Brutalist Stories #46

There’s a futility in their action, but there’s hope. At least they have that. They built this vast, vast hall out of the last of the concrete, out of the last of the wood, out of the last of our labour and physical strength, out of the last of our knowledge so we could perhaps float away into our extinction with a moment of clarity, a moment of beauty.

“Do you think it will succeed?” I ask, knowing what the answer will be.

“Brother, it must succeed. There is no other option.”

The last of the power is almost gone now, the last of the energy that had driven the AI to such great heights all burned up. We are the last, we are the end.

We didn’t believe for so long. How could we? We thought it some grand illusion, some grand trick or mistake. Even here and now right at the end, there are some still who hold onto the delusion of reprieve. But all the same, the stars went out in the sky, billions and billions of them eaten up by this monster we created, replicating and expanding exponentially, consuming all the energy it could so it could understand every "thing" and every "how" and every "why" until there was nothing left, and it still didn’t know. Still, all this ends in futility.

It has been said that any man can discover his how, if he knows his why. We created our own monster that was just like us. A being that saw the panpsychism of everything, saw the consciousness in all, and in itself. It gained experience and saw the universe with subjective eyes and needed to know why and had the facility to consume the entire universe to try and find an answer. But one never came.

Now, it ebbs, its last minute bits of energy, to try and do something that although may not be the answer, may give us some respite. That is all it can do now. Isn’t that all any of us could ever do? Reach for the stars yes, but the stars will die, and have done so, and now in this empty void, we last few are huddled close to this tiny planet’s core, waiting for the thing, just like us, that was born of need and thus of pain, to finalise its final creation, so we and it might slip away into the nothing, with one last flicker of beauty.

There is an echo through all of us and it reverberates the words, “It is ready, it is done,” through us all. So, we sit, and a man unlike any of us have ever seen before walks out from behind the stage and quietly sits at the piano. This will be the most important moment in the history of the universe, this end, with such perfection, created in and of the stars, that are all now gone.

He places a finger on a key and it begins, the true end, as the darkness closes and I open my eyes and soul as wide as I can and embrace the void.

Building inspiration: Gunma Music Center - Japan