In a Time of Silence

Chapter 2

He smiled sadly at the city beneath him as warning sirens screamed in the distance. He was old now -something he never thought he'd live to be when he was a boy, raging madly against the machine his parents and their parents on back to the beginning had built for him.

And he certainly never thought he'd live to see that world crumble.

There was something sad about it. Flawed as this world was, there was so much beauty. So much promise.

He chuckled tiredly. Perhaps it was for the best. As much as these people could have achieved, there were things that might have never changed. The predatory nature of their societies, the pre-disposition towards paranoia and superstition, the forever-hunger of their egos, the men of means swallowing the world whole and shitting out the third world -a stain on the world that no one had ever managed to remove, just shuffle elsewhere- and the constant rejection of rationality for the sake of the individual's feelings.

He turned, a note of finality to the motion as he spun away from the arching white exteriors and photovoltaic walls that gleamed like crystals breaching gargantuan eggs.

The city. His city. Floating atop the vast ocean, designed by young architects and scientists alike. The city of the future. The city where the New World would be born from endless power and bottomless funding and unlimited access to resources. Where young and old minds alike could come and pursue science in it's purest. Where the laws were written based on a body of evidence or not at all.

The city at the end of the world. Built to last forever.

Someday, some alien intelligence might find this place, pristine, maintained by millions of simple AI too one-dimensional to contemplate their lonesome vigil, stalwartly keeping it afloat for masters long since gone.

Or it might stand, an empty relic, a testament to the void, proof to no one that once, complex life had existed in this empty universe, long enough to burn bright, reaching for the stars, and to fizzle out.

"Like Icarus we lived, full of foolish passion, and brazen: we touched the stars only to destroy ourselves in doing so." he grunted.

Yes. His city would be a gravestone to his people. And it would stand until the sun came to devour the place of their birth and death.

He strolled serenely through the empty halls, absent from his surroundings, as though a ghost already, mournfully unaware that his whole species -indeed, every species- was gone, and his spirit doomed to wander the halls of his fruitless monument to hope and eventually; failure.

As he entered his study, a familiar voice greeted him.

"You have the contented air of a man who's accepted his fate." hummed the sonographene crystals he'd had installed a year ago.

He sighed, and for a moment you could see the crushing weight that he carried still. "Hawking. Right. I forgot you-*"

"Existed? Don't worry. You looked like you forgot the whole world existed for a moment."

He nodded and opened his mouth, only to be cut off by the intrepid voice again.

"Sixteen minutes or so. Not a lot of time, hm old friend?"

"No." He answered. "It feels like an eternity."

He paused, and Hawking busied himself with other administrative tasks while waiting for the man to gather his thoughts.

"Is everything ready?"

Hawking paused for a split second, then responded:
"Yes. Well. It will be. I mean everything is in order. The intersystemic logic is assembled. Physics and rendering being finished up -hence my distraction, I only have so much processing power allotted to myself at the moment- annnnd..... As of right now the last upload is complete."