Nothing III: Steve

Static hiss. A crackle, as though somewhere a telephone receiver has been picked up.

“Krzt. You certainly took your time,” says a noticeably bored voice. “13.9 billion years—that works out to …” The voice pauses briefly to think. “That’s almost an hour.”

We do not understand. Caught off guard and bewildered, we finally ask, “What is that supposed to mean? Who is there?”

The voice speaks quietly, as though addressing someone in the background. “He finally made it. I’ll wrap this up real quick, then I’m calling it a day. See you later.”

Rustling passes through the ether, as though someone were tidying a desk.

“Krzt! Uh, right. Where were we?”

As the flying sun traces its path above us, warning lights flare across our holographic visor. Numerous data buoys at the outermost edge of the universe have lost contact. It makes no sense to us. There is no life there, no matter or anything of the sort.

“Who are you?” we finally manage to ask. “And what kind of planet is this?”

A hint of fear enters our voice as more buoys fall silent. Dozens of light-years from the edge. Closer to inhabited clusters. The strange thing is that the failures are not occurring in different places, but along every boundary at once.

“Steve. My name is Steve,” the voice crackles. “And you just pressed the button that ends the test. Honestly, you took your sweet time. Who spends that long working on a picture?”

The signal beacons begin failing at an accelerating rate, at a speed surpassed only by Nothingification. Like a wave, sectors flip from active to inactive, until the wave crashes against the space station where the image within the image within the image is safely stored behind an elaborate security system.

Whatever this phenomenon may be, it stands no chance against autocannons.

“Aaaand it’s gone,” Steve crackles.

And indeed: where a space station existed only a blink ago, there is no longer a single ping.

“1.1 million years wasted. If you hadn’t dawdled so much, you might even have made the top ten.”

Nervously, we tap the visor. Try to issue commands and visualize the image within the image within the image. Nothingification does not work here, so we are forced to rely on technology.

No response.

It is as though every outer sector has simply vanished.

An attack?

Impossible!

We experience our first outburst of rage in eons:

“Have you been watching us this entire time? Why are you attacking us? What happened to our picture? Speak, or you will face a wrath no one can withstand!”

An unfamiliar heat boils in our stomach, for nothing has provoked us this deeply since the Union.

Steve sighs loudly. “I knew this was going to be difficult. This isn’t an attack. I’m uninstalling the simulation. Your picture no longer exists. It’s been reclaimed. We simulate the birth and end of our own universe. We feed helium and water into the server, season the whole thing with the constants of nature, and the rest unfolds on its own. It’s quite interesting how differently things turn out every time.”

We check the visor. Countless outer galaxies have vanished. Whether they were attacked or fragmented cannot be determined from here. All we know is that not a single signal is coming from them anymore.

The wave of annihilation continues to gather speed as it tears its way through the universe. It plows through our Empire and everything we have cultivated.

Garden worlds and industrial worlds perish in moments.

Contact with the home world, Tetra 232, is lost.

“No!” we finally scream as the wave threatens to engulf the Ark of Life.

Trillions of life-forms, hand-selected and raised with care. Believed safe for all eternity.

Veil whales whose wings pierce the clouds.

Fenris hounds, the most loyal companions in the universe.

Rainbow pheasants, by far the most beautiful creatures in existence.

Bunga Bunga …

“Don’t take the Ark from us!” we scream at Steve, hammering our hands against the button in an attempt to stop the process.

“Sorry, man,” Steve replies, exhaling heavily. “I’m not stopping it. The sole purpose of this simulation has been fulfilled. We watched you because you were the dominant species. Nothing more, nothing less. But that was an interesting maneuver. The Union, I mean,” Steve says in a tone that sounds as though he is trying to cheer us up. “You eliminated internal conflict that way and could focus entirely on external threats. We haven’t seen that one before.”

As though possessed, we hammer at the controls on the visor. Activate Prometheus mines, drone swarms and eruption cannons.

After a moment’s hesitation, we finally scream, “Prepare the final bomb!”

Flashes of light streak across the visor; enough firepower to destroy an entire solar system.

“Fire!” we scream into the vacuum. “Launch everything! The station must not fall!”

Silently and without warning, the symbol changes.

We fall to our knees, for the uninstall has reached the Ark. Every signal is gone. Along with every living thing aboard it.

Steve’s voice scratches through the silence:

“You should’ve seen the transmorphic terra spiders. 13.1 billion years of pure efficiency. Absolute peak performance—and a joy to watch.”

Shaking our head absently, we realize that no other life remains. The visor shows no signals beyond the center of the universe.

We are the last.

As we look out into space, toward where the labyrinth of black holes and quasars once was, there is nothing.

Not the Nothing we were able to penetrate.

“Our life’s work,” finally escapes our lips. “We were perfect. Indestructible. Divine. If only we had never pursued that one final mystery.”

Rage has given way to resignation when Steve says, “Almost everything’s uninstalled now. You only bypassed your rules with Nothingification, but we’re the ones who defined the rules of the game. Well played, I have to admit.”

The artificial sun and false moon drift above our head. Radiant infinity stretches beneath our feet, and the planet’s core is visible within it. A pulsating mass, as though all the matter in the universe were gathered there now.

Opaque darkness devours the radiant white planet.

“If it’s any consolation,” Steve insists, “you’ll be uploaded to the archive. Just like all the other winners.”

“Bunga Bunga too?” we ask, though we already know the answer.

“No,” Steve replies.

As the darkness crawls up our legs, we feel no pain.

Everything is Nothing and Nothing is everything.

“Man, I can’t wait for the best-of at the end of the week,” Steve can be heard saying enthusiastically in the background.

Static hiss. The connection is terminated.

Our torso disappears.

Then our limbs.

And finally, we are:

Nothing.

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