Running along the familiar circuits of the sun, Pearl was once again disobeying his parents. But it was a difficult time to be a youngster when everyone else was old and drained of energy preparing for the inevitable end in only a few billion years. He was the only child in the whole camp, but Pearl gave no thought to it as he twisted and turned among the arches of stellar bursts, weaving his way around the star in less than a third of a second.

     Like all the energies huddled around this star, he was a descendant of a race long since forgotten.

     Almost a trillion years ago, human beings took to the stars. Shedding their physical form was an evolutionarily clever move, which took them away from the limitations of their ships – the biggest one being the speed. Once they could fly at the speed of light, the interstellar journey no longer seemed perilous. Though light still took years to reach the closest stars from Sol, the voyage time was relatively instant for the travelers.

     The entire civilization became a collection of signals free to roam the galaxies in search of answers and, most importantly, questions. Questions that still lurked after humans became one with the universe; after they learned about the moment of creation and foresaw the inevitable end. What lies beyond the Great Freeze was still a mystery, but one thing was certain: the energies needed a source to survive. One by one, the brilliant stars that defined the night sky of their ancestors had faded leaving behind a scarce legacy of Brown Dwarfs – the refugee camps of the last beings in the universe. But Pearl was oblivious to these facts and to his ancestry. He knew nothing outside of his camp, but he had heard stories of such bright stars that they could be seen from light years away. The elders would always run on with their tales of the ancient, but nobody listened anymore – nobody but Pearl as he was the only one unfamiliar with the world of the past in which giant stars lived and died in colossal explosions of Super Novae.

     At times, he would fantasize about a world so warm and teeming with life that he would have peers to chase across the chasms of enormous gaseous giants. He would fly from one camp to another without feeling sick from the cold emptiness of space. He would reach out and feel the rocky solid worlds orbiting beyond the freezing point. He would fantasize…

     “What’s out there?” Pearl would ask his parents.

     “Out where?”

     “There – beyond this camp. Are we alone in the universe?”

     “No. Well, I hope not.”

     “Then where is everyone. What happened to the bright skies that the elders always talk about? Where did it all go?”

     If Pearl’s parents had lungs, they would have sighed as they knew this moment would come sooner or later. They had to explain to their child that perhaps shedding their physical forms wasn’t the smartest move of the past. Not having a body meant the end of all fear – fear of being sick; fear of not having enough material possessions; fear of death.

     Sadly, after the fact, they realized that fear drove much of the progress of their civilizations. If they were still afraid of the end, maybe they would have done something about it billions of years ago. Maybe they would have created some sort of recycling device that would prolong their lives until another solution was presented. Unfortunately, with the demise of their bodies came the end of an era in which living creatures could influence the physical world around them. No longer were human beings the makers of their destiny – they were the passengers.

     Against the advice of the elders, Pearl’s parents – “creators” would be a more appropriate word – decided to have a child. There was no need to procreate as nobody died; yet nothing was truly alive anymore. And who would think of bringing a new life into a world on the edge of existence? An act of foolishness, it would seem, but his parents had a plan. They had a vision – one that Pearl was about to fulfill.

     “Once these Brown Dwarfs perish, so will our existence,” continued Pearl’s parents. “The Great Freeze will consume the cold, lifeless universe. There will be no life to observe it, but there will be no light to reveal it either. And beyond that, we do not know what happens, but we don’t care either as none of us will be around to find out. We have no senses but our feelings, and with them, we wish to convey our regret for bringing you into this world so late.”

     Though nothing ever left Pearl’s mind, their final words rang louder than others. Even back in the day, interstellar travel meant great dangers. While human beings used space ships, the tiniest rock colliding at sufficient speed could destabilize the hull integrity and depressurize the cabin killing everyone inside. After they had abandoned their bodies, new explorers faced less subtle dangers. Perhaps the biggest killer was arrogance: flying from one star to another seems straight forward except for occasional black holes along the path. Some travelers were trapped beyond the Event Horizon forever – unable to escape.

     Rather quickly, the energies learned to navigate using gravitational lensing. As light of distant galaxies passed near a powerful gravitational field, like the one of a black hole, it would bend around the edges smearing the image to an observer on the other side of the singularity. Such phenomena meant danger, and it was the first lesson taught to new energies.

     Unfortunately for Pearl, there was no need for a navigational school after parents learned how to replicate their knowledge in their children, and there was no need for such knowledge to be replicated once all the bright sources had faded in the darkening sky. Nobody left the camp, and nobody new entered. There were times when such stars would only be pit stops where life forms would socialize for a fraction of a second – long enough to exchange their observations – and veer off to more exciting places.

     For Pearl, living life on one crowded star seemed unbearable. He did not enjoy his youth the way all others could before him: he was trapped as a child while the rest retired from life and adventure around him. No, Pearl was determined to leave this place in search of something. What it was, he did not know, but anything was better than waiting to freeze to death. He sensed that there was more to life, and he would risk everything to find what.

     “We can only give you our knowledge of the universe as it was while we could still observe it,” the parents told Pearl. “You can model what the universe is like on your own, but it is a place ruled by chaos. Even with our advances, we cannot predict for certain where the other Brown Dwarfs are, and worse, the locations of black holes.”

     “Why don’t you talk me out of my journey if it is so dangerous?” Pearl asked an obvious question.

     “Because this is why we created you – to be young and vigorous. To keep you trapped on this world would be a cruel mistake. You must find your own destiny now among the remaining settlements. Explore the world, and if you feel you’ve seen enough, we will be waiting for you here.” “How long until this sun is extinguished?”

     “That is irrelevant for your journeys will seem instant to you while a billion years may pass for us. You cannot wield time as you can your future.”

