Chapter X: In the end, everything burns.

contd from here.

A million years later...

The antimatter was black. Not only was it colored black, but it was positively radiating it, glowing with an evil light. But he knew that it wasn't really evil. Life had taught him that 'good' and 'evil' were just words. To be written on paper, to be thought of in your mind and to be spoken out loud.

But there was no good or evil really.

There was simply existence. And his would soon come to an end.

The antimatter was dense, and concealed the starscape with images of terror and fear, projected directly onto his mind. He'd always had a thirst to explore. When his brain had developed and he had access to the thoughts of his ancestors, his realization of his fathers disapointment at never really getting to see the universe had only egged him on.

He'd had a good start. After being sucked into the planet Earth and befriending the humans, he'd watched as time whittled their weak lives into brittle bones and sagging skin. He'd seen his mentors pass like dust in the winds of the cosmos as their short lives evaporated meaninglessly, disappearing like wisps of smoke caught in the great cyclones of Time. He missed them still. But he’d become older, and wiser. And he was more determined than ever to live life to the fullest.

The universe was a strange place. An apple in one corner was a fried chicken in the other. Life originated only on planets with the carbon molecule K. And Superman was real. He'd been from the planet Isotope that was the base for the last and only truly Galactic Empire anyone could ever remember. Isotopians had been known as Gorgons and they were right bastards. They had ruled the galaxy with iron fists ‘til one day all their suns mysteriously went nova without warning and every single one of their base planets were destroyed.

The one known as Superman, as legend had it, was the sole survivor. He was ‘good’ because he was brought up by the Americans, a noble race of people on planet Earth. And he had lived a happy life until he had found himself unemployed when his newspaper went bust and demand for good looking male reporters with nothing to speak of in the mental arena suffered a blow. He then had no choice but to work in a Chinese toy factory for a living. And there he succumbed to kryptonite abuse eventually traced to the paint in some (now decommissioned) toy engines.

But now, after a million years MIA, the Gorgons were back! It had turned out that they'd had a backup empire in a parallel universe all along and a group of them had escaped the nova and had been plotting their return to galactic dominance for all these hundreds of millennia! But in their eagerness to conquer, in their eagerness to destroy everything in their paths, they had done the unthinkable; they had torn the very fabric of space and time that separated one universe from the other.

The result was the antimatter, slowly seeping through the tears in the fabric and into both universes simultaneously, filling up space, distorting time. And eventually, when the density got too much for the collective universal gravitational fields to hold up, when the crushing of the antimatter pierced the point of Absolute Pressure, it would all finish.

Baklava found himself thinking about Greenwilly who had died such a long time ago. He’d seen the blue gas escape the shattered bubble. He’d heard mammy’s screams of despair as Willy’s gas dispersed into thin air. He’d seen it himself! Willy was dead. There was no hope of getting him back! Everyone had known this! Everyone had known…

They’d managed to track down every last molecule of the gas eventually, but just like humpty dumpty, they’d never been able to put Willy back together again and it had broken poor mammy’s heart. Blue had always been up for an adventure though, and Baklava and him had had a roaring time until Blue had ended a lifetime shorter than that of most fruerahbeest with a final request that his remains be converted to a green gas and mixed in with Willy’s blue gas so that they could be together in death for all eternity.

At least he’d thought so. Or liked to think so. Anyway, they were still sittingon top of his bookshelf at home.

Then, approx Three hundred thousand years later, he’d been on a trip to Kronos on business. When on a whim, he’d thought to pay a visit to Septerkande 4-Oh-Oh to see the famed Mad, Half - Machine Morgothron. To see if the famed seer was really as mind blowing as everyone said he was. And boy was he mad. The room had gotten dark, there was only silence, and before he could figure out what was going on, everything was spinning. And the voice of Morgothron had boomed out;

The Central Sun in the Universe Beta! Take them to the Central Sun! Take those who would take you for their own, now enclosed in a gaseous form, take them for the universe’s salvation, the salvation of all! It is your only hope.

At that time he’d not known what the implosion this piece of half fleshed metal had been talking about and regretted spending his 2 tringares. But now that the Gorgons were back, and the presence of an actual Universe Beta was revealed along with impending apocalypse, his mind had obviously been magnetized by those words again.

Green’s blue gas and Blue’s green…Could he really make it happen? Could he really save this universe and the next, with its myriad of life forms? And if this Central Sun was so amazing, could it bring back his two old friends to life? It seemed absurd. That crackpot of a machine! It was impossible! Anyway, he thought, how could he get to the middle of the next damn universe before the antimatter sparked? And what and where was this Central Sun anyway? Whoever heard of a universe with a central sun! Shaking his head, he tried to dispel the crazy notion.

He stared into the sky, blacker now than it had been a mere decade ago, and steadily darkening. He wondered where the first spark would ignite. Where the first little sun would succumb to the black mist and go nova, triggering the explosion that would rip two whole universes into atoms within the space of a few nanoseconds; a force no bigger than two big bangs. He hoped it would be far away from him, because he wanted to watch the sky ignite, and see the glorious flames erupt and consume everything he’d ever known in his life, just for a moment.

He remembered a famous quote on Meepus 45.

And in the end, everything burns.

And far away, in the next universe, swirling antimatter not coming within light years of its outer surface, floated the great bright orb of the Central Sun. Forever burning. At least for now.

Click for chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.