The End of the Universe

The end of the universe came suddenly.

Neither a bang

nor a whimper.

The Man sat in the bus terminal as all reality crumpled itself neatly into a ball, and then deposited itself promptly in the omniscient trashcan. Beyond the dimly-lit overhang of the terminal was nothing, in all of its splendor.

The terminal was open on three sides, with a wall behind his seat, and an overhanging roof. The whole area of the terminal was much wider side to side than it was long.

The floor was the kind of indeterminately colored tile that refused to show dirt easily, and the light was the kind of soft zombie-light that was neither too harsh nor too soft. Perfect for reading, napping, or waiting.

And for all The Man could tell, THIS was all that was left. All the light. All the floor. All the waiting.

Outside was hard for The Man to describe

No light.

No dark.

It wasn't black

And it wasn't white.

But looking at it, The Man knew it for what it was. Absence. There was no way to mistake it. It was a wholly alien lack. It was the field in which space occupied, but bereft of space. It was uniform in its unimaginable emptiness. But The Man knew it when he saw it. As all things that live will recognize the end. Terminus, the inevitable cease of existence. But had any creature great or small ever witnessed a thing like this?

The Man's palms began to sweat. He looked around wildly in the flickering fluorescent lighting. Against all logic the lights were on. He hurriedly walked to the water fountain by the bulletin board announcing missing persons and the best rates to New Mexico.

The water flowed. It was cold, but tasted flat. The fountain had condensation around its drinking aperture. There was gum stuck in the drain, causing the water to pool before slowly making its way down the pipe.
Where did the water come from?
Where did it go?



The Man walked to the edge of the tile floor, onto what remained of the sidewalk and blacktop beyond the overhang. He stared into the emptiness. The impression was without depth. When he expected to stare into a bottomless pit, his experience was closer to staring at a wall his nose was pressed against. There was nothing to focus on. No sense of space.

He couldn't stand there for very long. And he didn't.

*
Someone had said something in the between of wakefulness and sleep.

The Man was reasonably sure it was important. He opened his eyes and brushed off his newspaper blanket. Someone had fixed the vending machines again. He didn't need to get up and inspect them to know that they'd been restocked.

Or at least, that was the first hypothesis.

What bothered The Man more than the isolation and the seeming tractlessness of time was the fact that he hadn't passed a bowel movement.

Not once.


And while his suit was understandably dirty, there was no ring around the collar. The general filth one would expect one's body to shed onto cotton after going days or weeks (how long had it been?) without a change of clothing was noticeably absent. The oil-stain on his knees was still there - from when he'd reached under the vending machine searching for loose change.

The Man didn't get hungry. He broke open the vending machines and ate every morning more out of routine than anything else. Once he had punctured a water-pipe while banging on it with a loosened tile, and managed to take an impromptu shower.

He gazed at that pipe now. He'd never have guessed it had ever been disturbed. Whoever came in here while he was sleeping certainly did a good job of repairing whatever he damaged. Cobwebs were returned, nicks and scratches in the glass were there.

One day The Man just carved his name into the wall with a pen. Then he took a nap. His name was noticeably absent when he awoke.
The antihypothesis was much less comforting, and The Man did not spend much time on it.

The Man walked up and down the terminal. Empty benches standing like monuments to the dead. Or lost. Or maybe he was lost. Maybe he was dead? The Man wasn't sure.

Sometimes he would speak loud enough for him to hear himself babble and warble and ramble on about nothing. And sometimes he would scream. He did not like the sound of his scream echoing back at him.

The world looked grayer to him every day.


The Man noticed that the emptiness was coming closer almost by accident.

The yellow line that indicated no one was supposed to stand beyond that space when the bus arrived had, he was relatively sure, been at the edge of the drop off to nothingness. But today it was gone.

The Man remembered what happened when he'd thrown a pocket full of loose change at the void.

He could see the coins shimmering in that horrible, ceaseless light

and then they were gone.

They never struck anything.

They never passed beyond the concrete.

They were just gone.



The Man sat at the bench and stared at his shadow beneath him. He knew he would have to take the plunge.

If he didn't walk into it, sooner or later it would come for him.

The Man shuddered. Imagining a small island in the stream of nothing. A bench atop a small patch of concrete. He sitting there with his legs pulled up as the world slowly melted into nothing....

He couldn't do that.

Better to meet the inevitable, The Man decided. He took up his coat and straightened it as best he could. He looked longingly at the empty exit lane that indicated the way out that was no way out at all. The Man strode forward to meet the audient void.
He stared long into the abyss.

And then he stepped forward

The bench he’d sat in remained warm for a long time.

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