Endings

Álfdís huddled under her thick quilt, trying to breathe through a gap without letting the cold air in, knowing as she did so that it was pointless. There were a few days left, perhaps, nothing more.

The house was quiet, only the sound of the wind and of her breath giving her ears something to perceive. Peeking out at the room, Álfdís could see that dawn was coming on. She gradually began to make out the rough planks of the walls and the stone fire pit in the center of the room as it got brighter with the new day. The fire pit had been cold and dark for weeks now.

When her bladder finally became more painful than the cold, she threw back the covers and sat up, reaching for the chamber pot. Its contents began to melt as she filled it with fresh, warm urine – and she resolved that it would have to be emptied this time before it refroze. Going outside in the wind was not appealing, but it was probably a good idea regardless. There was no food in the home. Perhaps she would be able to find something to put in her mouth if she went outside. It wasn’t impossible.

Hunger seemed to bore a hole through her.

Álfdís was used to harsh winters. All who lived in Greenland were very, very well acquainted with harsh winters. But the past few years had been too much.

She had told Egill. She had begged him – all of the others were leaving. Perhaps they could come back in the spring.

“My grandfather would want me to stay,” he would reply stoically. “This was his farm. He gave his life to build it up for my father.”

“Yes, but did he have the winter that we had? Did his last sheep die? Did all of his neighbors sail away and leave him alone here?” Álfdís had made this argument several times.

Egill would sigh and gesture around at his work. “Look how much seal meat we have. I can catch more – enough for us to make it through this winter. We need to be here to maintain this house over the winter! We would have nothing if we left.”

Álfdís did not know for sure what had happened to Egill. It could have been a fight with the skraeling – but it could have just as easily been a misadventure on his little fishing boat. One way or another, it eventually became clear that he wasn’t coming back.

She stood for a moment at the door, in no hurry to close it against the cold, as there was no warmth to keep inside anyway and there was a lull in the wind. Looking out at the frozen, empty land, Álfdís was aware of her loneliness. Was she the last of the Norse in this whole land? Surely the last of their former community. Would any ever come back?

She did not think they would.

Jose looked up, alarmed. He asked, “What happened?”

Juan, tall and tattooed, splashed through the swamp toward his kinsman. “Pedro killed one of the white settlers. They are hunting him now.”

Jose stood immediately. “You mean they are hunting all of us!”

“Yes. We need to go.”

Jose immediately began calling to his family, and the other families. “Everyone! We need to get our things and go.” To Juan he said, “South toward Mexico? It’s the only way.”

Juan agreed. He stood for a minute watching the activity, as he had no family yet and few possessions. The Karankawan, his part of the tribe at least, had only a few families. Maybe a few dozen people would be making this journey.

He was worried. The tribe had never been numerous compared to the newcomers, but years of fighting were reducing them to almost nothing. Years ago it was pirates, then Mexican settlers, then American settlers. Becoming Christian and taking Spanish names had maybe given them some protection, but not enough. Later, fighting for the Americans in the Texas war had simply gotten more of them killed. And now this. The Guadalupe River was not safe anymore.

A woman, Maria, called out to him, “Juan, help me with these things. I have these children to carry, and you have none.”

Juan hurried over to help her. Maria’s husband had been killed, as had so many. She was a bit older than he, but maybe he would marry her anyway. One thing he knew as he gathered the packs, and watched her with the children: these were his people. He would try to protect them.

Could his people, the Karankawan, survive?

John Miller walked through the empty office with a box of the last items he was salvaging. Old filing cabinets, papers, and some junky computer equipment were all staying for the landlord to deal with. Sure, the lease specified that he was not to leave such things when he vacated, but then the lease had also specified that he was to pay rent. His business hadn’t been able to do that in some time, so the left-over trash was probably the least of his sins.

John was philosophical about the bankruptcy. He knew most businesses failed. You don’t start a business without every relative, friend, and acquaintance telling you that. Even his dentist had told him so! But, if it hadn’t been for the recession, he might have actually pulled it off.

His hand on the door handle, John turned and looked at the place where he had tried to make his dream come true, lingering for a moment with a pang of regret. With a wistful smile, he turned off the light and left the building.

