Will The Last Person To Leave Please Turn Out The Lights?

We found the Endling by accident.

We didn't have the word 'endling' at the time - it was a concept that was obvious when it was explained, but as an idea it hadn't ever been explored by our species. A species was either extinct, or it wasn't.

The world was blue and green, lush - overgrown even. Tectonically unstable, and with some absolutely wild weather patterns, but verdant with life.

That was why we didn't find the Endling right away. There were ruins of course - asphalt and concrete, overgrown with local vegetation, slowly being unmade and reclaimed back into the soil from which it had been industrially derived, but they seemed old, derelict. It was an archaeologist's dream.

The Endling's residence was smaller, more compact, and gave off few if any emissions by which we could have spotted it. She was sitting in a lightweight, collapsible chair, in rough homespun clothing, eating out of a metal tin with a plastic spoon, and chawing on a mass of vegetation that we later learned was called a 'cigar'. She seemed unsurprised to see us, despite her species never having made a first contact before whatever had happened.

There was a while of vague gestures back and forth - indicating self, colours, shapes - before our translation technology began to catch up, and could build a vocabulary. Her name required an embouchure that our mouths couldn't create, and which didn't readily translate - but she laughed when she heard that, and told us to call her the Endling.

It was apparently how she had been thinking of herself.

She told us that the world that she had been on had hurtled toward extinction - of its natural plant and animal life, and of its dominant intelligent species. A drive for the stars had been made, and as the world continued to become increasingly hostile, some great colony ships had been built. They had departed, an exodus of billions, but still not enough for a sprawling population.

With them, they had taken art, music, ideas. Everything that those who could escape thought made their civilization worthy of preservation.

The crafting of such vessels, she added thoughtfully, had only accelerated the industrial pollutants spilling into the sea and air. Once that plan had been decided upon, there had been no going back.

Some of their scientists had devised a way to 'terraform' their planet back into habitability. It was not especially friendly to life already upon the planet.

As the necessities of life became more and more scarce, factions of those who had been left behind made war. Great engines of destruction, and even devastating explosive fusion devices. With the species' own hand guiding it toward destruction, one of the terraforming scientists had decided to 'cut out the middle man'.

Hence, the verdancy of the world that we had found. Hence as well, the lack of the intelligent beings, of which the Endling was the last.

We did not understand that processes that had gone into the terraforming process, and the Endling made no great effort to explain them. She had survived by dint of being on a space station in low orbit when the device had been activated. The translation was poor, but she seemed... sad. It was understandable. Our people moved in herds across the stars - to be without one, to be alone, was unthinkable.

She gave a sad smile when I told her so, her upper extremity opposable digit tracing a glint of gold metal worn around her neck.

It was a talisman of some kind - and this being the last chance to do so, I asked her if it was a religious symbol or similar. When our archaeologists do not understand something, we so often describe it as 'serving votive purposes'. A placeholder, as much as anything else. The ability to disprove it at once was unparalleled.

She laughed, and told me that no, it was in the shape of a heart. Not a heart-that-was - our medical scans had revealed her own to be of considerable and frankly astounding complexity - but a heart-as-it-perceived-itself. It had been given to her by her mate, and since I was curious, she opened it for me, revealing still images of others of her species. I assumed, her closest herd.

She was sad again. I tried gamely to rally her spirits.

"It is an old wound," she said. "Though still it hurts, it no longer bleeds." Her language was peppered with such violence, unsurprising for one who saw so much before those capable of working it had perished. "But... you never really realize that the last time that you told someone that you loved them was the last time, until it was."

It took the translator some time to work through the syntax there, but I came to understand. As our people spread through the stars, even close family groups became less so - not for want of affection, or dint of effort, but through sheer logistics and the speed of light. We knew such a thing as regret.

"And besides," she said, "after they had died, well..." a rueful grimace, that the translator had interpreted as a variant on the bared teeth that the Endling had called 'a smile', "it took somewhat less force of will to bring myself to activate the terraformer."

Ah.

I froze at that. It was a different sort of detail about the sort of people that the Endling was the last of. And perhaps it explained just a little bit more about them, in a way that made them a little less charming, and a lot more frightening.

"Will your people return?" My voice shook slightly.

The Endling took the chaw of cigar out of her mouth, and dipped the end of it in a crystal goblet sat beside her. "Perhaps someday. God, I hope they've learned a thing or two. By the time they can come back, maybe they won't be my people anymore.

"Or, hell, maybe they will. Makes it all seem a bit pointless, doesn't it?"

I don't remember what I said. The people that had been here were gone - but out in the stars, they were spreading. Learning, perhaps. Evolving.

I do not study living civilizations - my assigned task, as an archaeologist, is to make a science of the remains, that which is left behind when a people, alien or domestic, expires. I do not know that I am qualified, therefore, to make a recommendation on a people that have, to date, one remaining individual.

But it is my advice that we leave this world, and do not return. When the Endling passes, it will be empty...

But perhaps, only for a time.

- Field Report of Archaeological Team Entu, Lead Surveyor Anesk Tenda