by Arnold East
Soon, perfection reigned supreme. Every morning, in every commune, the workers woke up in order. They ate their delicious and nutritious breakfast. They marched to work. Did their work. Ate lunch. Worked more. Had dinner. Returned to their apartments. Fell into sweet sleep. Day after day, night after night. Every year the oldest died, and the newest entered the world. The robots sat in front of the screens. The earth turned around itself, turned around the sun, as the moon inched away and the sun expanded. In the communes, the cycle only continued. Centuries, millennia without fail.
Then one day, the earth was swallowed by the expanding sun, disintegrated in an instant. Everyone, and everything on it was gone forever. But the world was still there. In it, other civilisations like the one on earth were created and destroyed. Gradually, over billions of years, the ones being destroyed began to outnumber the ones being created, as everything floated away from everything else. Floating and disintegrating. Floating and disintegrating. Eventually, the last of it disappeared. The planets. The stars. The holes of gravity. Everything. In the end, nothing changed. There was nothing left, nothing to come. Just like always. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.