Final Delivery

Have no fear—Trust the Eve Manuscripts

Eve protects—Traticus will end us all

Have no worry—Traticus shines bright

Traticus relives all worries

The messages floated through space in the communication waves, carved into the light side of dead planets, painted into the side of Eve ships, and blasted onto abandoned temples across the galaxy. Bold messages clogging the pipes of an emptying infinity.

Mercury’s Messenger floated through empty space, through the debris of fallen planets, torn war ships, and long dead stars. The world outside of the curved windshield was beautiful in a lonely way. Long-gone life had built this field of sparkling matter, erratic nebulous colors, and the dark collision of space matter. The communicator on the dash beeped incessantly, swallowing and spitting out the messages of long dead priests and supplicants. They’d flooded the waves in desperation as life slipped from the known universe. I could turn off the communicator, but it was nice to pretend someone was reaching out, no matter if they were reaching from the past.

The ‘world’ was supposed to end billions of years ago, just when it had sparked into existence. They say the first, and smallest, of life was unlucky enough to land on one planet and flourish there. I thought that was a ridiculous notion. The scholars and fanatics ran with it, though it had been disproven repeatedly. The seeds of life had been scattered across the infinity, sprouting in weird and wild and beautiful forms wherever it landed.

Billions, or trillions depending on your source material, of years later and the story is still being printed across the galaxy. Temples and societies were erected in its name. How life endured past the death of the first planet, Eve. When life fled from Eve and into the Unknown the ‘world’ grew bigger and bigger. So did the ‘world ending threats.’

Stars exploded, whipping whole systems and galaxies off the map with nothing but a twinkle from afar. Up close, no one lived to tell their story. Traticus has been ready to blow for millions of years. The Eve Manuscripts said it would wipe out the universe as we knew it, to end all unholy life. They also said you shouldn’t cut your hair or you’d be struck down by some unholy power, to suffer the longest of deaths and afterdeaths. Which I supposed was true, if my Nona had unholy power that she’d never told me about.

One particularly interesting universe ending threat had been the space worm. The universe had gone crazy over that one. People swore up and down across infinity that they’d seen it for themselves in deep space. The big buggers were real of course, but not the threat they were claimed to be. They were big enough to eat whole planets and ships though they were easily avoidable. Put a few communication waves their way and they turned around, naturally averse. Most occupied planets had put off millions of waves a year, they never ventured into live systems.

The latest theory had been that the universe was ending now and always had been. As far as theories go, I thought this one was pretty unimaginative. Scientists had been studying the dark matter and energy that kept space together since...forever, and gotten pretty much nowhere. Sure it was metaphorical to think that, like us, the universe was dying since the day it was born, but boring.

No one had guessed that life would shine bright for a time and fade out dimly until there was no way of knowing if your death would be the last, if life would end with you. Some people had jobs to do, families to raise, a business to run, a war to fight and die in. When the falling infinity finally got the attention it demanded, everyone was so wrapped up in their own life that the issues at the heart of it went ignored. Climate ruined planets continued to fall, until everyone either evacuated or stayed to fade away with their home. Wars waged and lives lost were compared and celebrated. Disease ravaged. Corruption...corrupted.

The Eve coalition sprung from the chaos of a dwindling existence. The idea was that the churches of Eve would sponsor the movement of populations, to repopulate healthy planets and promote growth and successful living. To create stable environments for farming on agriculture planets and continue the production of food to withstand population migration. They flooded the communication waves calling for the transport of resources and populations across space. Just like all things, it was better on paper. In the light of holy text and ancient history things always looked more hopeful. As it seems to go with all things, greed was the fall of man. The greed of living your own life, focusing on your own family, pushing your faith even at the end, and stealing from the dwindling life you swore you would cultivate.

Systems fell, planets grew emptier, and the universe got a lot lonelier. Some chose ignorance. Others chose the church. I chose distraction. I watched the fall as I continued to deliver packages on my transport cruiser. I spent my days wandering space listening for my communicator to interrupt the constant religious messaging with a order for pickup and delivery.

Most people had used partial transference before the fall, relying on traditional delivery only for unstable materials and sentimental packages. The already sparse orders grew farther and farther in-between until they stopped altogether. With nothing to do, I found myself stuck in routine, filling up on fuel in abandoned stations, scrounging up whatever pre-packaged food I could from dusty markets and aging homes. Time after time, I pulled Mercury’s Messenger back into space, floating around and waiting for an order that would not come.

