Escape From Bliss

Escape From Bliss

By Stephen Donnelly

Video log entry #*data corrupt* Date: *data corrupt* 3:15 a.m.

User: Markus1595Platinum8723 logged in.

Mark looks up and waves at the camera before speaking. “Hello to whomever is listening to this. If anyone will ever find and read this. The universe is finally going to sleep. And it's taking humanity with it.”

He pauses before collecting himself and speaking again. “My wife and I both entered the contest to be the last people to record what we know before everything shuts down for good. The hope is that any other being could come along and hopefully figure out some semblance of what to do. Maybe they'll be able to grow from our experiences and even our mistakes. We don’t know if there is anything beyond this horizon, but we're making this note just in case .”

Mark pulls up a little heart shaped necklace locket and displays it to the camera revealing a small little picture of a beautiful woman smiling and looking a little embarrassed that her picture was being taken. “This is my favorite picture of her.” You could see the sadness in his face. He wasn’t trying to hide it. There was nobody left to hide his emotions from.

“She only made it to gold tier which got shut down a week ago and it took me this long to get the courage to even want to leave a recording of anything.” He lifts something up from beneath the screen into focus. “This is my life’s work. I don’t know how close I was to finishing it but it should make it possible to recreate black holes.” Mark was welling up with tears. He forced himself to pause from his near emotional display so he could speak further.

“This is the last Dyson’s Sphere to have power that we know of. It has been slowly shutting down since the black hole it was housing closed up. We knew this would happen and it has been closing down for the past two hundred years. It was the timeline we had to figure out.” Mark was on the verge of breaking down but he had this last mission and he was going to try his best to power through.

After finally composing himself. “I never needed to see a real sun to have a light in my life. Now it has burnt away. I don’t care to finish this research anymore. The flower it would have nurtured will never get to feel its light.” A quick tear rolled down his face as he took a heavy breath. “Her smile every morning gave me motivation to take on the day.”

Humanity is down to its last one hundred people all recording their final thoughts. If you took the time to listen to mine I am thankful that you gave me some of your precious time even long after my death. Hopefully this drive will give you answers. Hopefully your society hasn’t fallen into the same pitfalls ours had.”

“I could only imagine how far we could have gone past the end of the rest of the universe if we never had to battle with religion. Progress deniers. How much farther we could have gone if we understood that there is so much more to life than making more money than your neighbor. That the challenge was exploring and finding something new. Finding love. Finding new life. Finding answers that only the universe knew the questions to.”

Mark looks around the room for something else to show the camera. Revealing it the camera starts to lose focus making the object near indistinguishable from his hand. He looks disgruntled and sets it down after some time trying to get it to focus. “Well, anyway that was the last thing my wife gave me before we were split apart for that last shut down. It is a coffee mug with my favorite show on it. The quote said…” *data corrupt* Mark seems to be done saying whatever it was he was trying to say about his show.

With a heavy sigh he begins to recount the shutdowns, “The first couple of shutdowns were tragic. True horrors of humanity. Billions of people lost to violence when being gathered and herded onto their side of the sphere. Traveling was revoked. A lot of the news outlets weren't broadcasting anything about it since everyone seemed to just know. You can’t kill half of humanity without there being a real toll. But people tried their best to escape certain death. Murders. Even killing people in the bronze tier just to close the gap and hope they could be placed higher up just for a few more months of life.”

He laughed to himself a little. It was a sad laugh. A laugh that said ‘if only they could have known’. After some pondering Mark continued, “Their actions, evil or not, would have meant nothing in the end since none of us could have figured out how to stop this end from coming. But with the actions of those that didn’t get tiered would now, other than this recording of it, would be lost into the ether.”

He smiled a little after that about his next thought. “At least humanity got its act together on these other tiers as a group. Though I am sure many individuals lost parts of themselves being separated from their families. Their friends. Some even watched their final moments pass as the lights left their sections. Some on other sides of blast doors trying to touch through the clear sections but still ten meters apart.”

His pause was silent until he finally choked back some tears before speaking again. “I was there when I could see the lights finally leave her eyes. She looked numb. At first I thought it was her light that left. It took me this long to realize it was my light that died right then. So much of me was in someone else…”

Mark looked like he didn’t want to continue on. He finally seemed resolute to move on to the next memory that he wanted to record for whomever was going to find and listen to the last stories of humanity.

“In all my life and all my experience I can only say there is one thing for certain.” His expression was that of true solemnity and seriousness. “There is no secret to life. No goal. No endgame. Just a beginning and an end. Make what you want of it and don’t let others confine you. Humanity learned that too late. I learned that too late.”

“Ten minutes until termination. Water is exhausted. Recycled air exhausted. Power at…” The computer overhead was picked up by the microphone Mark was using to record.

“That is my cue. If I have any last minute advice it is this. Take time to breathe. Take time to find out who you are and what you want. Be you. Don’t let anyone take that from you.”

Mark got up and started to reach for the power button. “ Those of us that are left are going to sit around and hold hands. Breathing the last breaths of humanity together. Though we have warred, murdered, and stole from each other most of our history. We will be taking our last breaths united. Our last breaths as one. L’Chaim.”

*End of recording*

User: Markus1595Platinum8723 Logging off.

Computer Message: Goodbye.

*data corrupt*