“I have a question,” the delegation’s imam said, an old man with a full white beard and spotless black robes. To my mind, his stern voice indicated he wasn’t going with the Olyix’s liberal interpretation of how the Prophet’s vision came to be. “You claim to be on pilgrimage to the end of time. If so, do you welcome humans who might wish to join with you?”
“Certainly,” Eol-2 said quickly. “There are practical concerns, of course. We would have to adapt your biology to effectively provide you with immortality. Our Kcells are a good start on that endeavor, but considerable work remains to be done.”
The imam gave Eol-2 a disbelieving stare. “You mean the Olyix are already immortal?”
“The bodies of a quint are the vessel of the mind, carrying it through time. We continue to reproduce physically, for all biological bodies decay over time, even ours. However, our identity remains steadfast.”
“So there are no new Olyix?” Nahuel said.
“No. Physically and spiritually we have matured as far as possible. As you would put it, we have reached the end of our evolution. This is why we have embarked on our great journey; there is nothing else left for us in this universe.”
“I find that hard to believe,” the cardinal said. “God’s universe is bountiful and limitless.”
“We know all there is to know about this creation. Therefore, we await that which is to come after.”
“After?”
“The God at the End of Time will look back upon the life of the universe, and use what It finds to create a new and better universe from the void into which all will collapse.”
“That promise of immortality sounds suspiciously like a bribe to me,” the imam said.
“It cannot be,” Eol-2 replied. “Immortality, extending through this life and into the next, is something that only a mature mind can accept. If you are not worthy of it, you would never survive such an existence. And remember, there is no return from the path we would share. You would have to be very sure of yourself to accept such a daunting offer. We do not consider it a bribe. Abandoning all that you are—your belief, your life—is a decision you must come to by yourself.”
“Then tell me why you are alone in the
“That is the saddest part of our journey, for we have discovered how terribly rare life is in this galaxy. And sentient life is the rarest of all. So many times we have listened to the faint radio cries of civilizations as they rise and fall. Very few ever succeed in reaching the stage you have achieved. Normally, all we find are empty ruins and creatures who have sunk back into the unthinking abyss as their star grows cold. This is why we love and cherish you so much. You are the most precious of all life; and to coexist in a galaxy so vast in space and time, to actually meet you and offer guidance, is truly a miracle. It will probably only happen a dozen times between now and the end of our flight.”
“Statistics can be a real bitch, it would seem,” the cardinal said in a level tone.
I caught the imam’s lips twitching in surreptitious satisfaction.
“Do you have any records of these lost civilizations you encountered?” Nahuel asked. “I would be most fascinated to see them.”
“I will inquire,” Eol-2 said. “They would be small indeed, for we place no importance on such encounters. Our gaze is upon the future and the glory that awaits us there.”
—
“What are your thoughts?” Nahuel asked me that evening as we ate supper. Thankfully, we’d been entrusted to manage that by ourselves. Eol-2 had shown us a communal area beside the yurts with freezers full of prepackaged human meals and a row of microwaves, along with a small selection of bottles. Before leaving us, Eol-2 imparted our schedule for tomorrow, which was mostly lectures going into greater detail of the pilgrimage and what their equivalent of philosophers thought they could contribute to the God’s deliberations about what universe to usher into existence next. There was also time reserved for us to advance our beliefs to the Olyix, but to me that looked like a polite afterthought.
“I think we need an astrophysicist to start asking some difficult questions about quantum cosmology,” I told him.
“I believe those questions have been asked many times since contact. No substantiated astrophysical proof has ever been provided for their assertion that the universe is cyclic in nature, and each iteration can only exist for a finite time. In that respect, they exceed even our most facile popularist politicians when it comes to delivering on a promise.”