Future Apparent

The first time, it was entirely unintentional.  We had no more use for the thing, so we sent it into a different universe to get rid of it.  It was only later, during a safety check, that we noticed the phenomenon.

Further disposals confirmed it, our people's eyes keenly watching through our scientists' dimensional scanners.  As each hermetically sterile object entered the disposal universe, life--/life!/--appeared from it, as though coalesced from the ether itself.

No one could explain how it happened, and the creatures were far too tiny--and our scanners too imprecise--to perceive anything other than their forms, but our scientists assured us that the macroscopic patterns of their movements indicated, without a doubt, intelligence close to our own.

What began as a means of disposal soon became official policy.  Our used-up objects were without exception deported to that universe, and we smiled as we saw each one colonised in turn.  Our one regret is that we have no way of effectively communicating with those people, nor any way to make contact with a deported object or survive the trip ourselves.

We have known for a long time that our universe is dying, and that our race will go with it.  We cannot escape, and we thought that we had nothing left to hope for, but now we have peace.

The exhausted dregs of our civilisation will become the promised land for nations, in that empty universe.  Until our last star sputters out and our last person draws their last breath, we will keep sending our used objects to that universe, until it is filled with life.  Those objects will remain forever there, and eternal flame of life and hope, our legacy in the multiverse.

If someone one day reads this, then smile for us, for out of our dying present we have brought forth an endless future.

---

It has been a long time since we evolved, but the planetoids have been here long before.  Our greatest scientists say that they are eternal, that they have always hung here in the void with no beginning.  Our philosophers scoff, but cannot deny the data, and our religious sing of the divine glory of infinity.

We began as very simple creatures, but quickly gained curiosity, intelligence, and the technology to spread from planetoid to planetoid, building our cities on every surface of their disparate contours.  Everything we can measure says that the planetoids have always been here, and nothing could prevent them from forever remaining--or so we thought.

The appearance of the Enemy sent shockwaves throughout our civilisation, not only in what it did to us but in how it did it.  Transmitted recordings show in dreadful clarity how space itself opened up, dragging that first planetoid from its eternal resting spot, slowly at first but then faster and faster, into the white gaping maw which vaporised our people and destroyed even their ashes.

When the maw closed, leaving space as still and sublime as ever, the planetoids in our universe numbered one less.

Decades later, the Enemy attacked again.  Again a world was pulled into its maw, again a world of people died, again ours worlds numbered one fewer.

As I write this, we do not have many worlds left.  Even as our factories struggle, we cannot make enough vehicles for all our population to evacuate whichever world is targeted next in time.  More than evacuation, everyone from our leaders to our children realises that we need to find a way to fight against this Enemy if there is to be any hope at all.

We cannot live without the planetoids, and every attack they become one fewer.  Everything we tried has been disintegreted without trace by the maw, without causing the slightest perturbation.

To those who read this:  Defeat the Enemy.  Find a way to save the planetoids, to anchor even one planetoid in its eternal rest without being taken by the Enemy.  For if you do not, we have no future.