The last thing to exist
I have been forgotten by the universe.
I know that now. After I survived the death of my star, my life force was prolonged past the natural state. The human boy Ryan helped me slowly learn of what I had lost. I learned my name, Eta Carinae, but I never remembered the memories from before I died.
Riftwalkers were always meant to have a definite end, we never feared that end, nor did most do anything to delay it. The death of my star was interrupted by an anomaly. I was displaced in the flow of time, and the existence of my consciousness persisted after my death. I remained there until Ryan and his friend, Carter, passed close enough for my soul to follow them. I was no longer suspended in time, but I had also lost all of my memories.
It took me some time to reform my body. I lingered around Ryan, drawing from his memories as I struggled to remember what living was, what having a body was. When I finally reformed it, Ryan quickly became my friend, and I accompanied him on his journey to find Carter, who he’d become separated from. After I recovered some of my past, I decided to bid Ryan and Carter farewell, and leave to search for my old star.
My journey took many, many centuries. I returned to Earth after my journey to find it thriving in interstellar trade with the other human planets. Ryan no longer lived. I knew he wouldn’t be there, but it still hurt.
I wandered among the human civilization for a couple thousand years. Sometimes I revealed myself as a Riftwalker, sometimes I kept it quiet. Eventually I left again, searching for other Riftwalkers and travelling past planets as a Solitary.
I watched new stars be born and old ones die in explosions that would eventually become new stars, new planets, and I watched the Riftwalkers of my generation slowly fade. As time drew on, I began to wonder about my own end. My star had died long ago, would I ever die? I still showed no sign of fading, my magic still as strong as ever. I continued my wandering and my wondering. Millennia passed in a blink of an eye, and any Riftwalker with a living memory of me died.
I was forgotten by the Riftwalker society, and any Riftwalkers I came across did not know the name of Eta Carinae.
Planetary life ceased, and the Riftwalker society stopped their Recordkeeping. The dusk of the universe was a lonely place, but the Riftwalkers I spoke to didn't remember any other way of life.
When the last star died, the only thing left in the universe was the debris of dead stars, the black holes slowly shrinking, and me.
I lost track of the eons here, the decay of black holes was incredibly quiet and slow. I spent much time in a stupor, floating in one point, lost in my memories. I relived my life over and over again. The boundery between wakefulness and dreams didn’t exist any more. It made no difference. My memories of Ryan were the sharpest, and I saw him many times. Sometimes, it was a memory. A memory of a time when my feet were pulled towards a solid object, and I had other colors to stare at besides black. Sometimes it was my imagination, and we explored many of the planets I had visited together in my dreams.
At some point, I realized I could no longer form my body as I used to. I had kept a physical form. The same one, in fact, I had walked alongside Ryan with, I could touch it and remember what it was like to touch things, but now it became harder and harder to maintain it.
I pondered this for some time, maybe another thousand years.
Then I came upon the answer, the atoms in my body were decaying. The final essence of the universe becoming undone at last.
I let my physical form fade. Maybe now, at the end of the universe, I would finally die.
.
.
.
A bright light formed without warning and enveloped me instantly, filling the universe with light so opaque I couldn’t see anything. I heard and felt nothing, as I still didn’t have a physical form, but this startled me. Something was happeningnow, long after all the stars had died. I had spent so long in silence and darkness I had almost convinced myself I wasactually dead.
I waited a long time for the light to fade, and the universe once again became dark, but now I could tell the universe was full of atoms, all of them hydrogen and helium, the two lightest ones. I waited again.
Slowly, the atoms drew closer and closer together, drawn by the force that was gravity, until enough formed for a blazing light to light up the universe, one I had seen many times before, and that I never thought I would see again.
The light of a new star.
After taking a closer look, this star was very different from the stars I knew. It was composed almost entirely of hydrogen and helium. It was the first star to synthesize heavier elements in this world. I watched it tirelessly, as more stars exploded into being around me.
Eventually, the star used up all its fuel, and exploded very quickly, spreading the contents of its supernova across the universe and leaving no stellar remixent behind.
I watched the fading trails of stardust radiate from where the star used to sit and reached around me, slowly collecting the newly forged atoms and bringing them close. I concentrated on the image in my mind; head, chest, arms, hands, legs, feet. Slowly, I worked.
Reflexively, I inhaled, but my lungs took in little air. I opened my eyes and the stars blazed around me. The vacuum of space was frigid, and the heat of the stars would have razed my skin had I been human. But this body wasn’t human, it was just an imitation of one, formed from lifetimes of living among them. I looked at my hands, and they were human hands.
I took another breath of nothing and smiled.