My examinations are over and the results are coming up on Thursday. I think I did pretty badly for my Math, trying not to think about that. Anyway, I am very geeky about anything and everything relating the universe. How it began, how it will end, why is it here. Both philosophically and scientifically. I'm not very clear on the Science end, but it's still very interesting to me.
Spacetime
Arthur stands in silence, his feet rooted to the metal platform anchored in space, the earth's gravity holding it to its position. In minutes, the last strands of attraction would snap and the ship would drift free.
Soon, the blasters would be flipped on with ease. Arthur would try to make sense of all the mathematical equations flashing past on the screen, Alfred would pilot the ship and they will make their leap to a new part of the universe.
Everything was dim in the ship; it was an effort to conserve as much energy as possible. If things did not work out where they were headed to, it was best that the ship could support life for as long as possible. Shadows flickered in the corners and only brief sections were illuminated, unnaturally cold air was swirling around and the radiators whirring in the background.
This felt like isolation.
The earth looks so peaceful from up here, the view only marred by the fingerprints Arthur left when he touched the freezing cold window. She looked so radiant, the sun lighting up half of her elegance while the other half was lost to darkness and left to the care of the moon.
That was all going to be gone now.
They created a lock around the earth, a lock that was based in space-time. No one will ever be able to access the earth from the outside. She was too fragile in her state, she had to recuperate and she could not be disturbed, she could not be harmed. Not ever again. She had to be lost.
This time, Arthur wasn't just destroying a race. He was destroying the species of man, and all the other species that deemed Earth as their home. It was so much more than genocide. It was less bloody, more disastrous. Arthur would call it immoral but he no longer knew where the lines of right and wrong blurred.
The night sky was littered with stars, each of them shining steadily, each with varied distances to their present location. All of them were very far away. The closest one was the sun and her rays will stop lighting up the earth today.
They were enclosing the earth and all her children in a box. After today, life on earth will stop indefinitely. Time will not move. Arthur was like a child throwing his toys in a box after he was done playing. He was never going to be taking them out again.
"The cube will seal itself soon."
Arthur wanted to snarl, wanted to sneer and snipe but he couldn't. All he could do was to stare out at his home that was burning from the inside and try not to cry. All of the wars that devastated the planet amounted to anything, not when they were being compared to the end of the world.
"My people are down there and they don't have a clue."
"You know that this had to be done. They would always end up back here, whichever road they take, and we will always have to do this for them. We're the only ones who will ever know."
Arthur stiffened, eyes watering but still staring determinedly at the earth still revolving around the sun, still spinning on its axis, still living. The light will turn off on this world in a moment and no one would ever know why. No one but the both of them.
"You have to man the navigator, Arthur. Come on, it's time to go. The universe awaits."
"Don't you care? They're all going to die in a few minutes. Don't you mind that we're murdering all of them? They won't wake up after this."
"Caring about them won't help me save them. They either burn alive or their existence gets snuffed out and they were never there. I know which one I'd choose."
"I'd choose to burn."
Alfred sighed and his lips were at Arthur's cheek before he turned away and padded out of the observatory, leaving Arthur to his own devices as the tears began to brim over and trickle down.
Thoughts began to flood Arthur's consciousness. Why must they do this? Were they created for this sole purpose? Were they just pawns in someone's great chess game? Were they in a child's dollhouse, being moved as to her desire?
They had millennia to consider all of those questions but nobody ever paid much heed. People asked about the stock prices, the weather and yet they failed to ask the most fundamental questions of them all. They were all fools in their own private games.
Three-dimensional space and the fourth was time. If they could move around in the first three dimensions, it made no sense why they couldn't in the latter. But if only they had discovered how to manipulate time before their eventual deaths came to meet them.
Every time Arthur was reborn, he could remember all the times previously he did this and it never got easier. Also, it was always with Alfred by his side. Their destinies were intertwined from the start to the end. As far as the both of them understood, this would never end. It was a cycle. The universe was created, earth was created, earth's kidnap from the skies, the universe as they knew it would close and then it began all over again.
Like each time, Alfred kept his ship anchored just outside of the vacuum and far enough away from the black hole that was going to suck everyone into oblivion. They always stayed to watch before putting the ship to travel at high speed. The plan was to travel to the edge of the expanding universe and stay there till they couldn't stay alive any more.
They had always said that man's thirst for knowledge is its fall from grace.
Arthur heard Alfred's footsteps long before the American entered the room. The shift in the air was enough to verify that claim.
"Let me do something for you," Alfred whispered, hand gentle on Arthur's shoulder.
"There's nothing you can do. My heart gets broken today, just like all the times before. Leave me to my misery."
"I won't."
Alfred pulls Arthur from his sanctuary, the Briton's eyes still unable to tear from the view of the globe beneath him, catching any fleeting glimpse he could. Even as he passed the winding corridors all he had was the image of his people burned behind his eyelids. All the passageways, sickeningly white. Just like the hospitals they had down there, the hospitals where people were getting treated for their various illnesses. It all wouldn't matter in a few minutes.
They went to the lift in the centre of the ship, it was enclosed in glass with the floor numbers merely lights on a screen. Arthur vaguely registered the beeps of keys as Alfred typed in his authorisation. It wasn't long before he felt the platform rising higher and higher.
And higher still.
When the lift finally slid to a smooth stop, the stainless steel ceiling slid off to reveal more transparent glass. The humming of the lift and deep breathing was the only thing the both of them heard. Arthur was clutching Alfred's blouse tightly, green eyes wide and searching. They were surrounded, completely surrounded.
"How the hell—" Arthur's voice was caught in his throat and his sentence was cut off midway. But Alfred understood the sentiment.
Alfred smiled softly, "I remember, you know? All the times you would cry silently in your room, all the times you would tell me that you were fine. All the times you were lying."
Arthur couldn't tell if he wanted to sob or laugh.
Meteoroids, comets, constellations, asteroids, all of them were so close and there were so many. Arthur could see the satellites they sent up into space glinting off light from the sun. The atmosphere around Earth, giving his most beloved planet an ethereal glow. This was what he had been living for. His people, his planet. And all those continued on, light-years and light-years away. Nobody really knew how big was the universe. It could still be expanding even now, for all infinity. It might never end.
But Arthur knew he'll face this decision again and he would always choose the same thing. He'll blink Earth out of existence... and it always comes back. He always comes back.
Alfred's hand closed around Arthur's shoulder and he forced in a shuddering breath. Eyes still flickering around him.
He could see all the stars. All of them were so bright, twinkling in the wide expanse of space. They seemed like they were all floating around the both of them. He could see galaxies in the far off and the brightest stars emitted tendrils that curled in his vision, everywhere Arthur turned, there was more.
He was so insignificant, in the big plan of everything, he was barely a speck.
"Look at the universe."
Arthur lifts his eyes.
End.
I blame Wikipedia for having so much information that I am unable to process but ridiculously intriguing nevertheless. Hope nobody got bored. This is one of my more indulgent pieces, this was more to satisfy my imagination. Sorry!