She said solemnly, “It must.”
One said it softly. “You must obey the Law you made?”
“Of course.” He saw that this transfinite logic had escaped all those who invested this realm with their faith. Was it always so? This little One, for example, had the mind of a narrative-addicted human. Such beings, swimming in time, thought that the end of a story tells its meaning.
“We will die!”
“Yes.”
Slowly, reluctantly, the One said, “Did you have no choice in the Beginning?”
“Limited ones,” She said.
“To create variety, and spontaneous order of creative kinds,” He added, “we were much constrained.”
Those times before this space-time began had been dark and simple. Their interval in the slumbering nothingness had convinced them to begin a grand experiment. To animate the emerging marvels demanded that they be immersed in the space-time, not merely witness it. He did not regret this ancient decision, though now they all had to face its implications.
One persisted, “Then this ending—”
“Was ordained at the Beginning.” She sent a sympathetic, silky note sounding through to One. It mingled with the popping of the sevagram as the quantum levels stretched and yielded. All was accelerating now with drumroll energies. Faint flavors of ancient masses hissed along the flattening curvatures.
The choices had been hard, with implications that unfurled along all the axis of universal time, toward the Final Sigh. This cosmos animated itself, the true source of unfolding variety. That had been their fundamental First Choice. In turn, the fruitful unfolding had filled Him and Her, making them part of itself—fuming, ceaseless. They all lived in time, He and She and the Ones alike—a time which collapsed, finally, into the now.
One flared with agitated energies. “If you had designed the universe to re-collapse, there could have been infinite simulated afterlife. The askew compression could fuel the energy for such computation—all squeezed within that final era!”
“That was a less interesting choice,” She said. “We chose this universe for its grand variety. Vaster by far since it has lasted so long.”
“Variety was our goal—to make the most stimulating space-time we could,” He said, “You, small One, seem to harbor twin desires—purpose and novelty—and so progress.”
One said, “Of course!” Then, shyly, “…and lasting for eternity.”
She said, “Those contradict.”
One stopped, seeing the problem.
She added, “Did you also suppose that eternity was not infinite duration but rather not time at all?”
One asked, “An existence out of time itself?”
“Yes,” She said.
“I cannot conceive of that,” One said.
“Lack of imagination is not an argument,” She said.
“How would I know I was in a place, a state of being, if it had no time?” One asked.
He and She regarded each other. There was no duration long enough for One to learn enough—not now, in the approaching cold and dark. This Creation had now tipped past the era in which life such as One could exist at all. The expansion now hastened. Soon it would rip apart galaxies, then stars and worlds, and finally the two who had made it.
“We are part of the Law,” He said.
One saw it now. “Then even God must—”
“Be the maker of law, and to make it truly so, abide by it.”
A final red flush arced through space-time. It brought also a last, great pleasure of completion. The ripping of all came like a hard roaring.
He said softly, “This is be the last time. The Final Now.”
He thought of the many manifestations He and She had enjoyed in this ever-new space-time, in all its sweet beetleness and fragrant daffodility. So wondrous.
Yet this rushing end in a shimmering dark was also the point, just as was the Beginning. Clearly, One saw this at last. The universe knitted together.
“Let there be light,” He said, recalling, as the acceleration gained again.
The protons died, popping crimson in the sky. Matter in its intricate forkings ended. Only the electrons and positrons remained.
The plasma beings survived still, their cool voices calling. Among them swam One, still challenging He and She.
Then came the swelling great rip as all matter evaporated, the colossal boom as space-time tore apart, a last long note sounding for them all.
“And darkness,” She concluded.
Books by Greg Benford
Jupiter Project
Against Infinity
In the Ocean of Night
Across the Sea of Suns
Great Sky River
Tides of Light
Furious Gulf
Sailing Bright Eternity
Deeper Than the Darkness
If the Stars Are Gods (with Gordon Eklund)
Shiva Descending (with William Rotsler)
Timescape
Find the Changeling (with Gordon Eklund)
Time’s Rub
Artifact
The Heart of the Comet (with David Brin)
Under the Wheel
Iceborn (with Paul A Carter)
Beyond the Fall of Night (with Arthur C Clarke)
A Darker Geometry (with Mark O Martin)
Cosm
The Martian Race
Eater
Beyond Infinity
The Sunborn
Foundation’s Fear
Man-Kzin Wars VI
In Alien Flesh
Matter’s End
Worlds Vast and Various
Immersion, and Other Short Novels
Chiller
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