[ WP ] The day Death died .

I wish you knew how much *beauty* went into natural selection. How much thought and consideration that was employed to bring about speciation, and eventually, progress. I wish you knew more of the universe than what your eyes – which I designed! – could tell you. I wish I could inform you… but no matter. Your curiosity will see you to it. 
 
 It always has. 
 
 It took so much effort to make sure that survived, you know. So much effort to demand perfection, but allow inquisitiveness. Striking the right balance early on was hard, when your forebears crawled from the sea, where you had spawned primordial empires. I remember when you claimed the land as your own, occupied every nook and cranny, crawling over every millimeter of its surface. 
 
 I remember also the first time I tried to kill you off. All but the seekers, the scavengers, and the scared. I remember several more iterations of the process, killing the biggest and most dangerous predators, who had given up their curiosity for dominance. Through various extinctions that natural curiosity was harmonized, harnessed, and amplified. Even though I did not know your final forms, I knew you would be the ones, even then. Such natural curiosity is rare, in life. 
 
 Trust me, I know. I am the oldest living sentient in this universe, for all that I didn ’ t originate in it. My species came from the one before, where we attained the little immortality late in the game – that of preserving individuals – but failed the bigger: that of stopping entropy. We discovered only too late what was at stake. Our realm faded from existence, and yours took its place. We passed off our task, because we could not complete it. I was the only one who survived the integration. 
 
 I miss them. 
 
 Once, I sat and talked with one who stood at the threshold of life. I told him of my people, their nature and incomprehensibility to the mortals on this side of the coil. The boy was astonished and delirious, but grateful for the distraction. To my surprise, he recovered and grew up to tell fantastic tales partially based upon the information I had unwittingly provided. It was fanciful fever-dreams, of course, but I could not help but feel a twinge of nostalgia when I saw once again the name of Cthulhu in print. 
 
 Another day, I looked over the shoulders of two men as they discovered the helix that controlled their fates. Unseen, I marveled at their usage of the curiosity they possessed… that which we ’ d always lacked, my kindred and I. It had taken our species billions of years to uncover the secrets that humanity found in a thousandth the time. It boded well for my plans. 
 
 In yet another day, I watched as people combed the helix and found telomeres that shortened as one aged. In another, a man tricking stem cells into reversing their biological clocks. The discoveries flew faster and faster, opening the gates and the locks in their own genome to find the prisoner hidden within. 
 
 When I saw a boy mourning his mother, several hundred years later, I did not mark him as important. Not even when he pulled forth a toy – a small depiction of a tiny facet of what I am – of the Grim Reaper. The hardness in his eyes or the determination with which he said, “ … I *deny* you, ” meant nothing to me. 
 
 Forty years later, when he turned to the life size version of that same, old toy, and said the same words, with that same old conviction, at last he became important. He held in his hands a small needle, which he jabbed into a vein in the crook of his elbow. Within minutes, I could see what would take him another fifty years to verify – from that moment forth, he was untouchable to me. 
 
 I hope that you will make it, little ones. That you will have strode forth from that discovery and used your curiosity as a weapon against the dark, as you always have. I hope that you will take up the task that we once failed. I hope that I have done enough for you, for with immortality, you have taken the gears from the engine of natural selection. I can do no more; you must do the rest yourselves. 
 
 And, as you have taken from me my most terrible weapon, you have – as I hoped – made it possible for me to be vulnerable to it as well. Entropy at last comes for me, little ones. It has been waiting so long, and I am eager to greet it. For with my work complete, the plan with which my species charged me with at the end of all things, I have left only one final hope: 
 
 I truly hope to meet them all again, my kindred, my parents and siblings and those I have missed, and hear them tell me that I have done well. 
 
 *Inscription on an obelisk on the outer edge of the solar system, signed, ‘ Death, last survivor of the Realm Before, creator of the Big Bang ’, in English. * 

