At the End of the Universe by Chloe Garner

The beginning is the end.

Many species over the history of the universe have forged theories of the beginning and the end of the light.  Because that’s what’s interesting about the universe.

The light.

The darkness is everywhere, the darkness is through, the darkness is surrounding.  The light is what is special.

Light means life.

And with a seemingly egotistical, unspoken question, they ask: when will be the end of me?

And they look to the stars.

All over the universe, they look to the stars to calculate the beginning and the end.

They have theories of cycles, they have theories of angels and of angles, of spirits and peering eyes, of fusion and energy-into-matter.

They advance, they question, they seek.

And then, one by one by one, they end up at the same spot.

Whether led by deities’ revelations or ruthless mathematics, they come.

Here.

To the beginning and the end.

To The Nebula.

The mathematicians measure it and proclaim it a perfect microcosmic representation of the universe itself, expanding as it does, forming clouds of stars representative of galaxies, the core of it hot and radiating energy that blows the rest of it out like so many hot air balloons.

The religious say that it speaks, and that they are here to listen.

And they come.

They drop their trinkets and their tokens, whatever bits of value they find analogous for material support of The Observatory, the orbiting beacon that they are all ultimately drawn to.

I send the signal, and they all eventually come.

I don’t care about their coins or their ribbons or their stones.

Most of them come and witness the object that they came to see, the beginning and the end laid out before them, more darkness than light, but all the light in the universe at the same time, they do their calculations and they speak their prayers, all forms, all languages, all technologies, all ideas.

And then they go.

But some.

These are the ones that I collect.

They cannot escape the idea that is The Nebula, that something could show them the universe running at high speed before their eyes.  They find a sense of identity in it that they cannot bear to part with.

They form ruts in their paths within The Observatory, seeing to the pilgrims or tending the station, preparing meals or ordering goods, converting currencies into other value such that there is power and there is food and there is light.  Mundane things amidst the miraculous.

I don’t need to assign them roles.  They take them on naturally, selected for how they fit into the tiny world, here, convicted by fervor but taken in by memetic shape.

The Observatory calls to them in much the same way that The Nebula does, a place that they fit to, when very often the traits that made them adventurers in the first place were also ones that kept them from finding a place of home amongst their own people.

They root and grow in my home, disciples in a cold universe, always and ever drawn by the light.

They call me The Caretaker.  I have no name, though they do often ask.  They presume that I am just another of the convicts, a man who came and could not leave because of the beauty and significance of the phenomenon before us, visible out every window, like a rising and setting sun, and on every screen.

They are moved by it, and I am glad of it.

It is good for them.

It is good for them to be here, watching the heartbeat of the universe.

It is good for the heartbeat of the universe to have witness.

But they misunderstand me entirely.

I opened my eyes, once, long ago, and they will not close again until it is time.

They watch my heart, they hear my mind, they seek my eyes, even without ever knowing that this is what they do.

The beginning is the end, and when the universe closes, all of that incalculable time from now, after all of those uncountable pilgrims have come and lived and died, the icons of so many species rising, living, and dying through the expanses of the universe, I will remember.

And then.

Maybe.

I will open my eyes again.