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Last Day of the Universe

Matthew F. Amati lives by a canal. His fiction has appeared previously in Daily Science Fiction as well as in Flash Fiction Online, Space Squid, Cafe Irreal, and elsewhere. He has recently published a novel about Oompa-Loompas, although no one knows why, He has a blog at mattamati.com.

Tours of the Pillars of Creation will end at 11:00 AM.
Help wanted packing suns away; hydrogen-handling experience preferred.
All spaceships please return to port of origin. All lost spaceships, we'll turn on the house lights so you can find your way home again.
Gravity will be rescinded at 3:30 PM. (Consider your weight-loss goals achieved.) The weak nuclear force will be shut off at six.
All interstellar wars were supposed to have been concluded by last Thursday's deadline. If you are still wrangling over possession of the Southern Pleiades, or are fighting to determine dominance of ape-man vs. lizard man, desist immediately. (This means you Supreme Emperor V'Thulkhk! Stand down... or slither down, as the case may be).
Note to all spiral galaxies; wind it up boys.
Note to the Sombrero Galaxy; time to hang up your hat.
Protons and neutrons, the bonds between you are hereby dissolved. You are free to go.
Please dispose of any cosmic debris in the nearest black hole. Custodial staff, you may empty black holes as necessary.
There are reports of misplaced towels in the lost-and-found west of Rigel. If any hoopy froods are missing their most important assets, we advise them to check with the front desk.
Dark matter will go dark at 9 PM, regular matter at 11.
Humans! We ask that you... what? This is your first extraterrestrial contact? Er, we have some bad news for you.
(How to put this so humans can grasp it? Remember "billions and billions"? At this point, we're down to "several.")
Planets, please conclude your final orbits at this time. Consider yourselves out of rotation.
My closing speech will be short. No time to mention everybody who ever existed. If I leave out your name, don't take it personally.
It's been a good run. Remember how big that bang was? Whoa! And remember... aw, heck.
Sorry. Time's up. Really, it's up.
The Final Frontier is now closed. Will the last entity to leave please shut off Light?
The End
This story was first published on Thursday, September 29th, 2016


Author Comments

This story came from reading the Wikipedia page titled "Timeline of the Far Future." I highly recommend it for a jolt of purest cosmic Weltschmertz. You begin with "Canadian Rockies erode away to a plain," watch helplessly as "stellar close encounters detach all planets in all star systems from their orbits," and finish up exhausted at "all baryonic matter has either fused to form iron-56 or decayed from a higher mass element into iron-56." (Truly a Hobson's choice for poor baryonic matter.) After that, I hope you enjoy black holes and isotopic rust, because those will be your bosom companions as you while away the yottaseconds until the final energy state. The page doesn't have any recommendations for what we should do under such melancholy circumstances, so I've provided a few.

- Matthew F Amati
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