Still, We Wait

STILL, WE WAIT

by Nico VC

Content warnings: Mentions of dead civilizations, end of the universe.

The Observer was still there, watching the end of all things.

She stood on the low ridge that sagged toward the soft, grey landscape that had once been the sea. She was motionless in the deathly quiet, her form obscured by the crystallized spiderweb of tendrils that served as a shawl. Even as the Traveller peered at her from the base of the ridge, she seemed smaller and sunken, barely more than a statue.

It was only in that moment, seeing her, that the Traveller realized how long it had truly been. When ae had left, the ocean still existed—not yet frozen, not yet evaporating and rising in faint whisps into the stars above. Now, not even a trace of its vapour remained, leaving behind a flat plain stretching into the distance. Even so, the sun shone, faint as lamplight, casting a warm, orange glow. The Traveller paused at the top of the rise to glance at the star, trying to remember if ae had known the name of it once.

As the Traveller drew up to the Observer, ae could properly see the pose in which she had frozen: shoulders hunched, drawn inward to keep the shawl around herself, fingers just barely poking out past the crystalline meshwork as if she were holding her hands out in supplication. Her face had softened much like the hill, apart from the pinpricks of her eyes which shone with the intensity the stars once carried. The surface of her skin was smooth and shiny, although its curves suggested the familiar features that the Traveller remembered so well.

The weight of how long it had been pulsed through the Traveller’s body, and ae dropped aer gaze to the ground. “Oh, now. Come on. Don’t look at me like that.” Aer voice, if one could call it that, did not need to carry in the airless expanse; it was not something vocal at all. Still, the unexpected expenditure of energy seemed to set the ground itself to resonating, as if the planet was surprised.

Perhaps ae should have continued to feel defensive. Years ago, the Traveller would have argued for aer decision to leave. Now, ae was just glad to have found aer way home, to her. Slowly, ae shifted the broad scarf ae had worn for the last, lonely part of the journey, and slipped it over the Observer’s hunched shoulders. It had been made by the Patchwork People the Traveller met on an icy moon, the last ones ae had spoken to. Now, the soft fabric, intricately woven in fractal patterns, clung to the tendrils of the wire-frame shawl that wreathed the Observer. Her eyes flickered, sparking awake. Although she had not moved, the Traveller felt her focus shifting away from the horizon, toward aer. The tiny, subtle change seemed to be a question—How did it go?

Ae had expected the question, having spent years reciting what ae would say in response, all the story fragments and small artifacts that would prove that ae had found answers out in the void. The Traveller’s hand did not leave her shoulder, even as aer gaze slid down the hill. “You were wrong, you know,” ae said. “There were plenty of civilizations out there, even this late. I’d even say the universe was crowded for a while there.” The Traveller gestured at the sky—deeper than the ocean that had existed when ae left. It was an infinite, soft black, tipped with copper at the far edge of the horizon where the tiny sun drifted.

“There were so many,” ae continued. “I forgot most of their names. But I’ve been so excited to tell you about all of them.” Aer free hand closed around one of the artifacts under aer cloak. Worn under the scarf, the cloak had remained vibrant, its colours shifting like bismuth. The motion set the brittle strands that held all aer collected artifacts knocking against one another. The Traveller unclipped the tiny, clear bulb, and—after a moment of hesitation—laid it in the empty hands cupped in front of the Observer. “They gave me gifts. This was from… the Last, I think they were calling themselves when I left.”

The memory, from longer ago than the Traveller would have liked to admit, lit up aer thoughts like a young sun: a civilization of minds, stretched out in wire-thin networks spread between the stars, living as data and stories, racing near-instantaneously between wires to find one another. Their explorers had been so thrilled to meet someone from beyond the network, and had asked the Traveller so many questions. The Last, they had called themselves, but they had not been the true last—that had been the Patchwork People.

“This was theirs,” the Traveller explained. “They told me these hosted the souls of their dead. The bulbs… and the souls, too, apparently, would reignite when the end came, when the energy returned to the world. Strings of these things stretched an entire solar system.”

Under aer hand, a faint vibration rippled through the Observer’s back. The Traveller’s hand fluttered, instinctively about to pull away. Then, tentatively, the Traveller pressed aer hand against her back. Even though the contact was muffled by the cloth against aer palm, the touch felt alien and wonderful, after so long alone.

Ae lifted the soul-bulb from the Observer’s cupped hands, holding it to her face. Her jewel-bright eyes lit up the inside of the glass. “And then there were the people living in those interstellar spheres,” the Traveller continued. “Remember, we used to talk about them?” 

The Traveller had spent an unknowable time walking on the inside of those system-spanning spheres, the unfamiliar tingle of air running across aer skin, inhaling the deep smell of ancient vegetation and old civilizations effortlessly melding together. The few people left had stared at the Traveller as if ae were some distant god, their eyes glowing with reflections from the last artificial suns. They hadn’t believed ae’s own awe that the spheres were still populated. Now, the Traveller wondered if they remained, in that pocket of the old universe.

