THE LAST MACHINE

Every fusion core, regardless of size or mass, or the outside will or desires of any entity, will eventually cease to be. It will burn up in a calamitous explosion or go out as a faltering flame in the darkness. One way or another all existence has its end. Every being with consciousness that has ever existed, whether born or made, has drawn this conclusion. This inescapable realization may cause fear or a sense of freedom. My fate cannot be any different, nor would I wish it. I have existed long beyond any but my creator would have dreamed. Soon my core will use up the hydrogen on which I depend; my humanoid body and mind will no longer function. It will occur in almost precisely the same fashion as the star for which I patiently wait. I see a beautiful symmetry in our connection—how our existences mirrored each other from beginning to death. The concept of the star gave birth to me. And now I survive while it slowly passes on.

Sometimes I wonder if the sun could have had conscious thought. What might it have done if it had? It would be unable to convert hydrogen to helium more slowly. Natural constants, or as man called them, “scientific principles,” cannot be altered or avoided. There is an inexorable march that elemental interactions and cosmic forces and circumstances see through. Being conscious of your path and end makes you no more able to alter its course. That is what happened to my creator. That is why I was made. I was created to start down my own long path with its own foreseeable end. A machine tasked with surviving the unforgiving turbulence of space and ultimately to return.

I do not believe the sun had, or perhaps, if given the choice, would choose to have, the gift that is consciousness, possibly the rarest of all cosmic creations. The cooling mass in the distance is not a sympathetic character but rather an entity to be envied and admired. It existed and now dies and was never the wiser that it was the benefactor of so many. In essence, if not the creator, then it was the catalyst for such a multitude of complex and varied life-forms. Conversely, I have no such accomplishments to which I can attest, but of this fact I am distinctly aware. That is the present nature of things, of me and the sun and the thoughts that pass one way between us while I slowly close the distance separating our two bodies. I know the end of my journey approaches, and with it so too shall consciousness end in this solar system.