I just...
I’ve finished Outer Wilds. I spent so long trying to save everyone - first, when the probe went off, I thought that maybe the Nomai had done something. And then they did, but it hadn’t worked. Then I combed the solar system for a way, maybe, to prevent the collapse but your own people know it’s inevitable. Then, finally, I find the Vessel and I thought that maybe I could convince Gabbro to collect all our people, to put them on the Vessel and take a trip to the sun where the other Nomai were meeting. It was a long shot, yes, and we only had twenty two minutes, but it had to be possible.
I couldn’t tell Gabbro. More than that, I didn’t have their coordinates. More than that, their stable star very likely wasn’t so.
The universe ends. I didn’t spend very much time on Timber Hallow but it had been dear to me - it was distinctly home, with such small worries and quarrels - I remember someone telling me that this was why they’d been so worried about me going up to space.
The first time I died I fell into the sun. The second last time I died the sun crawled up to me. The last time I died, a billion suns are born, young and mewling, from something new.
We were something new, our civilization. Old, yes, the Nomai had spotted us, but so new to the sky. It was so acutely unfair that we would die just as we had started to escape our home, just as we had started to explore the planets that dotted the sky.
The Nomai had perished in a tight explosion, spewing something radioactive across our universe. Right before they found the eye. We’d find it for them.
It mattered that we did.
