Endings (Legacy Universe) The soft, haunting strains of ancient music spoke of the stars and the endless voyage between them. A quiet voice sang in a forgotten language; and Maria sang along, softly, softly. The singularity in the center of the Sanctum pulsed and throbbed; within its infinite depths the universe breathed with the same breath and reverberated with the same song. Here and there supernovae flared; x-ray bursts annihilated life on a galactic scale, and lesser disasters took the lives of trillions of entities, planets, star systems, worlds never seen by man, forever behind his reach. And birth also: the joyous radiance of a star’s first light blazing outward into the void, units of carbon and hydrogen—and elements more alien—combining into self-replicating forms, the first breath of an infant humanoid, an infant helium-based comet dweller, an infant energy being. And beauty: the flow of Spirit into Universe through the brush of an artist, the sparkling sky of a planet in a globular-cluster, the elegant dance of gravity and energy as stars brushed, touched, shared matter and light. All things beautiful, glorious, the breath and pulse of Creation as it sang to the rhythm of the song—not in linear time, but in the infinite complexity of the eternal Now... read more