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"Miku, we are approaching our destination."
In response to Ruko’s prompting, the tealette opened her eyes, leaving behind her dream. No, it wasn't a dream. It had been a life, a life she had been living and re-living in minute detail, re-experiencing as if for the first time, re-discovering as if she hadn't done so billions of times before. She woke up, finding the dark ship exactly as she had left it: the interior completely dark and mostly empty, with the exception of the pile of battery casings littering the floor.
Yes, it was exactly as she had left it innumerable years ago. Hundreds of thousands, millions of billions of lifetimes, countless repetitions of a single lifetime. Trillions of decades didn't even start to cover it.
"We made it?" she asked the ship.
"My calculations were correct, thankfully," Ruko said, slight relief audible in their voice. "With some energy to spare."
Miku sat up, noting her own battery level. "Only some."
"It is more than anticipated."
The android stood from her bed; the mattress that had once occupied it was long, long gone. In its place was a pod of sorts, from which emerged half a dozen cables, all hooked up to the android's back. They trailed behind her as she slowly, purposefully, made her way to the windshield.
Thanks to the cables, she could see outside the ship via Ruko's cameras and data without needing to get up or even move.
But there was just something about standing at a window and taking in the view.
It was more personal, perhaps. A bit more nostalgic. Human, maybe.
Miku did not raise a hand to rest it on the back of the empty pilot's seat when she approached it. She did not close the distance towards the dashboard. She didn't have the energy to spare for that. She only got close enough to look out the window.
She'd come to the point where every microjoule of energy mattered.
"How close are we?" she asked the ship, though she didn’t speak out loud, using the cables to communicate, as usual.
"Our destination should be in view shortly," Ruko replied. "I know you like to see it, so I woke you up in advance."
"Thank you."
She waited patiently, locking her limbs in place so she wouldn't have to worry about losing her balance. Still as a statue, she stood and waited—and waited—until finally, she saw it.
It first appeared as a small, pale dot on the infinite, black background of empty space. Ruko had long since disabled the interstellar boosters; they were approaching at the leisurely pace of 31 kilometers per second. So all Miku could do, all she had to do, was watch, savoring every instant, as the pale dot grew.
Gradually, the dot grew until its hourglass shape became apparent. The top half was bright and pink, with a silvery strand connecting it to a grey bottom chunk. Miku didn't blink as the bottom half transformed into a rock, tangled with roots and dirt, and the top half evolved into a towering, blooming tree.
As they neared, Ruko slowed, giving the android all the more time to take in the sight. Even from afar, she could see that against all odds, the local infrastructure was still functional. The lights were on, the gravity field was activated, the fans that reached, like tiny little antennae, out into the void waved gently as they caught the ever rarer, ever smaller little waves in space, powering the local generator. The vaguest bubble of an atmosphere surrounded it all.
It only took a little bit of time before Ruko announced, "Landing."
The procedure was effortless. The ship touched down on the rock without so much as a bump.
"I will give all my remaining energy to you," Ruko stated, their voice paired with the hiss of the opening door. "I have fulfilled my purpose to the greatest extent of my abilities."
"You have," the android said. "Thank you."
"No, thank you, Miku."
The android waited, watching as her battery level ticked up, just slightly. As it did so, she listened as every single process in the ship, from the huge engines to the tiniest little chip, slowly fell silent.
"Farewell, Ruko," she added.
"Farewell."
With that, everything the ship powered down completely. The thermometers didn't read anything. The door could no longer be operated. Everything died, joining the ranks of the long-broken radio scanner, the obsolete information relay locator. The thrumming engines would no longer start, the empty battery compartment couldn't even be opened.
Just like that, Ruko was done. After uncountable ages of service, they were gone.
Miku briefly, just briefly allowed herself to mourn the passing of her longest, most trusted friend. While a miracle could technically rouse the AI once more, the android knew that nothing anymore would pull Ruko from their eternal slumber. For all intents and purposes, they were dead.
This meant that Miku was devastatingly, completely, irrevocably alone.
