Infinity's End

BANG- BANG- BANG-

“Will someone please open up,” the muffled voice pleaded from the other side of the lab door.

The Captain scanned the room, looking to all of the remaining engineers—the ones who claimed to understand what it was that they were doing here—and raised a finger to his lips. The room fell silent; the only sound coming from the steady beep of the spacecraft’s clunky transmitter.

“We just want to know why we haven’t turned around yet,” the voice said. “People are starting to get nervous.”

And why not? Months had passed since the Captain had assured the ones below the lab that they were going to change course. And every day since then, the tension on the ship grew as they watched galaxies, flowing on the dark stream of time, smash like plates against the wall of the universe. The end of space; a partition that defied infinity and turned whatever it touched back into stardust.

The Captain walked backwards towards the door, a hand on his pistol and his eyes on the crew. He couldn’t afford any screwups. An outburst now would jeopardize the entire mission.

“We’ll be headed away from the wall shortly,” he barked. “It’s taking some time to plot the trajectory. Please return to your post.”

He kept an ear to the door until the sound of hollow footfalls clicked their way down the metal staircase; the messenger seemingly satisfied with the status report. And a moment later, making sure that the coast was clear, he gave a nod to the engineers who begrudgingly went back to work. Their hatred of him was visceral. Deep and animalistic. But what choice did they have? He was leading them, and everyone aboard the ship, to their deaths.

“The work that we’re doing here is important,” he said, trying to garner some sort of absolution, but the room remained quiet. Empathy, it seemed, was a luxury that could not be awarded to the executioner.

Three white coats, stained red and torn with tiny bullets holes, already hung on the coat hooks in the corner of the lab. All that was left of their former colleagues, whose bodies were now floating out in space, drifting towards the great wall. Three white coats that stood as a symbol of what would happen to them if they tried to stop the collision.

The Captain took a seat at the helm, placing his gun on the control panel, and looked out into the dwindling expanse. The eternal darkness of space that had come to an end. For centuries this ship had drifted through the empty void, but soon its search for answers would be over, and it was up to the Captain to make sure that they made it through the last leg of the race.

“We could at least tell them,” one of the engineers said. “They deserve to know.”

“Tell me,” the Captain asked, “if you were one of them, would you want to know?”

Life below the lab was simple. Its residents were born on the ship; lived, worked, and died on the ship. And that was that. For them, the only remnants of Earth was in their children’s stories. Fables that taught the errs of jealousy, greed, and destruction. If they knew the truth, that their forefathers had predestined generations of human life to limbo for science—that free will was not a birthright—chaos would ensue. They had been bred for a life in Plato’s cave, and the way the Captain saw it, taking them out into the light before their deaths would be inhumane.

“We don’t have to do this,” the engineer said, taking a quick glance at the bloody white coats on the wall. “We can turn back.”

“Have you forgotten about the blue planet?” the Captain asked. “All of those people on the other side of space?”

“What about the people on this ship? We don’t even know if Earth exists anymore.”

“It’s true,” another engineer chimed in. “In our lifetime, we’ve yet to receive a single transmission. We could be all that’s left.”

He could sense the desperation in their voices. It ran thick. The need for preservation was hard-wired into their DNA. Fear had been keeping them working this long; the fear that they would be nothing but hanging lab coats in the corner of the room, but how long would that last? The closer they got to that wall, the more threatened their survival would become. They couldn’t see the bigger picture, that true survival was transmitting as much information about the wall as they could before the crash.

The Captain picked up the gun, and moseyed around the table. How could he make them see that this wasn’t about them? That they were doing this for the future; for life both old and new; life that hadn’t yet been born in the goldilocks zones of yellow dwarf stars. They were dying so that the others had a chance to live. By collecting the data, all the way up until the end, they were helping civilizations band together and fight the wall.

“If we’re all that’s left,” he said, “then let’s not prolong the suffering.”

“And what if we all say no?” the engineer asked, a cagey look glazing over his eyes. The same look that seemed to be taking hold of them all.

The trigger cocked back, and everyone jumped as the sound of another white coat hit the deck. A wisp of smoke escaped the Captain’s barrel, and the smell of gunpowder filled the lab. Tears replaced the insurgence in their eyes, but it wouldn’t last for long. The host had been killed, but the ghost of rebellion couldn’t be stopped. Soon it would inhabit another, and then another, until all of the hooks were filled.

“Back to work,” the Captain shouted. “We’ve already wasted enough time.”