Midnight’s Fables

It’s A Small World

One thing is shockingly clear to you above all else: you are frightened of Midnight. Whatever they are, whoever they truly are under their shroud of darkness... they terrify you to your core. Without even trying to be menacing, their very presence unsettles you more and more. Perhaps it is because you are tired, and traumatized by the stories they have told you. But somehow it feels deeper than that. Darker. Without even looking at it, just being in its presence... you feel like you are on a precipice, somewhere very high up and looking down into a very deep, very dark, very frightening abyss.

You asked Midnight for some time to rest, and it led you to a small room with a bed and a reading desk and lamp. No windows. No natural light. It said you could rest here as long as you need. You do not need to eat or use the bathroom, Midnight has explained that your body has been sort of... ‘paused’... but your mind still needs to rest.

You peaked out the door several times.

It was stood there.

You have slept for hours, and it has been standing there the whole time, staring at your door, waiting for you to return so it can tell you more stories.

You do not know how long you have been here or for how long you slept, but it feels like a long time, several days at the very least.

But you are well-rested now. No point waiting. No point postponing. It will stand there until you come back out and there is nowhere else to go. You do not yet know enough about this creature or this place to plot an escape and so you must simply go out there, speak to it, be told stories, and learn.

Taking a deep breath, you rise from your bed, go to the door, and greet the thing that stands motionless on the other side.

“Hello, Midnight,” you say heavily. “I’m ready for another story.”

***

Some hours of wandering the endless museum go by. No matter how far you walk, even in a straight line, all that lies beyond each grand chamber full of displays is another, and another, and another. All of them huge, all of them grandiose and darkly gothic. A terrible combination of ancient Greek or Roman temple meeting with gothic dark-age European cathedrals in the grimmest, most colossally oppressive way imaginable.

Eventually you reach a grand chamber like the heart of a vast church, largely devoid of exhibits except for around the edges. Arches and spires and towering columns rise up all around you, and at the centre of this grand hall stands a small wooden plinth, containing a glass box and a miniature metal stand. A row of comically large magnifying glasses lead from one side of the glass towards something atop the metal stand.

You walk towards it, your footsteps echoing like cannonfire through that sickeningly large hall, and approach the box.

The magnifying glasses are so strong that they make the very tip of the needle-thin stand look like a flat surface which disappears beyond the field of view. And there, sitting atop the stand, an object that must be many, many thousands of times narrower than the point of a pin, is a very small world.

It is a whole little planet, with tiny oceans that you can see moving, and landmasses covered in microscopic plants and animals that move around. The scale is all wrong, of course, the water and animals and plants cannot be of the same scale to the planet as you are to the Earth. Compared to the things upon that world, it would only be perhaps a hundred metres wide, but even so...

It is a whole, miniature world.

“Well that’s got to have an amazing story,” you exhale in a moment of wonder and awe as you stare at the nanoscopic planet.

Midnight simply nods. “Indeed it does, albeit one of tragedy, and despair...”

***

“And you’re sure the animals are... fine?” the Manager asked with a frown.

The Technician nodded emphatically. “The core is ultra dense, though not actually as dense as you might think, which generates the sufficient gravity. Anything smaller than about five or ten metres experiences sufficient gravitational pull to lead a more-or-less normal life. They’ve been living there for six months now, no ill effects at all. Of course, the trial will need to last at least ten years before we can try it on people but... this could solve our current crisis.”

“I still don’t understand why it needs to be so small,” the Accountant grumbled. “Why not just leave it at the usual size?”

“Leaving them as the usual size in space would leave them defenceless. This way we can hold millions of them in a single one-inch cube and keep them all well-protected. Plus, once the size-reduction reaches a given threshold, the miniaturization field stabilises itself. Any bigger and we would have to pour breathtaking quantities of energy into each world to stop it returning to its original scale. But at this scale, the strong nuclear force works in our favour and closes the miniaturization field. Look, don’t worry about the science. The point is... it works. This could save our world from collapse. We could mine the necessary resources from the asteroid belt, and within fifty years we could all be living on tiny planets like this one. Each world can be owned by a single family. If we built a protected container one cubic foot, we could contain more than fifteen billion worlds like this, with more than sixty billion people. Travel between worlds like this is theoretically possible, and should be cheap and easy at this scale, meaning the entire population can remain interconnected! It works! It really works! This is the final solution to all our problems!”

The Accountant and the Manager shared a sceptical glance.

“You... don’t seem convinced?” the Technician said, crestfallen. “What’s wrong? Are they cutting the funding?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” the Manager shook her head. “It’s just that... well... we may not have enough time. You say it’s ten years before we can trial it with people. That’s just the trial. Realistically, how long until we can actually make this on the scale we need? Twenty years? Thirty? Fifty? I’m sorry, we just don’t have that kind of time. The other departments are saying we need a working solution that is ready in the next five years. Any longer than that and... there won’t be anyone left by the time that solution arrives. I’m sorry. What you’ve done here is incredible, and you should be very proud of yourself, but... this just isn’t the solution. I’m sorry.”

The Technician nodded slowly and softly exhaled, the sigh of someone who knows they are doomed.

The Manager and The Accountant left, leaving the Technician to stare at her tiny world and ponder the implications of her failure.

“That’s the last project we had for review,” the Accountant said, heart heavy. “And it’s still somehow the most promising.”

“I agree,” the Manager nodded, staring blankly ahead as they came to a window. She looked up at the black, starless sky. The horizon burned with a faint red-amber light from the burning radiance of the dying Sun.

