Streets of Hope

What's the end of the Universe like?

"To me, the end of the Universe is an installation. An art piece of sorts - the final note in a symphony, the last echo before silence - and before all that makes angels and demons what we are runs its course.

If you go by what Science dictates, billions upon billions of years from now, only zombie galaxies'll be left behind. Black-on-black, voids flinging themselves across the vast gravitational expanses of greater, more powerful voids, their pull so hard and constant the End feels like a rising drum fill. Spacetime rings out as the vortexes converge and merge - and eventually, all of Creation's stolen particles are freed, once black holes themselves run their course. For an instant on my clock and thousands of years on a mortal's, the inky blackness briefly lights up again - rogue photons dancing out into nothing, flaring out in wild colors - all for no living soul to see. It's beautiful in its own way. The twin to Hawking Radiation is finally released and, well, once those last few motes of light and heat have sailed past us with nothing to reflect or perceive them...

Well - nothing happens. Nothing keeps happening, forever - until I find the last black hole. At the end of Angel Time, I and a few others stand before it and stretch out its last instant. Its light is cold and weak; there's a corona of photons just about to push past its event horizon, like a white halo against an inky sea.

Nothing keeps happening and at the same time, dark energy keeps pulling at all that made what we knew, pulls Spacetime further and further away, like a wave passing someone while they stand in the shallows - or like a tablecloth being yanked off of its resting surface. The Universe grows thin, falls apart like spider silk...

And I stop. Everything stops. This is as far as Angel Time's ever gone. We're told that the next Creator reuses the Universe's matter, reshapes the Medium as He or She sees fitting - but all of us are creatures of one configuration alone. I can't perceive what the next Thrones will be like, or if the next Creator will even need to use Thrones, because my will is entirely the product of God's design. Not all Creators want to or succeed in instilling life, and life isn't much more than a single bright spark - a single instant we inflate into countless astral epochs - in a Universe that otherwise slowly rises out of its own raging inferno. It'll spend more than one-third of its lifespan being too hot, too hostile for life to take shape. Then, somewhere in its adolescence, and at the favor of some tiny instant we're told some hopefuls entirely miss - life blooms.

A spark in a fading fire. That's all any of us could ever hope to be - and the thought of it is so poetic I never understood why Uriel could never see all the value I find, all the worth any of us find in that single, almost anodine instant. In that instant, I am an Archangel of God and was given uncountable multitudes of lives to wonder over. In the next, I'm gone and so is everyone else. That alone makes Creation precious, in my eyes. I can relive the moment Neil Armstrong leaves his footprints on the Moon forever, if I want to - but even I can't stop the fact that on a span of time no mortal could ever grasp, even hard vaccuum won't protect these bootprints from fading away.

Every time, I get a little emotional in the moment. Then, I peel back. It isn't this Creation's time just yet. The spark hasn't faded, and I'm still called to work. Angels might be able to reflect on their final moments from the instant of their inception, but mortals have the right to live in peace - and I've long claimed the right to watch over said peace."