I looked around. The same old thing everyday. This, that, this, that. I certainly would have liked the school they had a long time ago, but I knew that was long gone.

They gave chips now, inserted into your brain which would hold the information for you. You could literally calculate that  193923479213947923747 was not a prime number with only one glance. You could know its factors, its double, its square root. All you needed was one glance. Even chips were kept to help you store memory and access it quickly. You could delete memory too. Read a book, and you’d know every single word on it. But no one would do that. We would delete it. So we could read again! That’s why everybody had only 1 book in their house, in their little wooden bookshelf, and all we had to do to read was to delete.

I wanted more. I wanted more of something I didn’t yet understand. I wanted the meaning to live. All my classes were a bore as usual, inserting data into the chips. At the end of class, I stood outside waiting for my friends. I stood at the end of a long and distant hallway, and I could hear the trees rustling their leaves. The leaves gave an eerie feeling. The silence of the place, while only hearing the leaves, made it feel like the world I lived in was not meant to be. Not meant to be at all.

Everyone else had most likely left the school, ready to take a break and sit down and turn on their video game chip to play. Others would turn on the music, or would call people with their chips. Regular life.

“Where are you Sewey? Badey? I’m at the hallway near the library.” I thought into my communication chip. These chips were designed for anyone to send a message, and instead of having to hear someone out, their thoughts are immediately transferred to one another. Sewey and Badey came running right out of the library itself, terribly surprising me, and panted as they took a breath.

Sewey was the brainy type of person. Only a selective few were allowed to get newer chips inserted into the brain, and because his dad worked on chips, he could get free access to any of them.

Badey, on the other hand, was like an average girl, and she agreed with anyone, as long as it wasn’t about her. She never made an argument, and went with whatever people around her thought.

“We found something in the history section. Come on, check it out!” they said through the chip.  We entered the library, and ran to the history section.

The library was as plain as it could get. Each chip shelf lined the library in an orderly fashion, where each chip was located in their respective categories. In the history section, the shelves were so high one could not reach the top even if we were double the size. We would normally use ladders to reach the uppermost chips. At the aisle where all the oldest history records were kept, stood a section labeled, Before the Golden Age. In that particular section, were only two chips. I inserted it into my datareader on the back of my head, and out popped the story.

Vividly in my memory I saw a world of beauty. I saw trees, birds, and people, oh, the people. They walked by, and talked with one another in person. “Who would do that?” I thought, “Why would anybody take the time to do that? It is unusual.” And so on went my thoughts. A bird flew by, captivating my eyes. I had never saw a bird, only had heard of it. Heard of the creatures that once stood by near the humans, granting them happiness. Now there was a happiness chip to take care of all that.

The bird, and its colorful feathers, its short, yellow beak, gave a pleasure I couldn’t understand. I realized that this was the feeling I ever so missed. It chirped a little tweet-tweet, and all the people around smiled when it flowed into their ears. I knew that this was what I was looking for. Something more from life perhaps. And then Sewey broke the silence.

“You saw it , too, didn’t you? A world of interesting. We don’t have that kind of world today. This world is nothing. And I don’t think we can get it to interesting. It’s much like a dystopia, don’t you think? I don’t feel right with this situation. I got to think over this. I think we all, we’ve forgotten the meaning of life. I’m going home.” he sent through the com. chip.

I walked home in this dystopian world. I mulled over everything, the past, the present, and what the future might be. As I sat in my house eating my digital food, I turned off my com. chip. My parents would always talk as soon as they sat down for dinner. I realized, in the midst of the world, in the midst of my life, there was nothing new. Nothing new, nothing surprising, only old. Only the same old things. And would I have to look forward to this everyday? No. I realized, that I just wanted something new, or I would have to do something. Something drastic.

Death was a concept all too new for me that day, though. I didn’t understand it, and took it very lightly as my thoughts strayed to my dreams.

“Wake up! Wake up!” Sewey sent thought his com. chip. I woke up in my bed.

“What is it now, Sewey?” I answered, getting up into a sitting position.

“It’s time to go. We’re leaving. And I’ve got a plan. Pack up all the essentials: digital food, water, and some extra clothes.” Sewey replied, and stopped communication.