     Those words seemed to have concluded their conversation, and Pearl would have plenty of time to ponder their meaning. After all, the only thing they could do is think, and they had all the time in the world to do that – however much that was.

     Pearl chose the closest Brown Dwarf he knew would still be active. If he arrived at a cold spherical rock floating aimlessly through space, his journey would end there forever, but it was a risk he was willing to take. After all, life is meaningless to those who cannot die.

     As soon as his mind was set, he sailed into the unknown – into the dark void. And something told him that he would not see home again.



     “The Great Tear is upon us! Everything will be ripped to pieces,” yelled an old prophet energy. “Beware of the Great Tear.”

     This was the problem with the elders: in their age, everything was Great – the Great Freeze, the Great Tear. The world became too small for them, and they dreamed of greatness. But everyone knew that those days were long gone. Without adventure, there can be no praise and glory. Pearl wondered if he had arrived at the right colony or whether he skipped right by until he finally hit this Brown Dwarf camp. But he dared not to go back and verify for his journey may have taken billions of years, in which time the home camp would have ceased its existence. His sudden presence did not go unnoticed. Courteously, he offered his knowledge to the surrounding population.

     “From where did you come, traveler?” asked one of the elders. “You seem much younger judging from your knowledge of the past. Are there worlds beyond our own where the young can still survive?” His barrage of questions doused any chance for Pearl to answer. The elder seemed excited with hope, and Pearl hadn’t the courage to extinguish it.

     “I come from the Evershore camp,” Pearl answered carefully. “It is much like your own, but I dare say that I was the only young one among them. Where am I?”

     All but a few energies scattered away from Pearl as the wave of disappointment swept through the crowd. There was nowhere for them to go, but they preferred to think and fantasize in solitude. Pearl’s answer may as well have said that this is the only camp left in the universe, and for all he knew, this may have been the case now.

     “You have arrived at camp Unbootu.” The name was meaningless to Pearl.

     “Who is the elder talking about the Great Tear?” Pearl asked one of the energies. “And what is the Great Tear?”

     “That’s Joe. He was a traveler born not long before the last of the bright giants vanished. His thoughts seem to have been corrupted by his journey, but you can ask him all about it.”

     Pearl wondered what manner of a name is “Joe.” Perhaps his ancestors hailed from an alien clan. With nothing to fear, Pearl approached the stranger Joe.

     “You! Yes, you!” Joe reassured Pearl, “Beware of the Great Tear. The end is upon us, and all will be ripped apart. The Great Tear is coming!”

     “What is the Great Tear?” Pearl was determined to break the crazed babble.

     “It is the end of ends. Nothing will survive it, not even energies.”

     “I’m not familiar with it. I have never heard the elders talk about it.”

     “Bah, the elders. What would they know except for patiently waiting to freeze over? They lost their passion for travel long before the universe began its self-destruction. They gave up on life long before death could sweep these barren stars.”

     “Joe,” Pearl implored him, “Please tell me about the Great Tear. I am young and curious.” For a moment, Joe seemed stunned, but it was a quantum moment that only the energies would have noticed.

     “Our expanding universe will not last,” he would have whispered if their conversation required sound. “Once it reaches a certain limit, there will be nothing to fill the gaps of space – even the space itself will not be enough, and it will begin to rip. The fissures will be so destructive that even the atoms themselves will be torn to millions of pieces.

     “The Great Freeze will only slow things down to a sluggish pace, but the Great Tear is what will end the universe as we know it.”

     “But what does it mean to tear space itself?” wondered Pearl.

     “I,” Joe paused, “I don’t know. Nobody knows! It is the end of everything – of matter, time, and space. But beyond that, nobody knows.

     “Before I ended up in the Unbootu camp, I saw its effects. I flew deep into what some called the center of the universe – the Great Gate. I barely escaped with my life as I saw the few remaining stars behind me fade out of existence. That’s when I knew that the rip does not stop at the emptiness of space, but it continues until it consumes everything around it. Nothing can stop it.”

     “How do I get there?” asked Pearl.

     “What? You can’t! I mean, there’s nothing there, young one. Why would you want to risk your life to see the end of the universe before the rest of us?”

     “This isn’t much of a life, Joe. My parents created me for a purpose – not to wait for the world to end.”

     A few more quantum moments passed by before Joe gave his answer.

     “You must travel through the Path of Great Desolation.”

     Of course, thought Pearl, there was that word again – Great. Joe shared his navigational knowledge with Pearl. He didn’t want to see the youngster’s life cease at the end of a dangerous journey, but to have him wait and freeze among the elders would be a ruthless choice.

     The Path of Great Desolation was so named for the living as it contained many inanimate objects. There were black holes so huge that they would consume entire galaxies. There were neutron stars so massive that they would twist and curve Pearl off his path. There were billions of planets and frozen suns that would halt his progress leaving him stranded without a point of light in sight as reference. And there was the rip – an emptiness that even space could not fill.

     With clear conscience, Pearl took a leap toward the unknown into the Path of Great Desolation.


     Even in total darkness, Pearl could recognize the difference between the black space and the emptiness of the Great Tear. If he had a body, the chill would pierce right through it. There was nowhere to turn now, and he knew it. He flew toward the empty abyss – beyond the edge of space.


     A luminous speck appeared in front of him as he fell into nothingness. No matter how close he got to it, the speck did not grow in size. It was a point of mass and energy so dense that it contained trillions of suns waiting to be unleashed. Pearl’s curiosity was overshadowed by the longing for warmth as he flew into the speck of light. It would have waited patiently for him for all eternity – a life form to begin anew.

     And suddenly he knew: the universe would not fade at all – it would go out with a bang. The Great Bang.