Captain’s Log: 1095750-HT
Format: Scheduled Audio Recording, Captain’s Quarters.
Captain: Adam Ending aboard The Nod
Time: 8:45
Date: 01/01/9000
Flight Time: 26280000 Hours
CURRENT LOG:
“System Log begin. Scrub all vectors and output enhancers. Shut down the internal reactor and process generators. Protocol A-1203, termination of systems protocol initiate. Captain Endling reports finalized and shelled for transport in count: 88,945,394 :end count, nodes of ejection directions. Life systems check? [8%] Run life expectancy diagnostics [0.00000002%] Run again with Tasic engine reverted and Signs of Life at zero [0%] . . . begin personal log . . .
Happy new year. It has officially been three thousand years since The Nod left Earth. We are currently seven hundred billion light-years away from the Milky Way and this day marks the end of Project Omniscience. As such, this will be the last log recorded and bundled with the Novaport Transmission. I am the last of the crew left alive. As I said in yesterday’s log, the Pox had finally spread to Jenkins and Glorian too and now they’re gone. I remain in my cabin sustained and protected by the Simulate, but I am finally done. The mission is done. The results? Nothing. No, the reports aren’t lying or faulty, SOL is still zero. We were so confident in Omniscience. How could we not be? A fool-proof system capable of monitoring galaxies down to the atomic level from anywhere in the universe at a rate of a billion galaxies a second, all to look for Signs of Life. But SOL is zero. We checked ten trillion galaxies millions of times at different angles and eras, even using The Nod’s Worm System to travel to the Grand Expanse and to the Grand Void, the beginning and end of the universe. But SOL is zero. I had doubted the effectiveness of Omniscience a thousand years ago, but not anymore. I almost envy the humanity stuck to their planet living on an 80-year adrenaline shot of hopes and dreams. By the time the Worm System was mastered and life expectancy became essentially infinite, the humanity I know had lost the need for hope. Any question could be answered with the appropriate level of technology and the entire universe was ours for the taking. There was just one question we didn’t have an answer to yet. Was humanity it? I don’t know what happened to Earth, none of us had the guts to back and check. She’s now a ring of rocks circling her mother, peppering the star with debris as thick as the seven failed Dyson swarms of the past. Landon killed himself when we found out. I said he caught the Pox. He didn’t; he drowned himself. Correct the previous entry, or not. It doesn’t matter anymore. Leave it to Eden to burn once again. The other Milky Way colonies will keep humanity alive until the Red Dwarf Era when the last trace of life in the universe is forced to huddle around the dim heat of a single evaporating star husk. We saw that. Landon didn’t bat an eye then. I’m rambling, I apologize. SOL results are finalized so it must be made official. Record end mission statement: SOL is zero, Project Omniscience was a failure. Earth is the only planet to have ever or will ever form life, end statement. I expect I have about three hours left before the Simulate ends and I join my crew. Don’t come looking for The Nod, we’re all gone. We’re all gone.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.