"This is the end" by Robert Sjöblom

Earth. Not as you would know it. Earth has changed.

Deep in space lies our galaxy. In the middle of our galaxy lies a super heavy black hole. Some million (billion?) light-years away lay another galaxy. We know it as Andromeda.

Earth. Some say it still looks the same. I don’t know. I can only guess. History hasn’t taught us anything. History has been forgotten. Three billion years do that to you. The Romans, their empire, the Celts and their culture; everything has been forgotten. The time is near. Some speak of the revelation of God. Some say it is the end of days. How can we be sure?

I am star pilot James Malloy. Pleased to meet you. This is my ship. I call her "Cassandra". My wife... My wife’s name was Cassandra. That’s why I am taking this mission. I have nothing that binds me to earth anymore. Our scientists know what will happen. Everybody knows what will happen. I do to. This is the end. My men, five billion "corpses", and me are what will leave Earth. We will find another place to live. So that mankind can continue its everlasting quest for space domination.

Space journeys were a big disappointment when they first began, I’ve heard. The first, the pioneers, all came home disappointed. We are alone in the universe. Nothing else lives in this big place, this emptiness. Odd, really. I mean, how many stars are there? Yeah, right. As if someone would know. Every star has one or more planets orbiting it. I’d be damned if there didn’t exist, somewhere, something that could be called intelligent. Save mankind, that is. This is the end. That’s all I can think of while walking the ladder up to Command Bridge.

Cassandra. What a beautiful ship she is. She was a beautiful woman, too. My wife. My dead wife, that is. I miss her. I will miss her every day on this journey to another planet. Of course, there are other ships, just like mine. Every colonized planet in this galaxy has sent a ship. Some even sent two. Mankind has lived in this galaxy for all eternity, it seems. Odd, really. How one species can survive for that long. And to imagine it all began on earth. It scares me, to think that this is the end.

Earth. Some say it has changed. I don’t know. I do know that this Earth is the only one I will know as "home". I look at it; it’s viewed on the screen. This is the final day. Today we will leave. Towards an unknown goal. I don’t know where, or if, we ever will get there. That is irrelevant, actually. We are mankind’s last hope.

Take off. We have left the solar system. Today is the seventh day of the third week, of the sixty-seventh month of the twenty-second year of reign under emperor Ivan Malloy. We’re related somehow. On my mother’s side. My mother was a beautiful woman, she died at the age of eighty-five. Sad, really. She said to me that I should be lucky, if I got to see the end.

We have cleared half the galaxy. We got words from the other ships. They are all behind us. The only humans this far out are those under the emperor’s service. Scouts, armies, secret laboratories. I don’t know.

One of our engines failed today. It’s broken. It will take at least a year to fix it. The other ships are continuing. I look at the screen, having directed the camera towards Earth. I can’t see my home any more. I know where it is, though. It’s encircled by red. So I know where to look. Andromeda is really close now. I can see the stars clearly. I could count them if I wanted to. But I would have to give up after a while. Nobody can count the stars.

Do you know how space, as we know it, came to be? A big explosion, some say. Funny, really. I never thought of space as ironic. This is the end.

The crew voted today. It was unanimous. Everybody wanted to see the end.

This is the end.

I can see Andromeda clearly. I can see the planets of the solar systems of Andromeda. With a speed of four hundred thousand kilometers per hour she crashes into our galaxy. The explosion is enormous. Earth, unlucky as it is, is caught in the middle. A super nova boiled the atmosphere away in less than a fragment of a second. The explosions continue throughout the entire galaxy. This is the end.

End of Diary.

This is the beginning.