A long, long time ago, in another galaxy …
The stars still shone brightly, the galaxy still swirled like a mighty river, and countless life-forms still hid behind each sun, divided by the vastness of space. They concealed themselves in the nooks and crannies of the galaxy, growing, developing, struggling, slaughtering; the rhythms of life and the laments of death filled this obscure galaxy just as they filled every other part of the universe.
However, this ancient and far-flung universe was nearing the end of its own life.
In a sphere with a radius of ten billion light-years, stars were dying at an unimaginable rate, one by one. Civilizations winked out; galaxies dimmed … and all were returning to the void, as though they had never existed.
The countless lives in this galaxy did not know yet that all their struggles and setbacks, their concealments and slaughters, had lost meaning. Against the greater background of the universe as a whole, a terrifying, unanticipated change was about to take place. Their very existence was about to be reduced to nothingness.
Faint photons from already dead galaxies billions of light-years away had traversed the endless darkness of space to illuminate this out-of-the-way galaxy, like letters without recipients silently recounting bygone legends of the vanished.
One of these beams had originated in a little-noticed nook of the universe once known as “the Milky Way.” It was so faint that the eyes of the vast majority of living beings could not detect it, yet it contained innumerable legends that had once moved heaven and earth, shocked belief and understanding.
Ye Wenjie, Mike Evans, Ding Yi, Frederick Tyler, Zhang Beihai, Bill Hines, Luo Ji, Thomas Wade …
Red Coast Base, the Earth-Trisolaris Organization, the Wallfacer Project, the Staircase Program, the Swordholders, the Bunker Project …
The ancient stories remained as vivid as though they had taken place yesterday; the figures of heroes and saints continued to twinkle among the constellations. But knowledge of the tales had faded, and there was no one left to mark their passing. The curtain had fallen and the players had departed from the stage; the audience had scattered to the winds; even the theater had long since fallen into ruin.
Until—
In the endless darkness of space, in a forgotten corner a long way from any star, a ghost appeared out of the void.
Faint gleams of starlight limned a shape vaguely resembling a creature that had once been known as “human.” The ghost knew that for billions of light-years around this spot there were no other beings who would have recognized a human shape. Its world and species had long ago disappeared, leaving no trace behind. That species, which had once created a civilization that had lit up a galaxy, conquered billions of worlds, destroyed countless foes, and enacted magnificent epics, had submerged in the river of history, which had, in turn, melded with the ocean that was time. Now even the ocean of time was about to dry up.
But at the end of the universe, at the moment when time was about to cease its flow, this ghost stubbornly wished to continue writing a story that was already concluded.
Floating in darkness, the ghost extended a limb—let’s call it an arm—and spread out five fingers. A tiny silvery spot of light hung in the palm.
The eyes of the ghost reflected the countless stars as it stared at the silvery dot, as though lost in reminiscence. The bright spot of light drifted up and down like a delicate firefly, so small that it could wink out at any moment, but also, like the singularity before the birth of the universe, embodying all possibilities. The bright dot was a minuscule wormhole connected to the great black hole at the heart of a galaxy, capable of releasing a galaxy’s worth of energy.
After some time—no one knew how long, as there was no one around who cared to measure the passage of time—the ghost issued its order. The bright dot dissolved into a silvery thread extending into the distance like an infinite timeline. In another moment, the thread unrolled into a white plane. A third dimension appeared as the plane undulated and gained thickness, but the thickness was insignificant compared with the width and breadth: The ghost had unfurled a giant sheet of blank drawing paper, and now floated above it.
The ghost spread its arms and glided. A light breeze followed its movements, and an atmosphere materialized out of nowhere. Beneath it, the sheet of paper seemed to react to the breeze, forming wrinkles and waves. The peaks and valleys soon solidified into mountains, hills, canyons, and plains.
Then came fire and water. As massive explosions erupted everywhere, oxygen and hydrogen, formed out of pure energy, combined into bright flames that coalesced into a sea of fire. New water molecules generated by the reaction fused into droplets, merged into clouds and mists, and then consolidated into torrential rain that fell against the newborn earth. The endless rain flooded the plains, converting them into vast oceans.
The ghost swept over the waters like a gigantic bird and landed on an empty beach. Stretching out its arms—one toward the waves and one toward the hills—it lifted both at once. Brontobytes of data stored inside its body came to life and, absorbing energy from the surroundings, took form; life appeared in water and on land, as though deposited there by a cyclone. Shoals of fish and pods of whales leapt out of the tides to honor their creator; patches of grass and stands of trees erupted from the soil, with beasts and creeping things wandering among them; flocks of birds large and small swept across the sky. The noise and bustle of life filled this new world, and as living things materialized, so did forests, grasslands, lakes, and deserts.
Having completed these tasks, the ghost still felt that the world lacked something important. It gazed thoughtfully into the dark sky until it realized what was missing. With a single finger, it described a circle against the dark velvet empyrean. Then, pulling the hand back, it flicked that finger, and a bright dot shot into the circle in the sky, turning it into a fiery golden orb. The familiar Sun had reappeared, or so it seemed. As sunlight refracted through the atmosphere, the whole world lit up: azure sky, clear and smooth as a mirror; cerulean sea, sparkling and shimmering.
The ghost bathed in the new light, which had long been absent from its existence. Intoxicated, it gently lifted its head.
This is just like that golden age long ago …
Sunshine gleamed against his skin and hair, filling in the outline of a typical human. It was obvious now—or would have been, if anyone had been around to observe it—that the ghost was no mere spirit, but a person, a “he,” a man from that long-ago world once known as “Earth.”
And this new world, just like the mythical Earth, beckoned to him with a sense of familiarity.
It was a shadow cast at the end of the universe by that ancient planet, long after it had been destroyed along with the innumerable human civilizations that had once inhabited it.
The ghost knew that, compared with the grand universe that had once existed, compared with even just the real Earth, this artificial world was tiny, inauthentic, and insignificant. He had created it anyway, so that the cosmic epic that had already concluded could go on just a bit longer. Even if his addition would not be a true continuation, wasn’t it a joy to be immersed in this virtual world for a few more moments, and to experience the dying embers of that imitation Sun, as the universe irresistibly wound down?
“Sunset for the universe,” he muttered.