We are far, far into the future- and here the earth is now so old that it has become almost alien, sundered from the vibrant and youthful thing we would recognise by time, vast and empty. It is quiet, and radiates only a murky and dull glow as it continues to sweep wide and silent paths through the black vacuum.
The sun is pale now- and to the dim eyes of the planet, it hangs dull and remote in a thin grey sky. The air is cold and still but for the feeble vestige of ancient winds, gliding limply over the dry, flat surface. The planet has begun to cool- its fires long since burnt low, leaving only red embers to smoulder in deep, eternal chambers. But here at the end of its life, time stretches abysmally- almost halting- and the long decay of the earth and its final dusty disintegration will continue for eons.
There are still humans here- in places- spread sparse across the surface where once great ancestors, and ancestors of ancestors journeyed- and there they remain. There is no more travel. Vast distances lie between sheltering pockets of habitation, and in these long, cold deserts are the remnants of forgotten cities, ancient relics and old, sad scars. But all is fading- baked and beaten by the earth’s old strength and slowly becoming as the sand and dust.
Many left over long ages, but grand expeditions- star-gloried or desperate- have too been forgotten, and the fortunes of distant colonies unknown. They that remain- the still masters of the earth- are no longer truly our own. Generations beyond count separate the races- generations so long and vast as to lead the species astray, or splinter it completely. But if a narrow lineage does remain, it is truly ancient now- thin and bare and frail- leaving to unwilling heirs a dry and dusty inheritance. The race has been built-high and razed-low times beyond number, knowing glory and star-grasped wonder, as well as writhing, dirt-housed despair. The will of man has been stretched to breaking, and is slack now.
Those few have little desire or impulse left that would be recognisable to us. But they do now know time beyond mortal comprehension, and this knowledge has laid-low sense and reason. Their minds are numb- endless years have exhausted body and will, but eternity remains. They exist to lethargy insurmountable- cursing vainly deathless bodies built by vanished madmen who long ago conquered mortality. Loathsome they reside- still and cold and silent- hunched with handing heads in dark tombs behind shining doors, with not the strength of will to move.
The human spirit was mighty, but it was not immortal, and therefore it could not forever serve the flesh. The will of man- rejuvenated only by eternal rebirth- was chained to the withered bodies of desperate men, and there it starved.
Their towers rise no more- the last of the builders- in their last desperate acts to escape the loss of the surface, burrowed deep into the earth, seeking the shelter and last heat of the old core. Excavations made by the powerful arsenal of man’s machines dug pits and shafts to unseen depths, and trenches whose walls merge with the horizon, but wide enough for the building of escaping ships by those who sought vitality elsewhere. Pits were deepened as the last of them that would know the open sky drained from the cities- leaving their tall towers and wide avenues to the machines that had served them.
Ever deeper the pits went- chasing the warmth- and the upper levels were left empty, and so they decayed. After long, access to them was lost and so the surface was forgotten, seen now as only long shards of bright light far above, falling through powdery air.
They looked out from dusty windows- those last few- on levels stacked one above another- pale houses lining long and buried trenches. But even here entombed they would find no end- man, as the master of death- had cursed his own grave, and he would never now know rest or peace.
Dain_
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