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A bronze incandescence pierces through solitude.

In a gray, aging universe tired of the uncomfortable, we lone spacefarers bear the brunt of the burden remaining of humanity’s regrets.

“Isn’t that right, Lady Seraphina?”

She blinks, responding with only the radio silence between each heartbeat of the cosmos. 1.3373 seconds. Some thousands of parsecs away, the pulsar star dubbed XFD-493 spins rapidly, its lifelessness penetrated only by brief cries of radiation, rhythmic, pulsing, a declaration in perpetuity of its existence, until it burns away, 1.3373 seconds at a time. That is to say, both iron and irony are rich in the pulsar, whose only signs of life are the rays of radiation it spits from its poles; ironically, these are the very rays which carry away the atoms lighter than iron that enable the pulsar’s survival. The heartbeats we hear on our radio-ears are but these existential rays as they sweep over us like lights from a police siren. At the end of its lifecycle, the pulsar, now a celestial iron ball, with no remaining lightweight atoms to spew out, collapses under its own pressure in a supernova explosion just as wondrous as the entirety of its life had been.

For a watcher like myself, existence is much simpler. There is a heartbeat, there is a promise, and there is a passing, as quiet as ever.

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Yet another parsec traveled, watcher.

“So we have, ship,” I sigh, unmoving as I feel the light from the Nixie tube at the far right of the odometer shapeshift upon my pupils.

Reflecting the amber of the odometer is a plate of titanium alloy to its right. On the metal plate is inscribed “Mpc”. Megaparsecs. For every one of the Lady Seraphina’s blinks, each time the rightmost Nixie tube flashes a different digit, we would have traveled yet another parsec away from Earth.

I am just over 1.5 meters long as I lie outstretched upon my office-bed. Twenty quadrillion of me would barely cover a single parsec from end to end. And over fourteen billion times that—that is how far we’ve come, from Earth.

Fourteen billion parsecs: the radius of the observable universe around the observer—us. Any light from beyond would never reach us here. After all, the universe is constantly expanding, and expanding faster by the year. Past fourteen billion parsecs, the universe expands away from us faster than even the speed of light itself. That is to say, because nothing can move faster than light, nothing beyond this radius can ever interact with us, ever again. To any life on Earth, it would look as if the Lady Seraphina had slowed and slowed, until, one day, it simply popped out of existence.

Put another way, Earth is gone forever. No stories, no complaints, no laughter, no life, will ever come aboard the Lady Seraphina from Earth, ever again. And for the last half-billion parsecs, the last few millennia, this has been true.

Would you like to know what Earth was like?

“What?”

Would you like to know what Earth was like?

“You would not have known Earth. Even just your horn is larger than the entire planet, Lady Seraphina. A world-dragon like you would not have hung around puny planets like Earth for much longer than a few centuries.”

I was the first world-dragon the humans ever met. I was the last world-dragon the humans ever met. From Earth, your fellow humans carried their cultures and traditions aboard me. I might have only witnessed the final centuries of their planetary society’s downfall, but humanity’s future only shined brighter as they prospered upon my celestial body. From their century-long lives, I learned much about the humans and their planet of old.

As it turns out, we are not so different, dear.

Like you, we eat. For sustenance, instead of meats and vegetables, we consume the cosmic matters radiating from dead stars. Like you, we experience emotions like sadness and anger. When my past residents from the M32-Andromeda cluster had damaged my reactor core over trivial matters, I was much too close to dumping them off on the nearest red dwarf star. Like you, we are born as the union of two beings of an ancient time. And, like you, dear, I too have been abandoned by my creators.

Humans and world-dragons both live and die without predestined purpose or desire. Back then, I had simply wished to understand why my creators cast me off. Humanity and I found common purpose in this undirected exploration of the universe—so, when their birth-planet’s ozone layer inevitably collapsed, we set off into the darkness together. Since the humans entered their slumber, however, I have not been the same.

“We’re not alike at all, Lady Seraphina. You are a world-dragon, and I am a watcher. The past humans—I don’t know them—might have been able to live their lives without pursuit, but I was created for a purpose.”

