How a Universe Ends
by Adam Ritchey
This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang, but with an off switch.
We knew it was coming. Had known it for decades. Ever since researchers proved, beyond doubt, that we were living inside a simulation— not base reality, but someone else’s software— we’ve been learning how to grieve a world that never technically existed.
We tried everything to signal our creators: planet-scale prime patterns etched in deserts, synchronized gravitational pulses, fleets of satellites chirping the same message at the same time for years. One time, all of humanity shut down all electrical activity for a full month, creating a perfect dark sphere floating in space — an intentional absence. That was a surprisingly wonderful time for us, my wife and I. Eventually humanity detonated the largest fusion burst in history, not as a weapon, but as a flare.
When our creators finally replied, it wasn’t a conversation. It was more like a cosmic slow clap: well done, little algorithms.
Polite, though. They told us the truth – there was a sunset date. They would be turning off the servers, or whatever technology filled the niche in their world that computer servers filled in our world. But they gave us time.
That was nearly ten years ago.
As the years turned over, the world slowly became the best version of itself. Governments dissolved – there was no point competing for a future that wouldn’t arrive. The global birthrate plummeted – no reason to have kids who would only live long enough to perish as fourth graders. Wars ended – not from treaties but from irrelevance. When the countdown reached one year, nations opened borders so families could reunite before everything went black.
As the date grew closer, I would sometimes find my wife standing in the yard, sobbing. The world was suddenly too beautiful to bear– the leaves, the grass, the clouds. She struggled with the idea that such beautiful, perfect things could be fake. I would remind her that our love is real. The base equations of our universe may have been programmed, but we still found each other and fell in love.
That made it real in any universe.
During those final few days, skilled chefs cooked their best meals on sidewalks, offering them free to strangers. Museums opened their vaults, letting anyone touch the things too precious to touch. Couples married in empty courthouses, exchanging vows for a future measured in hours. Neighbors who’d never spoken shared blankets and thermoses of hot chocolate.
Near us, someone played a violin in the park, and our whole neighborhood went still just to listen.
And then the final day arrived, the literal end of our universe.
Humanity did the only real thing left: we went stargazing.
Cities dimmed lights. Families gathered. Across rooftops and beaches and deserts, billions lay on blankets, looking up at the night sky one final time.
And in that moment, with everything ending, a strange peace settled over me. For something so fake, my entire life had felt painfully, beautifully real. I looked at my wife so I could tell her one last time that I . . .
A.P. Ritchey is kind of all over the place -- speculative fiction to science reporting to poetry. His work has appeared in many periodicals, with recent fiction in Rat Bag Lit, Typishly and SciFi Shorts, among others. He writes from Fayetteville, Ark.