The beeping of Eve’s messages had been so incessant that when it suddenly stopped, the eerie silence shocked me from my seat. The only time my communicator stopped its endless beeping was when I was contacted directly. I’d been so numbed to the pattern of noises that I found myself desperately searching for a pen and paper when the new message came through. I wrote it out in a series of dashes and dots, making sure I wouldn’t miss a word of it.

I had to shake my hands out between words, my nerves jittering, not in excitement or fear but in a lost emotion that comes with being born into a dying universe. Letter by letter the message came together. It wasn’t a beautiful haiku of a dying man's last utterings or a lonely woman's plead for comfort. It was simple, short, manufactured. The same message I’d received a hundred times.

Pick Up Request Incoming—Stand by for Incoming Coordinates

I watched the green light on my receiver blink, loading first the quadrant, then galaxy, planet, and final coordinates. I could have swords it had never taken so long, but finally it came through, lightening up my dash. The call wasn’t far at all, funny to think that one of the last dregs of life wasn’t far from my lonely wandering ship.

While the engine was gearing up for fast travel, I’d thought that the otherwise quick flight would be like wading through syrup, but I was wrong. The green planet was growing in the distance almost faster than I could handle. My nerves hadn’t jumped so skittishly since I’d delivered my first package as a young woman.

I set down in a clearing of trees, a mossy green river weaving through the monstrous evergreen trees. There were no signs of life, past or present, no roads, houses, nor footpaths. I was out of practice, but I’d made enough deliveries to not be shaken. With my handheld communicator strapped to my wrist, I followed its beeping toward the water.

I’d almost missed it, hidden in the green brush clinging to the muggy water. A small rowboat carved from too-green wood wobbled with the waves. A figure sat inside, stock still underneath a dark cloak. He turned a weathered dark face on me, so old and wizened that he might have sprung right from the gnarled bark of the trees surrounding us.

“Hello, Sir!” I called out to him, pulling out the same enthusiasm that I’d always used on my clients. He turned away from me, showing no signs of hearing me, only sliding two oars from his lap and into the water, breaching the thick green growth floating on the surface. I trotted up into his line of sight, right up to the edge of the boat. I tried to persuade him into a conversation but if he heard me, he didn’t show it. Instead, he gestured an ore toward the seat across from him.

I climbed in at his command, my boots flooded with warm water. The rowboat rocked threateningly under my clumsy space-gait but my companion only pulled us out onto the river. He kept us at a steady pace, while steadily ignoring my prodding questions. I’d started to delude myself into believing that I was the last living being left behind, I couldn’t help but put all my flooding questions to the first person I’d seen in almost a year.

We sat in companionable silence for a long time, after I finally gave up my questions. The soft lapping of the waves rocking against the wooden boat was our only company. I watched the scenery sail by swiftly. It was a sinking discomfort to know that all that green, all that life was only the final exhales of a once thriving planet. To the untrained eye the sprawling greens might be a sign of hope, of life flourishing in one hidden corner of the universe, but I had seen this before. To me, the green was an obscene abundance, soaking in the resources of the planet too fast, as a final measure to save itself. In one human lifetime, this planet would be dark, dry wastelands.

My companion pulled the ores back into the boat before I’d even realized we’d stopped. He needn’t use any words, only glanced up to the shore, and I knew to disembark. He followed me, not bothering to tie the boat down. He grabbed my hand in his own, leading me into the woods. His hands were cold, his pulse throbbing heavy in the thick veins that pressed against my own. Weaving through mossy patches and hanging vines, we found ourselves upon a hill, the bright star lighting our way, slowly descending below a line of trees.

We sat, shoulder to shoulder, and watched the explosion of colors paint the sky. The star was no larger than an average one, and the moons no more unique as they faded into the sky than the thousands I’d seen. Yet I felt tears come to my eyes. Here I sat watching the end of the day, a hand in mine, growing colder. There was no package, no recipient. He’d called into an empty sky for a companion to watch the sun set on him. The dancing of colors was, at once, beautiful and comforting as it was devastatingly lonely.

I laid him down to be reclaimed, to provide this corner of the infinity one moment longer. As I watched the final colors fade into black, I knew with unexplainable surety that he was the last. I was alone on a graveyard planet among graveyard galaxies. There would be no mourners. Eve would not come to save us, nor Traticus to end us. The infinities faded in a dry cough, the writing of our demise on each and every one of our graves, echoing through an empty endlessness.