[ WP ] A story about the end of stories .

Gilgamesh stared at space through the ship's bay window and was greeted by nothing. Not a speck of light in all of that cosmic darkness, no ray of life to be seen. He could not remember how long he had been on the ship, and preferred not to think about it. That way lay madness. 
 
 He could not know of his coincidental namesake. The Epic of Gilgamesh had been a story on Earth, some rundown planet that had been forgotten as soon as the last monkey on it suffocated on the toxic air. That was so many years ago that it had to be refereed to in scientific notation. 
 
 He did not sigh as he thought of the nothingness. He did not do much of anything anymore. He did not know for sure that he was the last organic life form in this universe, but he had a pretty good idea. 
 
 Every thing that ever was in the known universe has trickled down to him. Every happening now only exists in his mind, and everything he did n't know about might as well have not existed. 
 
 The only way to cope was to do nothing. Be nothing. Assimilate to the darkness around him. He did not know why he was spared as everything decayed - why he alone could escape entropy's cruel grasp. He had been on a supply run. Before. A simple run between planets. He had done it a million times. He had heard the warnings. They all had. He did not believe. 
 
 Why should he? If he was wrong, if the heat death of the universe was as imminent as they said, if the protons were decaying, if everything would soon be nothing, how could he affect it? What use was their in worrying about it? It's not like he was going to be around after, right? 
 
 Wrong. Maybe there is a God. Maybe he likes the irony. Gilgamesh, the first and last. Maybe he is a sadistic bastard. All of it was lost on Gilgamesh ( 2 ) anyway. 
 
 He had spent who knows how many years, decades, centuries wondering. In a state of mild panic as he watched the light of the universe die. 
 
 Now he has become truly catatonic. His state slowly approached zero as the years droned on, finally becoming one with his surroundings, until the end. 
 
 Gilgamesh evaporated along with the last matter in the universe. Or maybe not. He could n't tell. 
 
 ___ 
 /r/Periapoapsis 
 
 

