Conclusions

“When I look back on my like, I can't help but see an unavoidable chain of events.” A tall man closed his hands behind the small of his back as his eyes gazed outside the clear window to the pitch darkness that lied beyond it.

“Thats ridiculous.” A voice replied from behind him, an annoyed tone resonating with it.. It was an soft voice, with a light inflection.

“Do you believe things could have been any different? You've been around for everything, watched as it all came together after all.” He turned, long dark hair spilling down his shoulder as he did so, his look serious.

“Thats not how it works. There is no grand story to history. Things just happen. Its looking back on it that imposes a sense of narrative. We've all made our choices. It was our decisions that shaped how things turned out. YOUR decisions that shaped how things turned out.” She snapped the line at the end, bitterness screaming and scathing.

But, the bitterness was brushed away. “And yet here we are, just as we were always going to be. Doesn't that drive you mad?” A small and amused smile crossed his face as he took a step towards the direction of the second voice. “Don't you hate your self for it? For never having seen it coming before now?” He shook his head slightly, the look still set crossed his face. “Every little thing is so painfully obvious now isn't it? Now that its to late, you have all the answers don't you?” He reached a hand down, rubbing her cheek slightly, trailing slightly through her light brown hair.

“Its not to late.” She said softly, looking up, tears starting to well up in her eyes, voice with the slight bit of hope present.

“It is for some people.” His voice was low, without emotion on that one, his hand pausing on the side of her face for but a moment before falling away.

“Are you trying to goad me?” The hope was gone, only resignation remained for her.

“Its already over. You know its going to end here.” He stood, walking around to the back of her chair, releasing the fastening bonds that held her there.

“Just like it was always going to right?” Her voice sad as she stood, stretching her arms slightly as she did so, eyes turning to look up at him as she did so.

“You're catching on.” His amusement was back as he walked over to her and put an arm around her shoulder.

“I could resist, you know. Theres still a chance...” She was cut off with a slight wave of his hand.

“No. Theres not. And thats why you haven't tried anything. Somewhere in your head, your starting to realize.”

“You can't blame fate. You can't say this was all meant to happen. This was always your choice. Even if you could somehow convince me that you never had a choice, that you were a slave to yourself, or fate, or whatever you blame, it would still be our fault for letting you do it, of not stopping you while we had the chance.”

He shook his head with slight disappointment as a door slid open and out of the way before them, allowing them to walk into a room much the same as the bland metal one that they had just left, the apparent difference being the large databases sitting against the walls around the rooms.

“Thats just it. You didn't stop me because you didn't think this is where it would lead. You didn't see where it would go because it wasn't in your nature. Any of your natures. Everyone in the world, everything that has ever happened in the history of man kind, its all led up to this singular moment. It all had to happen exactly as it did for us to even be standing here.”

His arms gestured around the room at the items that lied there. “How could you say that it could have turned out any different when the sheer odds of how it did go were worse the the evolution of intelligent life?”

His arm slipped from her as he walked to one of the machines and began hitting a few buttons. He stood for almost five minutes, looking over the data that the machine was displaying before letting out a long sigh. “Its done.”

“So thats it then?” She asked, reaching a hand towards the machine.

“Yes. The human race is no more.” He turned to look at her, his voice void of anything. “Though by all means, they've been dead for more than five hundred thousand years.”

“Why?” She whispered, as she fell to her knees on the ground.

“You knew this was how it would happen.” He said walking back to her, kneeling down before her. “Or did you still cling to some notion that somehow things could turn out differently than where we are? That the final choice would somehow be different?”

“I thought... I had hoped...” She choked out a small cough from the crying. “Maybe there was something still human in you.”

A hand reached up to her face and rubbed it softly once more. “And thats why your here with me at the end. The only person that has ever believed that maybe there was something that you considered good in me. I thought, for a time, that maybe I could give up on where I was going, that I could just live normally.” He trailed off before standing up and walking away from her. “Be happy. With you.” He shook his head.

“But then you rejected me, and that set everything back on course. But, as the course was never really altered, I guess that means that the illusion that it had a chance of working out differently was just my mind playing with it. I've had...a few billion years to dwell and think... but you know that first hand. So have you.”

“Your saying this is my fault?” Anger, but also shock at the possibility.

“No. You acted in the only way that you could have. I'm saying its no ones fault. Things played out how they were going to. Why can't you see that?”

He turned to another of the machines and began typing once more.

“What are you doing? I thought it was over?”

“It is. For them. For us.” He shook his head. “But existence can't end.”

“I thought existence had no value?” It was all that was left, this conversation. Everything else in the universe had faded away, the human races collective consciousness stored in a fictional world generated by the mainframes where they lived in bliss, powered by the infinite cosmic energy that existed in space. All that was left, all that still existed, was them, in this place, and the words that flowed between them.

“A game has no value. You play it until the end, beat it, and thats it. There was no real point in the activity other than to divert your attention from the monotony and the passage of time.” He said as he worked. “But there always has to exist that game.”

He chuckled. “What did you think the rest of these computers had been working on? Do you really think that it took this much power to simply govern the programing required to keep a fictional world going for only a few billion people? That was only an infinitely small fraction of the amount of power that I demanded be built for me in this place when I was appointed caretaker.”

“Then what was it doing?”

“...Calculating how the universe began, and how to recreate it.”

“You can do that?”

He paused as he hit a button. “Why do you think I chose now to end things? Why do you think I woke you from your slumber to witness it? I'm going to bring light back to the darkness.”

“Your going to continue that which is pointless?”

“Everything is pointless, even non-existence is pointless. That means that regardless of what I do, nothing has any value. So restarting existence has the same value as letting it fade away.”

“...Will we survive this?”

“...I wouldn't do that to you. This is the only thing with a wide enough effect to bypass every contingency that I have set in place for those of us who transcended mortality through the network.”

“So this isn't just about bringing the light back, is it? Your going to kill all of us as well? Everyone that you knew?”

“Why are you angry? You all concidered it a gift at first, but after a few thousand years you began cursing me. But still, you never looked for a way to die.”

“We wanted to die.”

“What stopped you?”

“We couldn't shake the feeling of being responsible for our race.”

“They're gone now. Can't you let yourself die without regrets?”

He walked back to her, bending down to kiss her on the forehead while wiping away her tears.

“I always did love you. Even if I loved nothing else.”

“I know.”

“I lied.”

“About what?” She pulled against his chest, tears soaking into his shirt.

“I extended the network to exist past any realm of existence the rebirth of creation will touch.”

“...We're never going to die?”

“...I told you, I wouldn't do that to you.” His hand stroked her hair. “I'm setting all of you free.”

“Then why did you...?”

“...Someone has to stay and make sure that things go correctly after it.”

Somewhere far away in the universe, a massive blast of energy began sweeping through it with near impossible speeds.

“I'll carry the burden for you, so that you can rest in peace.”

“...you did this all for me?”

“The universe will exist once more, with me watching over it for eternety.”

He sighed.

“In the end, my purpose was to set you free, but as I'm the one that bound you originally, that purpose to is without meaning.”

He laughed, a true laugh this time as light swept over them, mirth at the bitter irony.

“And thus this universe has a purpose; So that you may die in peace.”