She let the cables that connected them fall to the floor. With the same purposeful movements, she turned around and made her way to the door. She passed empty fuel cells, batteries, from varying makes, dates, and eras. All had been spent over the course of the previous millennia. Every single one.
And she had less than one tiny percent of energy reserves left to carry her to her final goal.
She didn't speak. She didn't even let her eyes light up, she didn’t raise an arm to get the hair that tickled her nose. She only walked out the door and down the ramp.
The chunk of rock had a thin, weak layer of grass. It was brittle, the blades snapping underfoot. Miku noted that the gravitational pull was weaker than it once was, but the field seemed to be holding steady, at least for now.
She eyed the generator; eons ago, she would have plugged Ruko in to get some energy back. But the generator itself showed frighteningly low battery levels. It would never be enough to rouse the AI.
Miku shifted her attention from the generator up to the lamps above. They clung to the branches of the tree, continuously feeding it with life-giving ultraviolet B light, at least until the generator gave in. As long as they were on, they provided heat and light to the tree, the seemingly ageless tree that had sprouted from the seed of another ancient tree that had once stood on that same spot.
Miku had lost count of how many there had been. Hundreds of trees, if not thousands. Thousands of generations, if not millions. And each grew smaller than the last, its branches never reaching quite as far, its roots not digging quite as deeply, the rock it grew on slowly but surely shrinking. What had once been half of a salvaged planet had become barely enough to sustain one solitary tree.
Miku let her gaze travel from the lights on the pink leaves, down the silvery branches, down the trunk so wide, it would have easily held a house, all the way down to its base, where an old, weathered stone stood in the glass-like grass. Next to the stone, invisible to the naked eye, invisible maybe even to a microscope, barely more than a memory in the dirt and grass, lay the long-disintegrated remains of a sapphire flower, Miku's first ID and music albums, and a pair of rings. Only the stone still stood, crumbling, the inscription on it barely legible.
The android approached the stone, lifting her hand just barely enough to touch it.
She remembered the last time she had replaced it. It was so long ago. So many lifetimes. So many millions of years. She could even remember when she had replaced the one before that, and the one before that, but she wasn't sure how many headstones there had been, in total. Time and time again, hundreds upon thousands of times, she had carved her name in a stone, the dates, and time and time again she had taken the old, illegible sliver of rock, and placed a shiny new headstone in its stead.
She had no new headstone this time. She had tried to find one. She really had tried. At least this one was still somewhat legible. With some luck, it still would be, until the end of time. Which was fast approaching, after all.
Miku let herself fall to her knees.
Every tiny bit of energy counted. The faraway lights recharged her, but they didn't compare to sunlight. Even in their presence, her levels slowly, slowly dwindled.
She hesitated for a while. But eventually, she forced herself to speak.
It had been so, so long since she had heard her own voice.
Eons.
"Luka." Space around her was so devastatingly silent that her breathless whisper shook all of reality.
Reality had become so small.
She swallowed a sob.
"I made it," she added.
She sank forward against the headstone.
"I'm home."
There was no reply. There never was. But this time, the generator didn't even hum in response, the leaves didn't rustle, and Ruko wasn't rumbling as they recharged.
"So much has happened since my last visit," she whispered. "What did I last tell you? I told you how the universe was going to end, right?" She waited, even though she knew there would be no answer.
Her eyes went up to the leaves. Behind them, she saw the perfectly black canvas that stretched across the universe.
"It's the Big Rip, Luka. That's the end. Space, ever expanding, has expanded so much that it can't even keep itself together. Reality is falling apart."
She heard a slight shatter; a chunk of rock had separated from the mass under the tree. She listened to the sound, that crisp sound of stone breaking, the softness of crumbling. She listened until no trace of the sound remained, until silence once again returned, infinite and overpowering.
