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The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Calamity_Comet on 2024-07-01 06:33:10+00:00.
A featureless black cube hung in space. Each side was exactly one lightyear in length. It was so immense you could travel for months at full translight and not fully traverse its breadth.
Looking at it, the crew of the XFeh felt as though spacetime had broken. It was as if the abyss of fabled old religions had tread upon the very laws of physics. Captain XNau crossed all eleven arms. “What does the new report from ExoBiotics say?”
The second-in-command looked apologetic, “They’ve decoded the Cube’s message. It states that the Cube has been created by the adjacent creators of this universe. They will end this universe in One Ten billion years.’
“Unless?” Said the captain.
“Unless… We send an away team. No XFeh will come back. It’s a sociological experiment. To test… capacity for sacrifice.”
The captain shrugged. “One Ten billion years is quite some time. Your thoughts?”
Sociology shrugged from across the bridge, “Another species will take the fall long before then. I recommend we continue on as though nothing happened.”
The captain nodded, “Affirmative”
A featureless black cube hung in space. As though a black hole had gained angles and lost focus, expanding to a reference frame of gargantuan proportions. “Wow!” said Shala. “That’s a large cube.”
“One moment” said sociology. Their computers were very advanced compared to those in super millennia past. “Okay” they said, in collective, “The cube wants us to send a party to research. This team will be removed forcibly from this universe. This action tests our species’ capacity for mutual thought.”
“They will die?” asked captain Shala.
“They will not come back” answered sociology.
“How long until this universe ends?” asked Shala. Her tentacles undulated in delight at this problem, more unique than any before.
“Five Hundred Million standard years.” Answered statistics and numbers.
“Very long.” Said Shala, “Instruct the government.”
They did. Shala’s government spent forty thousand years on the problem. But there was no available solution other than to sacrifice a research party.
Eventually they decided someone else in the future would be smarter. And they gave up.
Out of intellectual shame, they informed no one else.
A featureless black cube hung in space.
“Identify!”
The cube remained silent.
“WEAPONS!” The Udnat ship fired everything. Anti-matter lances, photoid beams, particle bursts and even ancient nuclear weapons. The cube hung in space, still black and featureless.
Captain-general Atlast shrugged his various heads upon their necks. “Target-cube-featureless unaffected. Explain!?”
Xeno-biology regretfully shrugged. “Cube informs-demands that we obey puzzle-solving question. Twelve million years remain until cube-builders end universe. If we send inspection-marines to board cube it will relent.”
Atlast shook his many heads, “No point to waste patriotic-ethnic-in-group-marines. Twelve million years is a very-long time. Someone else will intervene. We must maintain our substantial-present-galactico-political-advantage. Dismissed!”
The Udnat cruiser left the Cube-space quickly.
A featureless black cube hung in space.
“Sensors! Put it up on screen!”
Captain Bradley couldn’t comprehend was he was seeing. They’d been at lightspeed for days but the cube stretched into what seemed like infinity. It was at least one lightyear across, that much was sure.
“Captain, it’s hailing us”
“And?” said Bradley. He didn’t like where this was going."
“It requests we send an away team!”
“The cube? The cube requests we send a team to its surface?”
“Yes captain. Beyond its surface.”
Bradley paced the deck. No Human had ever encountered a trans-normal galactic being. Now he was the first, but the feeling of foreboding that was crushing his chest was entirely unwelcome. “What are the terms?” He asked.
“The cube will end the universe by proxy in eight hundred thousand years should we not intervene. If we send a team it will save this universe but our team will not come back.”
“Captain” said physics. “Eight hundred thousand years is quite some t-“
“Prepare a team” said Captain Bradley, cutting off his inferior. “Eight hundred thousand years is no time at all. The universe is basically already over. If there is even a tiny chance that the universe will end, we must send a team. I will lead it. First officer! Prepare the orders!”
The team departed at the end of that cycle.
The universe did not end, per the very clear instructions.
But that said, it is worth mentioning that in the face of that immovable black leviathan,
No Human came back.