Answers and Ashes

Aariv was lying powerlessly on the chair, waiting for whatever was to come. maybe they were going to interrogate him or experiment on his body, well not like it mattered anymore he was just waiting for the eternal sleep.

After a while, the alien commander came into the room and looked at Aariv

"huh feisty one aren't you, you really gave me a scare back there, well it's time for introduction , my name is Elkats Urnieds Giks the commander of the exploration and removal mission for Virgo Supercluster of galaxies.

You asked why we are doing this right? Well, I can at least answer this for volunteering for my experiment.

Well you see it's not like we have anything against any civilization, it's just that we don't have any other choice, do or die that's the kind of situation we are in.

I guess your species did not know about the periodic war, you know what, after looking into your head I found some serious problems on your planet, for example, you people had immortal beings called gods who were strong enough to destroy worlds right?... why didn't they tell or inform your ancestors about this war?"

Alien Commander Giks looked at Aariv's confused face before continuing "you don't know anything right, alright then have you ever thought why the space is so empty? why there are no advanced or intelligent civilizations near you?.

Well, this is because every 500 Million years a great war breaks out, spanning the entire universe. why this war began I don't know, this knowledge is above my pay grade, only the Emperor and the topmost people of the Xogia Empire know about the reason.

You see every 500 million years all the advanced space civilizations in the universe start to fight each other, the winner eradicates the loser's species, but it is also a controlled war, there are some rules that all must follow or else the rule-breakers get removed, who removes them, I don't know.

Rule no.1 never harm a civilization that has not gone above level one civilization (Planetary civilization)

Rule no.2 never enslave the defeated species, instead kill them all.

Rule no.3 never destroy the planet of the defeated species.

Our ancestors had told us to prepare for the great war. When the home planet of all civilizations in the universe produces an earthquake of a magnitude never seen before, that's when you know that the war has started, we didn't believe about all this, but our Emperor emphasized about our ancestor's warnings and sent out exploration and removal missions. All the advanced civilizations we knew about or had trade relations with started attacking each other, even we got attacked and that's when we knew that what our ancestors said was real.

We didn't know that our ancestors had already put androids inside your planet, we just received a transmission from your planet called earth, we kept on going and finally reached your system.

before reaching your solar system we have already removed 15 civilizations, so you are not the only one.

according to your history, the war started in 1960 A.D. with an earthquake of 9.5 magnitude in southern Chile. so it took you 1540 years to go from 1st man on your moon to colonizing the solar system, I'm impressed, very impressed, I guess if you had another 5000 years to evolve then maybe this situation could've been reversed and am sure that's the reason those androids were placed on your planet, you humans are dangerous if left unchecked.

well enough chit-chatting it's time to say goodbye."

Aariv was just listening the whole time without any change of expressions but in reality, his mind was going crazy taking all this information in, this was really too much, the war happens every 500 Million years and humans were unlucky enough to be born at the wrong time.

Aariv still wanted to ask one last question though.

"How old is your species?"

"Oh, you can still speak, I thought your brain had gone haywire," Commander Giks said in a mocking voice.

*Sigh* "well my species is called Xogian, we hail from the part of the universe that was beyond earth's scope of technology to see, we made our 1st interstellar spaceship 200,000 human years ago. Yes! you didn't have a chance from the beginning if that's what you are thinking"

Commander Giks looked at Aariv for a reaction but didn't get anything so he continued

"Alright let's start with the experiment, I am conducting a teleportation experiment on you, We have Space jump technology but that still takes time to go very far places. I have tested this on the non-organic matter but never on organic matter, there's just 2% probability of this experiment going successful so don't get your hopes high and even if you survived we are still rule-bound to kill you."

Aariv closed his eyes and waited for the pain, his mind was blank at this point, he didn't know what to think anymore, there was no running away from here either so he just accepted his fate.

"Imperial Lieutenant Atten, switch on the distorters" Commander Giks commanded his assistant.

then for the last time, he looked at Aariv and then went to his desk and put on radiation protector glasses.

"START"

Aariv felt some kind of energy going through his body, he felt like he could destroy planets with his bare hand if he had this power inside his body but then he felt immense pain all over his body, from inside to outside.

He started screaming crazily, he could feel his body burning and then he looked at his hands, they were burning and turning into ash and ash was turning into nothingness, slowly the fire spread throughout his body, he helplessly screamed but the pain only increased.

Finally, the fire reached his head and he started losing consciousness, he had his whole life flashbacking inside his head in reverse mode, from the point where he was just a consciousness with no physical body to his current situation. He was having his last thoughts at the moment.

~ All your life you think you were made for something big then reality hits you, everything crumbles apart and death comes creeping in, haaaaaah I feel weak and I really want to kill whoever started this stupid war~

He felt the last of his consciousness fading away, soon only ashes remained and then the ashes turned into nothingness.

With that, the last human in the universe died.

"Aaagh... the experiment failed, he got disintegrated on a molecular level," Commander Giks said disappointingly.

he looked around and ordered his soldiers, "We're done here, back to your stations and set the path to Andromada Galaxy."

...

Year: Unknown

In a perfectly dark space where nothing could be seen no matter how far you tried to go, an invisible astral humanoid form started forming. Soon the shape of the astral form started showing up.

It was no one else but Aariv, not his body but just his consciousness/soul, he opened his eyes and looked around himself but could only see darkness. He started floating in a random direction without even thinking.

He was sure that he had died but yet he was here, Aariv could not feel how much time had passed since he started walking, after purposelessly walking he got bored and stopped, he started to look around himself to see if he could find any clue.

He was looking around but then out of nowhere, he felt some kind of pressure, like it wanted to erase his very existence.

Aariv had just come out of death so he was very afraid of dying again and started to find ways to counter the pressure but whatever he did the pressure only increased, it kept on increasing until he felt like his existence was getting squeezed toward the center of his astral body.

He held on to his dear life and sat down, he started brainstorming ways to get out of this trouble, just when he was looking left and right he saw something from the corner of his eyes.

He again tried to see his surrounding but instead of looking straight he looked it through the corner of his eyes, what he saw surprised him but also scared him, he saw an endless amount of creatures sitting legs crossed, eyes closed, some of them were humanoid some of them weren't, all had different features, there were some humans looking creatures as well.

Soon the pressure increased again and now it was going out of hands and he had to do something, so he also sat down just like others and closed his eyes.

as soon as he closed his eyes he saw himself in a tug of war, something was trying to suck his consciousness out, he got really scared feeling this and tried to pull his consciousness back by focusing on that thought.

after a long time, he got his full consciousness back but then he felt like he could pull more, so he started pulling, he understood there was something or someone just like him on the other side who was trying to pull his consciousness just like how he was now.

He focused more and more and finally he felt that he sucked the whole chunk of consciousness into his astral body, he felt very refreshed and stronger now. He thought that it was the end but soon another tug of war started and he felt something trying to pull his consciousness out of his body again.

This situation kept on repeating itself, again and again, every time he won this tug of war he felt more refreshed and more powerful.