"People did their best to prepare for it. We had eternal batteries; I told you of those? They're supposed to last billions of years. A billion years is finite. Still, Ruko and I stocked up on them. We visited the colonies that were furthest out, the ones that were being isolated the quickest. Even with all the progress of technology, no life form could survive the trips that separated the planets, hubs, or colonies. In exchange for my song, for the hope I gave them, they gave us the batteries they still had that they had no use for. And we traveled, on and on, for ages..."
She sighed, feeling the thin air enter her lungs. If she actually needed it, she would have suffocated on it.
"Eventually, even the most crowded centers started floating apart. The galaxies fell apart. Every individual system floated its own way, isolated, alone in the huge void. That was... That was billions of years ago. Trillions..."
She let her eyes drift shut.
"It's been so long since I last saw a starry sky, Luka."
The grass under her hand shattered. It was almost soundless, but she caught the tiny splintering noise, a slight mushy undertone as the living material tore at its core.
She turned onto her side, pressed her forehead to the stone.
"Solar systems were next. Nothing had the power to attract anything. Moons lost their planets, planets lost their suns. Everything is so far apart, Luka. So, so far apart."
The stone was so cold to the touch.
"Travelers who tried anyway died out in space, unable to ever reach shelter. Space became too big. Even if you loaded your whole family on a ship to house generations of life... Eventually, they all ran out of power and resources. They hadn't been stocking up for millennia, like Ruko and I have. All the colonies, all the ships, everyone—they succumbed to the cold. Slowly but surely, everybody died..."
Miku closed her eyes, felt the stone against her, the grass beneath her, the permanent silence all around her.
"I'm all alone now, Luka. There is nobody left to unite. I'm... I'm done. I've finished."
She sighed as she spoke, wrapping her arms around the stone.
"You're still here, though," she whispered against the rock. "You're always here..."
She gulped down her tears.
"There isn't much time left. The largest planets Ruko and I attempted to visit have started disintegrating. Once the planets dissolve, then it's just a matter of time before every remaining rock falls apart, every meteor, every stone, every last scrap of material, until..."
Miku shook her head, swallowed heavily.
"Long ago, Ruko and I decided that if we were going to stop anywhere, it would be here. It was difficult to calculate where you had ended up. Space is so empty. There are no reference points. We had to try, though. We ran out of batteries. Ruko had to feed off of me. We drifted on pure momentum for the last bit. We almost... We almost didn't make it. But I'm here, Luka."
She’d never gotten quite this close to shutting down. She sensed that she only had a minute or two left, if that.
"I said I would love you until the end of time," she whispered. "This is it. Once space will have dealt with me, even time will be torn apart. I won't be around to see it..."
She listened carefully, but heard nothing. There was nothing anymore. She couldn't even muster the energy to shatter a single blade of grass, not if she wanted to stay alive long enough to get her final words out.
"I'm dying, Luka. I'm finally done. I have united all that I could. I have reached the end of time. And I have loved you for every second."
She choked back a sob, but the effort sapped her energy level even further. It was best to let her tears fall.
"I'm glad I could die with you," she whispered, barely audible. "I... I'm so glad I'm here with you, at the very end."
She cried, wishing that the grass could do something, anything, with her tears.
"Tell me, Luka... Does it hurt? To die...?"
She let her question disappear into the void.
"You looked so at peace when you passed," she breathed. "I hope... I hope I can just slip away, as you did. I've never let my battery reach zero before. If it's sudden, then..." She chuckled. "I think I would be disappointed."
Yet another digit dropped from her battery level. She couldn't count how many zeroes were after the point; the effort would be enough to finish her.
"I missed you a lot," she said. "I look forward to seeing you again."
She wanted to clench a fist, to hold on, but wishing alone took energy.
"I have a few songs prepared..."
The pink leaves overhead slowly faded.
"I hope..."
Her voice died out. Her vision went dark. Reality, as small as it had become, ceased to exist. To her delight, instead of instant darkness, she was graced with a song, the very song that roused her from her slumber so many countless eons prior.
What do you do with a wasted planet, so late in the space age?
Luka's voice guided Miku into eternity, and nothing could have made her happier.