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Short Story

The Last Thought

Everything must end eventually, even consciousness. A short story by Grant Bartley.

The last man sits in the tower of the last house, in the middle of the last oasis, and weeps, for he knows that he is dying. Between the waterfalls of his tears he’s recording his last thoughts. Shaking his forefinger at the machine floating in front of him, he says, “I remember when they used to say, at some time in the future the human race will no longer be even a memory. There will be a moment when the human race, and its entire history, will be thought of for the last time.” He looks around him at his study of ancient and eclectic books and paraphernalia, and dry dust in occasional rays of hard sunlight, and mutters, “This is that time.

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