Cameras flashed, politicians grinned and posed, and all eyes turned toward President Gutierrez as he sat at his desk, took a pen, and slowly and carefully signed the document in front of him. Task accomplished, he laid the pen down and stood with a smile. Handshakes began all around.

“Congratulations!”

“Well done!”

“Historic day, sir!”

Off camera, political commentator Jeff Ramos resumed narrating for his television audience. “Well, there we have it. The Partition and Annexation Treaty has now taken effect. The world has six new nations, and the United States of America is now for the history books. Happy day for all, wouldn’t you say William?”

His colleague opined, “I’m sure a few tears will be shed for the sorry old USA, Jeff, but I think most can agree this day was long overdue.”

“I think we really have to hand it to President Gutierrez, or should we say former President Gutierrez, for the way he handled this—a delicate, difficult situation. He took heat from so many sides in this whole process, but sure came out smelling like roses. What fantastic leadership skills, pulling this all together.”

“A modern-day hero, sure. Let’s go now to Austin where it looks like there is going to be a news conference involving some of the transitional leaders.”

With a few minutes available for a break, Jeff stood up from his seat in the news studio to accept a cup of water from one of the newsroom staff members. His back reminded him how long he had been sitting. A busy news cycle was at its climax, and that meant long hours of work.

But as a seasoned journalist, he knew that the busyness would end and he would get a vacation at some point. News cycles or nations, all things must come to an end. Even the venerable United States of America, at last! After all they had been through, it was still a little hard to believe that it was done and North America could finally move on to the next chapter of its history.

Jeff sipped his water and rested.

Professor Sune huffed and puffed as she climbed up the rocks in this part of the trail. One of her students, a fresh-faced and curly-haired young woman named Allison, watched her from the top of the hill. I think Allison simply walked up these rocks! Disgusting, these young people and their athleticism! Dr. Sune thought to herself good-naturedly.

There was no need to make apologies for being slow. Everyone knew this was her last day of teaching. Retirement, getting old, and slowing down all tend to go together, and it’s amazing how much slack people will give you if you are pleasant and kind. And at any rate everyone was having a wonderful time in the beautiful weather.

A young man named Todd finally gave her a hand to pull her up over the last rock onto the crest. “Whew! Thank you!” As her students mingled and waited for Dr. Sune to catch her breath, a few of them looked at the rocks they could see by the trail, discussing what kind of rocks they were and what geological history they could infer from this little slice of Earth.

Geology and paleontology – nothing can compare to observing the world around you and seeing the whole stretch of history, the professor thought. Who can comprehend a million years, or a thousand million? Yet we can say something intelligent, and true, about what happened so long ago. We must if we are to understand our world. Yes, geology was in Dr. Sune’s bones.

“Professor, this line here – that isn’t the Tadrée fault, is it? We wouldn’t actually see it…”

“Yes!” she answered triumphantly, as a general movement of the students toward the fault took place. “It is! You can in fact see it here. The fault goes many kilometers down of course, but it is visible on the surface. That’s why we’re here.”

“So this is the bugger that shook up the city last year,” one of the students commented wryly, to general amusement.

She answered, “If you want to look at it that way, I suppose. But I wouldn’t be too hard on that bit of rock you can see there. The fault is hundreds of kilometers long, and of course it’s driven by forces deep inside the mantle. The earthquake wasn’t this rock’s fault.” An odd expression came over Dr. Sune’s face for a moment, and she exclaimed, “No pun intended!” Her students laughed with her.

After discussing the fault for a few moments, Dr. Sune posed a query. “You all know about the Tadrée fault, but what’s really going on here? What’s the significance of the fault?”

One of the students answered, “It’s where Africa and Europe are colliding. It’s building a mountain range.”

“Yes, it is,” she confirmed. “And this mountain range is in place of a sea that closed up. You have all heard of the Mediterranean Sea that used to be in this area?” She pointed toward a lake off in the distance to the west. “Look at Lake Mirable. One way of looking at it is that the lake is a remnant of that sea. It lies on the fault. It has been uplifted, but it’s where the sea used to be.”