“There were so few left there, but I saw their remnants,” ae continued. “They told me their ancestors began to carve into the spheres themselves when they ran out of room. They had these spectacular sculptures…”

The Traveller stammered to a halt as ae noticed the faint light had begun to reflect the smooth traces of the Observer’s face differently, highlighting the deep grooves that housed her eyes. She was turning, looking over—looking at aer.

And, making eye contact for the first time, the Traveller remembered the conversation that had prompted aer departure and the question the Observer had asked an unimaginably long time ago.

Are you sure you’ll find what you’re looking for out there?

Ae had left the hillside when the sun had glowed hot and red in the sky, a massive firework rather than a quiet coal. Once, the Traveller and the Observer had visited planets together, when they had called each other different names, before life in the universe had grown few and far apart. As time itself drew to a close, the Observer had chosen to remain here, on this frozen planet that had once been a home.

The Traveller had been furious, determined to find a way beyond the end. You’re giving up. Ae remembered standing on the white beach, feet in the cold water of the still ocean, trying to recover aer calm. The stars had been numerous beads, stabbing at aer eyes from even that distance. There had been air—it had smelt like salt, and like distant creatures. Somewhere past aer feet, the beach had dropped off into a much deeper abyss, almost as dark as the sky—a plain that had housed the shells of ancient buildings, long gone to ruin. There was no trace of them now that the ocean itself had long frozen and evaporated.

Ae had been angry back then at what had seemed like complacency, at the Observer’s disinterest in following. There must be something beyond, ae had insisted. We can’t have achieved our endless existence just to be defeated by the end of everything.

And now, the stars were few, but they glowed with the memories of the worlds that had been there. And what did ae have to show for it?

The Last had told aer their theories about the end of everything. There will be a new universe after this one. They told aer about how the sky would grow bright for the first time in millennia, how a crack would form in the universe. The stories differed between individuals, between centuries. The darker stories said that the universe would be a place of nothing—that only the creeping darkness that existed between stars would remain. Many of the Last said that the new universe would be a rebirth, erasing those that came before, bursting with new energy and light, unaware of the stories and the people whose place it was taking.

Yet one of the Last had told aer hopefully that the new universe would connect with this one; a creation, not a destruction. Perhaps, new beings would appear through the crack in the sky, arriving from some far-off place. They would need to be godlike, the Last speculated, if they were to find their way here. In the Traveller’s imagination, these beings were the size of planets, built out of interlocking rings of infinite colours, with wings made of solar sails, reflecting a bright light that came from nowhere. And when these beings appeared, the Last—or whoever was left, perhaps only the Observer herself, the Traveller thought—would welcome them. We have so many stories to share, she would say. There were so many of us here. We did so much.

Perhaps it was that hope, and the fact that it might not come to pass, that had made the Traveller frightened to return to this quiet planet, to finally be motionless, to watch the last stars flicker out in the sky, to watch the gentle lamplight of the last star go out over the empty ocean plain—

“What if…”  The bulb trembled as the Traveller trailed off, and nearly slipped out of aer hands. Ae gripped it frantically, mind filled with the image of it shattering against the slope. Ae couldn’t remember the last time aer hands had shaken.

And as ae looked up, ae saw that the shine of the Observer’s eyes had grown, now softly breaking through previously-hidden hairline cracks in her face. She tilted her head as she looked at aer, in that playful, rueful way that was so familiar. Her hands lifted free of the wireframe shawl, to properly grasp the clear bulb between her fingers; slowly, gingerly, almost timid.

The Traveller moved to face her directly, enclosing her hands and the bulb in aers. The old fear, from long before ae had left, pricked at aer eyes. But the Observer’s hands were warm, and her face glowed brighter than the planet, and her smile was real.

“I knew you’d be back,” the Observer said.

“I’m sorry I left. You were so alone…”

“But now you’re here.” The Observer’s fingers flexed, stiffly clamping around the bulb, fingertips brushing against the Traveller’s hands. The Observer’s eyes were the stars from when the universe was younger—silver, pinprick-bright, shining out from deep sockets.

“What if it’s just us, now?” the Traveller asked. “What if no one else made it to… here? To now?” 

“They were here.” She raised their interlocked hands, lifting the clear bulb to let it catch a bead of light from the rising sun. “They were all here. And wasn’t it glorious?”

She drew close, pressing her body against aers, their hands and the bulb pinned between them. Her chest had begun to grow warm too, and the deep vibrations—of her, of the planet, of the sky—thrummed through aer body, steadying aer shaking hands.

“It was,” the Traveller said.

Her smile lit up the quiet sky, as if the entire ancient universe resonated in sympathy. “Let’s watch the sun. You can tell me about all of them.”