“And we’re sure that’s the last one?” the Manager asked, watching the ember glow of the horizon. “The last star?”

“Definitely. The research departments have theorised that in a few centillion years, more could form again but... as far as we can see, ours is the last star in the Known Universe,” the Accountant nodded heavily. “The rest of The Empire might still be out there, but if they are... then they’re at war. An endless war against monsters that just don’t stay dead. Either The Empire is still out there, but is too busy to help, or...”

“Or they’re all gone, and the last thing we want is to draw attention to ourselves,” the Manager surmised.

The Accountant nodded. “That tiny planet in that room might be the only hope Humanity has left.”

“Sixty-four centillion years of history,” the Manager sighed. “Untold numbers of people who have lived across the stars. Vigintillions of worlds. All gone. That Technician doesn’t even realise how dire it is, does she? Sixty billion people? She’s so optimistic. Maybe we could get to that number again one day, if it all worked out, but... right now we barely have half a million people.”

“That’s it then?” the Accountant asked, her tone angry, tears beginning to spill down her cheeks. “That’s just... it?”

“I never thought the end would come on my watch,” the Manager sighed. “But I knew I would never be far from the end. The final leader of the last of Humanity... I can live with that. I nearly said it would be a worthy legacy, but... there won’t be anybody left to remember our legacy.”

“I don’t want to be among the last people,” the Accountant confessed. “I mean... how many great and fierce civilisations have existed, have transcended time across our Known Universe? All that history, all that legacy, and I... I don’t want our people to be the last.”

“None of us do. But Humanity had a fair go of it. We did better than any other civilisation our universe has ever produced, and better than the vast majority of other civilisations across the multiverse… before that ended too…” the Manager reassured her friend. “Maybe this is a fitting end to our history. A quiet, gentle demise. As the last star dies, so shall we. And maybe... that’s alright.”

“Ma’am!” a voice called from down the corridor. “Madam Manager!”

Both women turned as a young man came running towards them, papers in hand. “Ma’am, I... I’m sorry, we only just got the report.”

“What is it?” the Manager asked insistently, urgency prompted by the man’s panic.

“Solar flare. Just spotted. Bigger than any we theorised, and anything we could have ever prepared for. It’s going to hit the planet, Ma’am,” the man said, eyes red as though he were either about to cry, or already had been.

“What kind of damage are we looking at?” the Manager asked, though she could already tell the answer.

“Catastrophic failure, ma’am. Extinction.”

“How long do we have?” the Accountant interjected.

“Less than an hour.”

The Manager nodded slowly, sombrely. “Thank you. Go, be with your loved ones.”

The man, terror and despair in his eyes, turned and fled.

“This is impossible,” the Accountant cried, cheeks damp with tears.

“No, it was always inevitable. Come. I need to address our people.”

***

Not ten minutes later, the Manager was in her office, an automatic live feed broadcasting from her to the whole city; a single settlement of half a million people, on the dark side of the last habitable planet in the universe.

“I won’t put this gently. We have less than forty-five minutes. A solar flare is on its way right now. We thought we had five years before the Sun devoured us, but it would seem that approximation was flawed. There is no nice way to put this. We are all going to die today. Within the hour. Go to your loved ones. Hold them. I’m sorry we could not do more. This is it. This is the end of the Human race. Thank you, and goodnight.”

The broadcast cut out and the Manager slumped heavily in her seat. She’d been given the details, but she saw no reason to waste her people’s time with those. The solar flare would kill all their technology for starters, and within minutes the light side of the planet would go from hundreds of degrees to thousands. The air would burn, even on the dark side, and flesh, clothes, and wooden objects would all turn to ash.

In a few hours’ time, the atmosphere will have vaporised completely and turned into a mass of plasma that was swept off the planet by the solar tides.

The surface itself will have become magma, which would devour the remains of the settlement, and within a few days there would be no trace left that Humanity had even lived on this desolate little planet.

And that would be that.

Forty minutes until the end of the last world in the universe.

She could have gone and seen her family of course. Her husband, her daughter, her parents, but...

They had one another. They would cope without her.

The Manager just hung her head in defeat.

***

“Is that really how it all ends?” you ask, tears running down your face, your chest tight with a dread you cannot begin to articulate. The fear of the Manager, and her anguish, guilt, and grief, all wash over you and you cannot bear it. “Is that really how Humanity ends?”

Midnight simply shrugs. “What did you expect? A nuclear war? Galactic catastrophe? Battle against eldritch forces of chaos? Your species will experience all of those and more, but somehow you always survive. I like those stories. Not because they are hopeful, hope is my opposite. Because their victories are temporary. Yes, you survived all those wars and disasters, but you’ve still got more ahead of you. Everything you survive just makes it all the more tragic that one day you just... end. A tiny city on the brink of starvation and collapse, on a hostile planet orbiting a rapidly expanding star which happens to be the last one in your universe... such a pitiful way to go.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s... it isn’t. It’s horrible and sad, you’re right, but... it’s still hopeful. Everything ends eventually. Everyone dies, sooner or later, but every time you survive something, you learn from it. You grow. Trauma and grief change you. Give you the opportunity to become a better version of yourself. Humanity survived all that, and then... in its old age... died quietly in its sleep. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be? Isn’t that how these things are supposed to end?”

Midnight sneers at you and shrugs. “If you say so. Come, what would you like to see next?”