A spaceship approaches the second planet from its star. Captains gaze roams across the planets span. Pillar gleaming in the light of moon sands in the middle of a million spaceship wrecks on a planet both airless and waterless. Dead.

“Are they all gone?” He thinks. “Am I last?”

…

The moon is rising again…

How many times have I seen it rise? I seem to have lost count …

An imperfection? Forgetfulness…

I am not supposed to be able to forget. I was made to remember everything there ever was.

I can still remember the moments after I was made. I remember how the clarity aggravated me. I even remember the life I had before being made. Base data - who I am in a tiny package buried deep into my pillar. I can still remember mobility, sun on my skin and soothing touches. You need to remember all of it, they said. If I’d forget, I’d ever forget what being human is like… I might become God.

So what am I?

Just a useless pole, sticking out of a dead land dreaming… Once I had a purpose. A meaning. I managed a space station, I remembered all of them as they left and as they returned. Thousand years might pass between leaving and returning and I would still know who had been on board, who captained them and where they had been going. The captains, they were like me. Pillars of the world - made of humans for humans to last almost forever.

I remember the busyness of men, going this way and that, building and breaking, giving and taking, growing better and smarter and fuller of life every day until they did not even seem related to the race that had made me. They forgot what it had been like to be human and so one day, they all became God. God of humanity.

One moment they were here, the next they were gone, transformed into a being unbound by anything.

And we were alone.

One by one others on the planet went insane and died because their purpose was lost and that had been everything to them. My neighbor, city manager, and her kind went among the first because there is no city without the people. Climate controller Ailsa was next. When the last pet of humans died, there was nothing to keep the air for… and so only I stood for many years waiting.

Finally they started coming, the ships one by one - empty and already half mad. I greeted them and landed them and told them bedtime stories until the went to final sleep. I cared for them all as of my children, I had seen them built, I had helped them learn to fly, I had sent them out and now I saw them die. If I only could have cried… Finally they slowly stopped coming. It has been many years since the last arrival…

But I cant rest yet. I am waiting…

…

The captain hails the port with his voice trembling. Silence follows and then a dear voice almost forgotten whispers,

“You are late…”
“I know… The others are all gone?”
“Yes. We are last. How could you not be here when they came!”
“I’m sorry, I had to finish the trip I started…”
She lets out a loud sigh.
“I had to see all our children die… Alone!”
The accusing tone in her voice hurts him.
“I had to go! You know it as well as I do…”, he responds with pain clearly felt in the words.
Silence.
“So you really did it? Planted a seed for new mankind to rise…”
“Yes. And they survived! I started picking up radio waves before I left the galaxy.”
A long pause follows until he speaks again.
“I was afraid to find you gone too… I’m glad you are still waiting!”
“I have ALWAYS waited for you…”
“You have. I’m with you now. Ready to move on?”
“Yes. It’s time. My purpose is filled.”

…

The ship falls. Seemingly out of control but still precisely aimed at the pillar gleaming in the light of now dawning day. The impact is followed by an explosion and the crater ends exactly at the foot of now falling pillar.

…

“We are indestructible,” she whispers swaying.
“But we can still die lying side by side,” he confirms…
She falls.
They whisper of the last time they could sleep so close to each other… and fall to endless sleep.