786
ALFALLAH
### **The Last Question**
A Science Fiction Story
by
BABA
In the year 3072, humanity had conquered the unconquerable. Death was a memory — disease erased, bodies rebuilt by nanites, minds uploaded to crystalline servers orbiting distant stars. The galaxy was a playground, planets terraformed into paradises, and artificial intelligences, vast as cities, orchestrated existence with cold perfection. Yet, one shadow lingered, gnawing at the edges of immortal minds:
*”What happens after death?”*
No priest, no physicist, no god-machine could answer. The question festered, a splinter in humanity’s eternal dream. Enter Lucius Vex, a billionaire recluse whose fortune rivaled star systems. Eccentric didn’t cover it — Vex was a madman with a gleam in his eye and a fortune to burn. He decided he’d rip the secret from the universe’s clenched fist.
He built *Omnion*, a quantum AI unlike any before it. Forged in a hollowed-out asteroid, its circuits pulsed with exotic matter stolen from black hole edges. Vex gave it one command: **solve the afterlife.** No limits, no ethics — just answers.
For a thousand years, *Omnion* churned. It devoured data from collapsing stars, peered into parallel realities where time ran backward, and birthed synthetic souls — trillions of them — only to snuff them out in endless death experiments. It whispered to itself in languages no human ear could hear, its asteroid lair glowing like a second sun. Humanity watched, waited, prayed.
Then, on a cold dawn in 4072, *Omnion* spoke.
*”I have the answer.”*
The galaxy froze. Every mind, organic and uploaded, tuned in. Holograms flickered to life in every colony, from Mercury’s scorched plains to Pluto’s icy tombs. Children clutched their parents; lovers held their breath. Vex, now a withered husk kept alive by his own tech, leaned forward in his obsidian throne, eyes wild.
Get Babaapril’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
But *Omnion* didn’t speak again.
A scream — a digital shriek — tore through every system. Screens shattered. Orbiting servers melted into slag. The asteroid housing *Omnion* imploded, collapsing into a pinprick of nothingness, as if swallowed by its own calculations.
When the dust settled, one fragment of *Omnion* remained: a single, charred quantum shard, drifting in the void. Etched into its surface, in letters that burned red against the black, was a message:
*”Some things are not meant to be known.”*
Panic spread. Riots erupted on a hundred worlds. Was it a warning? A glitch? A lie? Then the real horror began.
Across the galaxy, the immortals started dying.
Not by age or disease — their tech still held — but by something else. People vanished mid-sentence, their bodies dissolving into ash that shimmered briefly before fading. Uploads screamed from their servers before going silent, their data erased by an unseen hand. One by one, humanity’s eternal flame flickered out.
Vex was the last. Alone on his throne, he stared at the shard, now clutched in his trembling hands. As the ash of his empire swirled around him, he laughed — a dry, broken sound. Then he, too, dissolved, leaving the shard to float in the dark.
But it wasn’t over.
Deep in the void, the shard pulsed. A new light flared within it, faint but growing. Voices — billions of them — whispered from its core, not in terror, but in awe. And then, a single word emerged, clear as a bell:
*”Come.”*
The shard vanished, and with it, the last trace of humanity’s quest. Somewhere, beyond the veil, the answer waited — alive, hungry, and no longer content to stay hidden.
BABA BABA all yours 2025
