She was slowly waking up. The air in the spacecraft was warm and had a pungent smell of metal. She opened her eyes and frowned. She stretched her limbs, slowly, rose and walked to her cockpit. From there she gazed upon the infinite space. Black. Completely pitch black. Not a single star nor speckle of dust. As much as she expected this sight, it did nothing to cheer her up. A long time ago, humanity figured out matter had a finite lifespan. 1025 years. It was considered at best a technicality, an interesting fact that would belong to the realm of theories. Yet, the self-perpetuating purpose of life pushed reality to the point where this became a problem.

She sighed and left the cockpit. She checked the stability field generator's display. A device designed to keep matter alive, as long as the field as active. However, everything comes at a cost and this was no exception. To keep necessary matter alive, unnecessary matter must be consumed. Thus, when matter started to die out, began a hunt. Humans set out to find any matter they could burn, to fuel their very existence. Colonies grew first around gas giants and asteroid fields. But those slowly but surely started to dwindle. Atoms individually started to disintegrate, one by one first. Then en masse, as the probability of each individual atom grew at an exponential rate. Rock and metal became porous, gas giants became less dense, forcing scavengers to dive deeper and deeper in the fading atmosphere. And so, celestial bodies slowly lost consistency and eventually died, leaving nothing behind them. The remaining humans quickly had to find a solution, which came under a peculiar form of piracy. Reluctant killers roamed former hubs in silence. Finding another spacecraft meant another month of existence, and the price for failure was death.

She looked at her sensor array, thinking of the many who died by her hand, only to delay fate a bit more. She was fairly confident she was the last human alive, so she climbed in her spacesuit and started dismantling the sensors. An hour later, she fed the field generator with the scraps of metal and polymers she could salvage.

She walked up to the cockpit and gazed at the perfectly black field that stretched out, infinite, in front of her. The metallic smell was a result of oxygen molecules breaking down and forming ozone, a constant reminder of the future awaiting her and everything. The field generator had to be kept on, no matter what. Should a living being step out of its area of effect, its lifespan would be considerably shortened, as DNA molecules themselves started to unravel under the effect of atoms disintegrating in key locations, long before complete annihilation. She was painfully aware those were the last days of her life. Soon will arise an impossible choice. Her life sustaining systems would be the last quantity of matter besides her own body and the field generator. She was bitter but found solace in the idea the universe will die with her. She was almost amused at the idea she would be the universe in its totality.

The ship grew uncomfortably warm. Air cooling systems were deemed non-critical and dismantled. The matter disintegration released some residual heat that eventually built up. The metallic smell became even stronger, and made her head ache. She decided to meditate and rest. She sat and tried to calm the flow of her thoughts, to no avail. As she struggled with her own feelings, a loud beeping began. She overestimated the structural integrity of the sensor array, there wasn't enough matter to power the field generator for two days, let alone one. The beeping meant that one hour of fuel was left. She put on the spacesuit once more, dismantled the engines, brought them in and put them in the compartment. She didn't plan to move elsewhere, if elsewhere meant anything at this point. She shrugged and put off the spacesuit. She folded it roughly and put it next to the engine remains in the combustion chamber. She watched her suit glow and slowly become translucent as its atoms were consumed to keep the field up.

She decided to inspect the cargo bay. It was obviously empty, as it has been for years now. She ran her finger on the walls. They used to be smooth but now had a rough feeling to them. They were slowly becoming porous and would soon start to leak air. She sighed and came back in the living quarters and sealed the door to the cargo bay. She looked around, and, with a knot to her stomach, noticed there was nothing left she could burn. All the furniture had been dismantled long ago. The unnecessary machines followed them and eventually entire parts of the ships were consumed. Only the ship's hull remained, along with critical life support machinery. She sat on the floor and sobbed in silence. Soon, her body will start disintegrating, she will be turned into a finite quantity of heat and slowly diffuse in an infinite universe. Time itself will die, in the absence of any observer or observable event. She contemplated mutilating herself. Cutting off her leg would provide her with a few more minutes, certainly. Instead, she waited. There was nothing else to do. The ominous beeping started again. She ignored it.

After a few minutes, she got up and stepped into the airlock, naked. She began the airlock procedure and waited. The spaceship doors closed and were sealed shut. She anxiously expected the air to be vented out, and held her breath. After what seemed an eternity, she resumed breathing. The venting system was damaged. She tried opening the inner door, then the outer door, to no avail. She sat and started considering her options. As she waited, the air in the airlock felt thicker, warmer and tasted like tin. A faint whistling broke the silence as air started to leak to outer space. She looked for the leak and put her finger on it. The whistling died out. Then another one broke the silence. And another, and quickly, the whole door was leaking precious air. She pushed the door and its polymers cracked. She took a last, deep breath and crawled through the breach. She was floating in the infinite black space. Her spaceship looked like a ruin from the outside, leaking gases from every panels. Perfectly isolated by a total vacuum, she didn't feel cold at all. She watched her ship slowly collapse upon itself and turn into a wreck that was quickly fading away. She was floating in space, with no notion of time nor direction. She closed her eyes and let herself succumb to the void.