While There is Love There is Hope

            The universe had decided to kill itself. All the peoples of all the planets of all the galaxies of the universe had convened, and they had decided to end the universe.

            “All good things must come to an end,” they said to themselves, “Is that not the principle of the universe itself. People are born and then they die. Relationships are formed and then are broken. Beautiful creations are made and after some number of generations they are forgotten. Explorers have come to new frontier after new frontier, but before long all the frontiers are closed. The universe itself, for all we know, may have a similar cycle. It may be like the phoenix that destroys itself after many ages and is then reborn from the ashes. A leads to B leads to C leads to A, and the cycle continues. People flourish, love, are loved, and then they die. To what purpose was that life? To what purpose was that death? Are we not as a spark that once lit shines for half a second and then dies? What then is the purpose of life, if it is to end, though igniting other sparks which will do the same? Are we not as men who daily wait in a wasteland for some person, who never comes? In that waiting people may pass by, and we may see glorious things, and invent glorious things, but the purpose for which we stand there, to see that one person, is never reached, for he himself will not come, for he does not exist. Being in a universe that repeats, we have no purpose. Memory is lost. History repeats. Nothing truly happens. Nothing lasts. But even so, there comes nothing new under the many suns. The ideas of one age, the good and the bad, are reinvented by a later age. All invention is conceit, for it has come before. A person may know much, but with that knowledge comes sorrow, the knowledge of knowing the depths to which human kind may sink. A person may know many people, but when they leave him he is left to greater loneliness. These cycles are inevitable, they go nowhere. Thus, for our own sake, let us end these meaningless cycles. Let us end that which is, for that which is is meaningless.”

            This was their statement. This was their thesis. It was agreed to. And beyond this, they had the means to do it. They erected the gallows for the universe, a mechanism that would cast the universe back into nothing, if indeed from nothing it had come. They insisted that they should have truly universal agreement. On all the worlds of all the galaxies they set up little rooms for each person. And in the center of these rooms stood podiums, upon which was placed a button. Once all the people had pushed all of these buttons the mechanism would be activated, but only then, for only then would they be sure of universal agreement. It was built.

            The people all entered these rooms, closed the doors, and one by one, they began to press the buttons. One by one, world by world, galaxy by galaxy the buttons were pressed. Then, at last, only one button was left unpressed. The Universe had condemned itself to death, had built the scaffold, had placed the noose around its own neck, and now waited for the executioner, the last button, to pull the lever and remove the trapdoor.

            The universe waited. They had all agreed before this that they would want to see who would be the last, the one who had so long hesitated that they would be the executioner, and had thus put cameras into all of the rooms to broadcast the last words of the universe to all.

            And behold, it was a young child looking at the button, seeing the recording light on the camera lit, knowing that its decision was the last of them.

            “No, I won’t,” the child sobbed, “ I won’t. Things should end happily, like in fairy tales. ‘Happily ever after’.  This wouldn’t be a happy ending, I want to live. I want my family to live too. I love them, my parents, my siblings. Even if I can’t live ‘Happily ever after’ I can hope for it can’t I? You say all good things end. Why do they have to? Can’t we keep the good things for ‘ever after’.  Forever, never ever ending.  I know I’m just a kid. I don’t know what you all know, but even if things are as sad as you say, can’t we believe love lasts ‘forever’, even if it isn’t true?”

            And thus that hope without which the universe would cease to exist still existed: that great hope that love is greater than death itself; that great hope that there will be a “happily ever after” for the universe. The hope that the universe has some purpose, called by humanity ”love”.