Deep inside, I knew that yesterday was my last civilized dinner of my life. I looked around, eyeing the wooden bed with the mattress that I was on, the closet where I hung my clothes, and the door where I would always exit to find himself in the same world, over and over again. The plainness of my room was something I never noticed before. My mind was drastically changing, and I knew I would never want to live in a world like this again.

I got ready for my day, whatever it was going to be, with all my essentials, and I left my dull house, but only to enter a dull world. I communicated with Sewey about what we were going to do. In short, his answer was “I’ll tell you when we get there.” I went to the school, waiting for my friends. The walk took surprisingly a short amount of time, considering I wasn’t exactly running. Sewey then showed up, with a big smile on his face, like something great was to happen.

Sewey took out what seemed like a rusty old book. Sewey had got the book from The Oldest Records in the town library. It was one of the few books left. It was labeled To The Age of Mortality, and when the book was opened, we could see our destiny. Not just ours. All of humanity. The book told us of a time when animals, not just humans, existed. There were all types of animals, and in all manners of places. There was a time, when the world wasn’t about US this and US that. It was about everything.

The book went on, with the story of Earth’s destruction, its demise, and how we cared nothing of it. In fact, we were the ones who made it so. We moved on, with our lives, to a new home, where it was only about us. The very definition of animals was soon rarely learned.

And then came the immortality. The book taught us that, humans, above all, didn’t want to die. When immortality came, where they would bioengineer a part of our bodies to be able to sustain life, all of that was gone. So we entered the Golden Age of Us.

The book also told us of a way, to bring mortality back, but it would cost us our lives. It seemed untrustworthy, because how can immortality go away, just like that? It told us that things called black holes exist today. And these black holes can kill people. No one knows what is inside a black hole. That’s what makes it so dangerous. We realized that might be the only way to save us from eternal life. We had to die.

Sewey had every part of the plan calculated. He had a super-charger bomb he made for a science fair, but was disqualified for its purpose, and not because of its ingenuity. We knew this was its purpose. Or at least seemed to be. To burst open the sun and create the black hole from within. To do that, we had to get as close to the sun as possible. We had to get to Earth. It was just close enough, with Sewey’s calculations, that would allow the sun to dispose of its current shape and take on the form of a black hole.

Badey, like herself always, immediately agreed with it. She would do anything as long as it seemed reasonable, even though this was as far away from reasonable you could get. Yet Sewey hid something from us. Something he wouldn’t tell us until the end. And that, we would find out later.

We went along our way. Transportation between worlds was easy, but getting to Earth was hard. No trains would be open except for one, the tour train. The tour train came very rarely, and there was no set times. It was so rare it was heavenly to find it itself. You just had to find it one day. You’re immortal anyways, so you wait for a long time to find one. But we couldn’t. We needed it soon. Before others would label us as runaways and bring us back to the horrid world we lived in for so long.

We boarded one of hundreds of thousands of Mynerallia Trans-planetary Stations across the planet. On board we found a space train that went straight to Mosstree. The way the Planetary Transportation System worked was you could go from one planet to another, but to prevent traffic problems they prohibited transportation to one direction. So, unluckily, Earth was to be our last stop.

The train ride felt new. We were never allowed to go to another world, unless it was for moving, business, or vacation purposes. I felt renewed. I was experiencing something new. I wasn’t all that crazy about going to die anymore, but still we continued.

The space train ride led us to Mosstree, the planet of the super trees. These trees could go so high, and it was mainly to allow for homes on different levels of the planet. The canopy, the understory, and the forest floor were the three levels of homes. It was certainly much better life than Mynerallia, but not good enough. Since we had a couple of hours to kill before going to the next train, we did a little visiting. We explored the world. It was exciting, but there was something missing. The animals. One more certainty that could never go away.

We got back on the space train, after enjoying some scenery. Those trees would make some of the best scenery ever in our lives. We moved on to Perbell, where they electronically had flying islands. Using a constant amount of power, these islands were floating because the motors and spinning blades, like a helicopter, kept it so.

We stood on the edges of the islands as we looked down, the wasteland of Perbell all around us. It stood so barren and so dull that it made us remember what we wanted to do. All barren down there, and beautiful up here. It seemed so artificial, that we moved on.

