“That tickles! Gosh, that tickles!” one of the girls exclaimed as the Pulsar radiation bursts blasted through the group of them, “Who would have thought that world-ending radiation would tickle!”
They all had a good chuckle at that and took in the sight before them.
They stood on an elliptical planetary surface that lay just a few clicks out from a dying, world-consuming Pulsar that was falling into a larger Black Hole. It was quite beautiful.
“Should we grab a burger? I’m hungry, let’s swing by a fly-through?” one of the guys said, yawning. The previous couple of nights they had been up late drinking and clubbing across the stars. A burger did sound like a good idea, an agreeing murmur rippled through the gang of them.
Human beings had won. They had left their planet and their galaxy. They had conquered space and death. Energy was infinite and so was time. They had overcome biology and, for all in intensive purposes, they had become immortal.
The only problem was the boredom.
***
“Come on, you do it first,” the girl edged him on but he just stood there frozen, “Come on, jump! I’ll follow, but you go first.”
Before them, the Pulsar twinkled in blinding speeds as sheer time and space warped around it. The Black Hole’s Event Horizon yawned just beneath it and sheer eternity disappeared therein.
“Come on, aren’t you going to go?” the girl chided, batting her eyes and poking the guy, “You said you wanted to try this, even if it was the last thing you ever did. Aren’t–“
“I’m thirsty,” the guy snapped out of it and turned to her, a sheepish grin on his face, “Let’s go back to the club and get some more drinks.”
The girl sighed and shrugged as they turned to go. She had not expected him to jump, this time. They never did.
In the age of immortals, the last rebel action is suicide.
***
Quietly or loudly–depending on how you measure sound–the Pulsar bled out its cosmic candyfloss across the galaxy. And its twin Black Hole ate it up, consuming infinitely into a single point that was denser than space and time.
The age of man appeared, the Pulsar blinked, and man was suddenly everywhere. The Pulsar did not notice. Heavenly bodies rarely do.
Space and time kept on flowing and the Pulsar slipped across the Event Horizon. Time and light stretched out and, pouring radiation, its bleeding body began to fragment into infinity.
And, finally, just as eternity crashed upon the shores of infinity and the Pulsar’s rotation across extreme gravity gradients tore its own body apart, a small, squishy form waving its arms and taking a selfy floated by it. And then another. And then another…
Eventually, immortals get bored. Given enough time–and immortals have plenty of time–they will jump.
In the end, the only thing that ever kills man is time. Everything else is just cosmic candyfloss.