TO THE END OF ETERNITY
By Manda Benson
The ship had been launched not half an hour ago, but with respect to the Galaxy it was accelerating into, a thousand years had already passed.
The acceleration continued in pursuit of light, and faster and faster sped elusive time in the ship’s wake. The centuries streamed by as the ship left the galactic plane, and still it strove on. At last the steady trickle of hydrogen into the reaction chamber dwindled away, and the ship sped frozen just beneath that fabled threshold. Eons passed. The Universe crumbled under the attrition of time.
The ship began to slow, and with it slowed the onslaught of time. The galaxies, once islands of light and life, were now dim spectres in the empty void.
In the desolation, the ship settled upon a cold lump of rock composed of carbon, silicon, and heavy elements, far above the burnt-out core of a once majestic barred spiral; a dim nebulous mass of white dwarf stars rotating steadily around a massive central singularity, hydrogen
exhausted through billions of years’ fusion.
The hatch on the ship’s pale flank slid back, and a space-suited figure stepped down onto the barren dust. He stood alone, at the end of eternity.
He went down on one knee beside his ship, and placed an object in a small impact crater.
It was a book, with pages of paper and bound in dark red leather.
The man straightened up, and surveyed the empty Universe.
“That ought to make Gideon happy,” he muttered, alone in the all-engulfing vacuum.
The man turned, climbed back into his ship, and sailed off into the eternal night.
- - -
Manda Benson lives in the Midlands of England and has a science-fiction novel, Dark Tempest, which was released in electronic format on the 15th of February.
By Manda Benson
The ship had been launched not half an hour ago, but with respect to the Galaxy it was accelerating into, a thousand years had already passed.
The acceleration continued in pursuit of light, and faster and faster sped elusive time in the ship’s wake. The centuries streamed by as the ship left the galactic plane, and still it strove on. At last the steady trickle of hydrogen into the reaction chamber dwindled away, and the ship sped frozen just beneath that fabled threshold. Eons passed. The Universe crumbled under the attrition of time.
The ship began to slow, and with it slowed the onslaught of time. The galaxies, once islands of light and life, were now dim spectres in the empty void.
In the desolation, the ship settled upon a cold lump of rock composed of carbon, silicon, and heavy elements, far above the burnt-out core of a once majestic barred spiral; a dim nebulous mass of white dwarf stars rotating steadily around a massive central singularity, hydrogen
exhausted through billions of years’ fusion.
The hatch on the ship’s pale flank slid back, and a space-suited figure stepped down onto the barren dust. He stood alone, at the end of eternity.
He went down on one knee beside his ship, and placed an object in a small impact crater.
It was a book, with pages of paper and bound in dark red leather.
The man straightened up, and surveyed the empty Universe.
“That ought to make Gideon happy,” he muttered, alone in the all-engulfing vacuum.
The man turned, climbed back into his ship, and sailed off into the eternal night.
- - -
Manda Benson lives in the Midlands of England and has a science-fiction novel, Dark Tempest, which was released in electronic format on the 15th of February.
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