The Last Star

The Last Planet

It is the end of the Universe, a million, billion, trillion eons from now.

We are nearing the end of the Big Crunch – the opposite of the Big Bang. There is only one Star left in the Universe – nearly everything else has been compacted by gravity into a giant moving mass in the middle of a shrinking reality. There is no escape as the dark walls of the Universe move in like a closing fist – slowly at first, but picking up speed until it is only a matter of years – months – until it's over.

The last Star burns brightly however, as if in defiance of the impending end. Around this last star is one last Planet, and two or three Planetoids.

On the Planet, there is a city. It is the last safe haven on the Planet, sheltered from the Star as it grows hotter and draws closer. Food is scarce, as there is little that will grow under such conditions, and life is hard.

The creatures that live in this city are anti-social and asexual, reproducing through budding. Our story focuses on one of these creatures, and for the purposes of this story we will name this character E.

E looked exactly like its fellow city-folk. Tall, with splotchy red skin. Long limbs with hands and feet the size of dinner plates, the skin rough and hard. Each of the hands and feet having six long digits ending with a black claw-like nail. Small, beady eyes, large slits for a nose, and a mouth with herbivore teeth. Hair as white as snow, and as long as its body.

E was also as anti-social as its fellows. They only communicated when they had to,and usually with chirps, squawks, hisses, or snapping teeth. However,there was something different about E. E noticed things that the others either did not notice or refused to notice.

Every day, E would getup from its chosen sleeping place and find somewhere where it could look out and see the surrounding wastelands. From there, E could see that the Star was getting bigger.

This scared E. The others however went about their daily life as normal. Wake up, go to where the last of the food grew, fight over who got what task that day, do their tasks, fight over the harvest, eat if you were successful, go back to sleep. E kept to itself, sometimes pinching whatever scraps were left when the others had finished eating, but always keeping an eye on the Star.

Why didn't the others notice? Why didn't they get scared? Why did they still let the ugly buds grow on their backs in the morning, to be shed at night, where the buds became new beings? There wasn't enough food, and many of the new beings didn't survive the first day.

One night, E settled into a hole to ponder this. One of the other creatures walked over,hoping to force E out of the hole. It squawked loudly at E, who hissed, squawked, at snapped its teeth back. The other creature stepped back, before chirping loudly and angrily as it went to find another place to sleep and give birth.

E returned to its thoughts. What could it do? What could be done? They couldn't stop the Star. They couldn't run away. E began to have convulsions as it thought. How could they possibly survive the Star crashing into the Planet?

E sighed. Maybe it could tell the others and together they could save themselves. With that thought, E quickly fell asleep.

The next day, E woke the entire city by squawking loudly and pointing to the sun. The others looked at the Star, and then at E. All of them were annoyed about being woken so rudely.

One of the creatures turned to another, and they both nodded. They were oldest of the city, and knew what they had to do.

They walked up to E and hissed. E hissed back, and snapped its teeth. That was enough to drive the rest of the city into a frenzy, for to attack the elders was one of the few laws that could not be broken. The stronger ones lifted E up into the air, and threw E out of one of the holes that let a small amount of sun into the city.

E rolled and rolled,the sand burning its flesh, and the heat of the Star pounding at its fragile body. E finally reached the base of the mountain on which the city sat. It looked up – there was no way of getting to its former home now – and no chance of survival outside.

E did the only thing it could think of doing. It began to walk away from the city which had cast it out. It did not know how many days passed before it finally couldn't walk any longer. The Star was too close now. The heat was unbearable, and E was desperate for food and shelter. Its skin was burned and peeling off, blood was dried everywhere, and E could barely see.

E did not survive to see the Star finally be pushed into the Planet, destroying the city and pushing the Planet into the swirling mass in the middle of the Universe.

Meanwhile, in the centre of the swirling mass, the last two Gods of the Universe are digging. They are blind, mouth-less creatures with only one purpose,although they don't know why. They just know they have to get to the very core of the mass, the dead centre of the dying Universe.