The space train brought us to Aquamaria, planet of the oceans. Standing on a little island, we could divulge ourselves into the culture of the people here, where everything was not just electronic chips, but more of enjoying the vast expanse of water. As we moved closer to Earth, we moved closer to things of the old. Practices, games, things such as these were available in Aquamaria. In short, it was our favorite planet of them all.

We spent some time playing a few mentally challenging games, but it was impossible to win. How could our electronic chips, so powerful in processing data and memory, fail us on a simple game? Sewey explained. These games were so forgotten in our cultures that when we first played it, it became an impossible task for the chips. They weren’t meant for this, they were for making calculations.

“We’ve become robots.” Sewey said, “We were meant for that. Just to move society forward.”

It became clear this was the case. Nothing in our world was meant for anything else. Aquamaria stood as the one world - the one exception - to this judgement.

Finding the tour train would have been like winning the lottery. Luckily Sewey, told us the most common of the tour train appearances. It was in a water resort, the richest one on the island. Obviously. The rich have a better chance of going to heaven. In most parts of history, the rich would usually get what they want. How is the golden age any different?

We sneaked into the resort. Right when the guard wasn’t looking, we ran right in. Inside, people were laying back, resting and enjoying the sunshine. They even had a big pool. We resisted the temptation to jump in and moved along the walls, finally to the VIP Train Express.

Nothing was there. No train had even entered the station. But suddenly, the air came whooshing at us, and a train stopped. It said in big letters, Tour Train. Those simple words kept flashing back at us. Even coming here, it only highered our chances by a tinsy bit. Still a lottery. But there it was. The gate to heaven. With our first foot in, we entered the tour train.

The train reached Earth, but it was not at all heaven. Earth, had nothing of the books we read and memories of the chips we analyzed. It was a barren planet, and was used for all the landfills and waste product disposal. I never understood where all our trash went, and here it was. How was this heaven?

The vast amounts of trash greatly touched our feelings. As the train went on, we saw shambled mirrors, doors, and things that were not from our world. These were from the past. There were plush toys, board games, tv screens, and all other types of furniture, just as easily disposed of as everything else.

We went east, but as the sun came up from the horizon, we saw the beauty that we were just about to destroy. It felt that the sun reached to us, wanting us to end its life.

Sewey whispered to us, “Time to go. This train will soon go back. Let’s get off without anybody noticing.” Stepping on Earth soil was a criminal offense. It meant it was now or never. Sewey jumped off first, then Badey, but I just stood. For a few seconds, I had begun to realize the terrible mistake I made. What if we could change this world? We didn’t have to die. We could morph it out of the superficial golden age. I wanted to go home.

I was just about to sit back down, but I realized, that if I did so, it would mean abandoning my friends. My foot touched the ground. I had committed a crime.

Sewey and Badey were near, wondering why I didn’t step out earlier.

“The train almost flew off! What were you doing?” Sewey asked, rudely.

“I had second thoughts,” I replied, “maybe we should have stayed. We should try to change the world for the better.” But I knew he wouldn’t change his mind. I stood off to the side, as the two looked at me in disgrace. They placed the bomb, and pressed Activate. Activation. Tick tock tick tock.

As the bomb blew, I saw my entire life, and saw that the end of it was the most interesting. The most memorable of it all. The blast didn’t affect us much, a few scars and bruises. It was mainly meant for destroying something bigger. Yet we knew what would come afterwards. The sun burst with flares, and closed in on itself. It burst out again, and I could feel my heat already being drained. I could feel myself pulled in. Sewey then sent me his real plan, through his com. chip, which were his last words.

“This black hole’s big enough to take in everything. EVERYTHING. ALL OF HUMANITY. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Those last words came to me as a betrayal. What bothered me most was he never told us. I realized our mistake. It’s not about what this world is, it’s about what it’s going to be. These were my last thoughts as I drifted into death. No immortality now.

The black hole swallowed Mars, and then Aquamaria, and then Perbell, and then Mosstree. Nobody suspected a thing. Everybody was already dead by then. Mynerallia, my home, was taken in in the end. But all wasn’t lost.

Humanity was a plague, and it had to be changed. We could have changed it, but instead we destroyed it. But it’s okay. Life can start anew, without us. It can take a different path. So be it. Life will never end. Life will continue, somewhere else and some other time. We just have to let it happen.

Year 60152: Death of Humans