[ WP ] In the far future , god-like beings decide to compile all of humanity 's utterances into a single sound

It was a mess of nightmare wails and gentle whispers; shouts of victory, whimpers of defeat, and boundless innocence. Peeling back the curtains of time, the curious beings dredged up every iota of sound that mankind had issued. Humanity had amused their unseen observers, delighting them with violence and love and the gentle good that resonated within them all. Now that the light of man had fizzled out, the observers whimsically compiled it all into one short burst of translated sound, to see if humanity had a single collective wish. An overarching aim, desire, or goal. 
 
 It was nothing remarkable, as the observers had expected. Humans were disparate, and each moment of each life had held something unique. But through it all, through all of the pain that mankind had suffered, all of the joy, all of the wonder, there was a hint of something. A peripheral tinge touching and tickling the minds of the ethereal eavesdroppers. 
 
 Each voice, each among the multitudes, had possessed the glimmer of hope; an earnest wish to know, to understand the void from whence humankind had been born. To sail among the deep dark with friends from the stars. To touch the very heavens themselves. A hope that, through the loneliness and horror of their orphan Earth, they would one day break their shackles of violence and ignorance and meet the mind of god. 
 
 The observers grew sombre. The stars around them flickered and danced their eternal dance. Beneath a nondescript sun spun a silent world, bearing the hopes and dreams of a race long dead. Eyes fell upon this world, mourning the delicate minds that had wandered it and the beseeching voices that had bellowed into the wintry night beyond. The observers came to the Earth, walking among the ruined stage of their actors. 
 
 The final line of man's tragic play was repeated throughout the wreckage: the faint whisper of a dream called, `` hope''. 

