The End of the Universe

Date: 6/3/2019

We woke up with the news that the world was going to end at 5 PM that day. Not just the world—all life in the universe would be wiped out due to an insane space war between alien races across galaxies. My family drove to a bunker that one of our friends owned, but after a while we realized that anything like that would be so incredibly futile. We returned home, and some friends came over. I saw people’s reactions to the news on social media, but after a little while I put my phone away and sat to talk with everyone. We talked about everything, like how this happened, what would happen after this. But also about our lives and how amazing it was to exist. And I realized that this was it. I would never exist again. This consciousness would not “move on” into an afterlife, I would simply stop existing. It was terrifying. I want to say that the feeling was comforting but at that time it was so terrifying. My friend Ace joined me on the piano bench in the living room, and I asked her if she thought that life would ever return to the universe after this. She said no, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. I started crying. It was 4:30. Mom had just made a cake and I made sure the cats were inside. We sat in the living room eating, leaning on each other, talking a little bit, crying. I got up and walked outside and no one stopped me. I saw this old, old alien (he looked like a Mystic from The Dark Crystal) who was in the yard, looking at the sun setting. I asked him what he was doing here, and he said that he had gotten the alert in his spaceship about the state of the universe, and that he wanted to spend his remaining hours on some sort of land. Earth was the closest. I said alright. He said comforting words to me, and I began to cry again. Mom came outside and sat down next to me and she wasn’t crying. I held hands with her and the alien and we all watched the sunset—beautiful reds and oranges. It was 4:55. I woke up.