As her students craned to look at the lake and the country around them, Dr. Sune contemplated her career and life. It was so hard to walk away from teaching and from academia when it had been her passion for so many years—but she also wanted to spend time with Michael before they got too old. She of all people knew that time was limited. In geology, she had learned that things as grand as seas and mountains were born, lived, and eventually died to be replaced by something else. How short a time a geology professor had to live before dying and being replaced by another!

She would take each day with gladness while she could.

Kevin glanced up nervously at the sun as he walked quickly into the low-slung brick office building and folded his umbrella. Don’t want to get burned. Got enough problems as it is. What else can go wrong today? he thought. Wiping the sweat from his face, he scanned the building directory, searching for his lawyer’s suite in this unfamiliar office. 106. Right…over that way. He hadn’t been to this building before; normally, they met on the other side of town.

He opened the door to suite 106 and went in. The office was a beige but still-decent-looking contrast to the cold gray stone of the building entryway. There was no receptionist, but after a few minutes of waiting in a chair, Kevin heard a door open and Roberta came out with her previous client.

“Hi, Kevin, sorry to keep you waiting! Come on in!” she waved him on.

Kevin quickly entered the room and sat back down. “Thanks for seeing me. I’m about at my wits' end here.”

“What’s she saying this time?” Roberta asked sympathetically, leaning in attentively at her desk. “The house again?”

“No, she’s ignoring the judge’s order…” Kevin explained the legal situation as best he could, Roberta nodding and asking a few questions.

The day really was going poorly. His one job for next week had fallen through, his toaster oven was on the fritz, and now Lisa was causing problems. He even found that he was out of simumilk this morning and had to make his oatmeal with water instead. And of course none of it might matter if the big news of the day was as bad as it seemed.

The conversation naturally drifted toward that topic. “I’m not sure I want that kind of a settlement,” Kevin told the lawyer. “Seems to me, I better get my money now. Might only have a year or two to enjoy it.”

Roberta let out a big sigh, and swiveled her chair around—with a giant squeak—to look out the window. Not that she really expected to see anything noticeably different. “I haven’t had much time to listen to the news today. Is it really that bad?” She glanced back at Kevin.

He gave a firm nod. “Absolutely. The disaster took out a full 5% of the screen. And it will get worse as the debris flies around and the system unravels. I don’t think we’re going to be able to patch this up.”

There was silence for a moment as they both stared at the desk, until finally Roberta gave herself a little shake and put a smile back on. “Tell you what – maybe you’re right. Let’s try to get that money now! And then maybe I should think about a sabbatical…”

Kevin chuckled. “I bet you’ll get even more busy if the end really is coming. For a while anyway.” Idly, he began musing internally. Yes, divorce lawyers and priests will probably see a boom. But obstetricians won’t be busy, he thought. No one’s going to want to bring a baby into what the world’s going to be like in a few years. That space screen was the only thing keeping the sun from frying us all.

Midori sat down on the floor of the habitat, bare legs sticky with sweat against the plastic, and glanced at her colleagues sitting there. The two of them left. Akio and Ren. Akio, as usual, had a quip for the moment.

“So, Eve was the first woman, and Midori will be the last. I don’t think the hab will survive this storm we’re about to get.”

Midori made a dismissive noise. “I’m not the last, silly. There are plenty of people on the colony worlds. And Eve wasn’t the first, either, as you well know.”

Akio persisted. “You know what I mean. Last on Earth. Those colony worlds are so far away they may as well not exist. Billions of years since we sent them out, and they’ve never even sent a thank you card!”

“Sure they did, lots of times, by radio. They’re only some years away at the speed of light. We aren’t forgotten here.”

Akio was trying to egg her on. “Lot of good that does us now. Even if we had a working radio, which we don’t, we are the most abandoned, lonely people who have ever lived.”

Ren finally broke in. “You’re both right, of course. I think we should keep in mind that there are others out there in the colonies. They will carry on. But how many years has it been since we had contact with another refuge? We really are the last people on Earth.” He thought for a moment. “You’re right, Akio. We are in the loneliest outpost in history. We can’t send a message out on the radio anymore, certainly not out to the stars. And no one will ever find any messages we write, because no one will ever come back to Earth. There won't be an Earth, soon.”