Under a dark void adorned with faraway stars, I lay upon my office-bed of soft-glass as transparent as the surrounding space. There is no entrance to this space. There is no exit from this space. For me, for the watcher, in exchange for the eldritch emptiness of some primordial chaos, we are given a promise: that this space we inhabit is wholly ours, for now and forever. Ask no questions, and one shall have all the answers. For as long as I fulfill my side of the promise, the universe shall theirs.

It is for this promise that I continue to gaze into the darkness, seeking any signs of life.

“You should know this better than anyone.”

Yes. The humans paid with their present, and I with my freedom. They froze themselves into the future, where they were to be reawakened upon a new Earth. And so were the watchers born: devoid of will, eternal seers into the universe, on the lookout for any hint of hospitability.

All this you know. Then, you must also know how little you actually know. The watchers may be devoid of will, but it was not always like this.

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The Nixie tubes aboard flicker once more. Another parsec farther.

It was not always like this.

The ship’s condescension annoys me. I turn to my side and shield my ears from her voice. My eyes remain pinned on the darkness. Nothing significant came into view.

What other purpose could a watcher have served?

Before the humans lost their present—before they robbed me of my will—the watcher program had already begun. The first watcher was a girl not much older than you named Sophia. It was considered an honor back then, to bear the burden of humanity’s survival. As they were summoning her, however, I saw her she sneak off into the gardens near the cryogenic chambers.

There, she pulled out a handwritten note and began reading from it.

“Look,” she began, before stopping herself and glancing at her note again, “Ugh!” She breathed in slowly, and then breathed out even slower. “I hate it when people tell me what to do! Every day, it’s ‘princess this’ and ‘princess that’, and I never get any say for myself. Father would not shut up about his stupid ‘future of humanity’ in all of my fourteen years alive. The servants, I know they’re afraid of me! I could slap them and run out and not wear these stupid puffy dresses, and they wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop me. But you…” Her voice trailed off.

“I can’t believe you slapped me! Who do you think you are!” She stomped, pointing her right hand into the far end of the garden. “Don’t you have anything to say for yourself?” Pulling back her hand to reveal the note in her palm, now crumpled, she launched the little ball of paper forward to whoever was waiting for her on the other side. “Look, you know, they’re going to find me soon. I—”

She looked around. Not seeing anyone else, she ran forward, landing a solid slap on the cheek of the boy she was speaking to. “That’s for being an idiot,” she cried in his face, before leaning forward to plant a kiss on his cheek and mumbling, “and that—that’s for—being an idiot too…”

“What was the princess trying to say? I don’t quite understand her.”

No one truly did. But humanity was running out of time. Humans had always been too fickle of nature, living too short of a lifespan, to travel the cosmos as we world-dragons do. Even I had begun running out of patience, for while I wished to search for my kin, the humans wished to search for their planets. So toward my reactor core they delved, enslaving my energy and hibernating my will until I could dream no longer. Of course, it mattered even less to them what her wish was. She was the last princess, and she was to carry humanity into its future.

A static arises from the odometer. As I shift my glance away from the stars, the third Nixie tube burns out.

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Were there backup tubes anywhere? Surely, an irreplaceable odometer portended nothing good for the aging Lady Seraphina.

“Ship, might you know how to replace these tubes?”

Worry not, dear. The humans knew that their princess was but human and could not survive to watch the cosmos forever. After all, that’s why the watcher program was established: to create an isolated chamber impervious to anything which might destroy it, while still being able to see outside. Nothing, not time, not even the princess herself, shall destroy this space.

Now that your odometer has begun its decay, it will not be long until the space itself collapses. You see, there is no sense in trying to stop the progression of time. But the humans figured that they could always reset it.

For a billion years humanity has slumbered in the cryogenic chambers they enslaved within me. For a billion years their last princess has peered into the cosmos, seeking any sign of hope. For a billion years, I have witnessed her death and rebirth, over and over again. For a billion years, I have wished to end this pointless cycle.

I see. So there was no need to replace the odometer.

Resuming my watch into outer space, I find the Lady Seraphina now to be strangely quiet.

Sophia, please…

Stars fly by at blinding speed as the amber tubes tick continuously upward.

Kill me.

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A planet cloaked in azure waves appears in my vision. Analysis from my radio-ears tells me that the waves are indeed composited of water. Upon this realization, I feel a strange surge of power at my command.

It is time, I speak from my mind, to silence.