhythmic white light together from its clusters eyes and ears.

Gerneau suspected it wasn’t quite right. The machine had run filters to capture errant noise, to boost the signal to visible levels. Maybe it had even been so bold as to run it through some post processing.

Something was wrong, though. It had been very insistent he get up for this - even more so than usual.

He was no fool, light had its limits. But even with the weight of that knowledge, he sat in the chair and furrowed his brow feeling the unspeakable knot in his throat, the immovable weight upon his shoulders.

Any moment now.”

A melancholic story set at the end of the universe, where the last man had to deal with an increasingly curious child asking questions he can't - or won't - answer.

5,011 Words

Published by Brian’s Bookcase on the 10/09/25!