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In The Glow Of Expanding Red
Among the remaining, careful administrative robotics, which busily performed each and
all of the maintenances on the planet, so that he could inhabit the earth alone, he was
a legendary, but little observed, entity: few of them had experienced his presence;
most of them were aware of him only as the purpose and object of their various
functions which were intended to prolong, preserve and protect his existence,
which had been scientifically (and some of his now dead colleagues had said,
unnaturally) extended so that he had witnessed the slow transformation of
the earth---from a metropolitan singularity teeming with life to a barren
junkyard of abandoned, and now obsolete, ancient machinery beneath
the piles of which were the unmarked sepulchers in which uncounted
bodies of deceased human beings had long ago decomposed to the
constituent and elemental dust of which had composed their flesh.
The unforeseen consequence of his longevity was the subjective
deceleration of time, as he perceive it, so that years passed by
him like seconds, and decades like hours, according to the
antiquated measure of time contrived by his unnamed,
mostly forgotten, predecessors' inaccurate devices.
He had read all books, and disparaged them; had
heard all music, and despised it; had viewed all
art, and misunderstood it. The thoughts of his
own mind had long since lost any interest for
him; and was replaced by the unrelenting,
always present fear of his own cessation.
So when the computers dispassionately
notified him of the suddenly persistent
crimson glow of the sun's expansion,
and that it was occuring much more
quickly than science had predicted,
he turned his head (the first time
in countless millenia) toward the
nearby viewer, and watched the
screen fill with the swollen,
crimson, rapidly nearing
destructive presence of
the dying sun.
Starward