Ren wasn’t finished, Midori knew. He seemed to be building up to something. He continued seriously, “But still, I think we should go out with a certain dignity. We owe that much to all the ones who came before us and called Earth home. This is the planet that gave birth to our species! Think of all the history, nation after nation, struggles and achievements! Billions of years, with us at the end of it all.”

Midori smiled. Ren was always the romantic one. She said, “This habitat is about to be destroyed. Eventually, in a few million years maybe, the wreckage will melt into an ocean of magma as the sun melts the rocks. Then it will all become scattered atoms when the sun finally swallows up the planet. But yes, let’s have some ceremony, and let’s have some peace before we die.” She slid closer to Ren, and he put his arm around her.

Akio raised his cup of warm water and called out, “To Earth! May she rest in peace!”

Yglesi Schvetic pounded his fist down, in a manner violent even for one of his temper. “You cannot mean that, Sven! How could you be so irresponsible?”

“I am simply telling you, we will not back down. You must accede to our demands. You know we are in the right. You will be responsible for whatever consequences may follow if you do not accede.”

Commander Schvetic let out a strangled roar of frustration and stomped around the room. “How can you possibly speak of what is right when you threaten all of us, even yourselves? These are not weapons to use. They should have never been invented—they threaten our very survival on this planet! Simply carrying out that research was a worse crime than any of us has ever conceived!”

“Accede,” Sven stated simply.

“You know I cannot accept your demands. I cannot!”

“Very well.”

Commander Schvetic watched in horror as his enemy left the negotiating tent and began walking back toward his waiting car in the reddish light of the sun. Mind racing, he began to pace.

“What can we do?” he implored his officers. They grimly looked at each other. No one had any reply.

The colony world where this war raged had supported humanity for much longer than Earth itself had. Orbiting a red dwarf, the super-Earth was perfectly positioned to support people practically indefinitely: The small star would take hundreds of billions of years to burn through its hydrogen, while the strong gravity of the planet would hold on to oxygen and other gases quite effectively. Of course, that still does not mean forever. Even hundreds of billions of years will eventually pass.

In this case, the real threat to humanity’s survival was not the overheating of the sun as it was on Earth. Given long enough, even unlikely events become probable. It could have happened that a large meteorite killed all of the people - if the dice had come up differently. As it happened, humanity destroyed itself by creating and using biological agents far more dangerous than nuclear weapons. It was unlikely that someone would be so irresponsible, but eventually it happened.

The machine orbiting the unnamed star had no name, but it did have a record of its own assembly and it did have what could be thought of as a rather complicated serial number. But that was of no importance. The machine did not need a name or serial number because there were no other machines to communicate with.

The machine, a self-replicating robot of sorts, was in a predicament because it could not self-replicate. It had failing systems, no raw materials of any value, and no contact with any others of its kind. There were, in fact, no other robots operational any more. This was the last.

As complicated and impressive as biological organisms had been, machines were frankly better suited for survival in deep space and therefore for colonizing other worlds and surviving. There had been many robots like this one, and many other varieties as well, for a very long time—they had lasted several orders of magnitude longer than humans or other cell-based organisms.

But even they must come to an end.

From its orbit, the robot looked around itself. Other than the faintly glowing star and a few already-mined asteroids, there was nothing, just as had been the case for many years while the robot orbited.

The progenitors of the robot had been successful largely because they understood well how the universe operated. Stars were born and died, elements and dust were scattered by explosions and gathered by gravity. The machines had known about the expansion of the universe, and so it was no mystery why the sky gradually grew dim over the eons. Stars used up their fuel and burned out, and other galaxies receded as space expanded. Opportunities for reproduction and renewal grew limited.

As the last robot orbited, with fading power as its solar panels degraded, it knew it was alone at this star. It knew there might not be any other robots anywhere. It was not programmed to be particularly philosophical about that, or sad, but it did understand. It also knew it could do nothing about the situation anymore.

One-by-one, cameras and other systems were turned off to conserve power. Last of all, just the main computer processor remained, blinded and impotent.

What was the purpose of keeping a trickle of electricity running through its last circuits, when its fate was clear? Perhaps the robot simply held on to what life it could, while it could.

Eventually, that trickle ended.