On a few of these ships strange markings were found etched into the metal hulls - anything else would've degraded by now. These markings, presumably writing of some sort, have been wildly different on every ship. Only 1 thing remains constant, a single symbol with only minor variations.

This symbol appears to be that of a star.

Humanity doesn't know what to make of this at first, we already know that stars existed long before these vanished civilizations did. Perhaps they were longing for stars, after so long in the intergalactic void. Or perhaps there's something we don't yet know. We are eager for answers.

In a system devoid of planets and asteroids, a massive star lifting process is begun, one of many at this point, for the purposes of creating further dyson swarms.

But there's something different about this star. As matter is torn from it the space surrounding it warps and thrashes for several weeks, before suddenly ceasing. The scientists are puzzled, but eventually the process begins again.

Then, just as suddenly as the initial thrashing began, the stars go out. Expanding in a bubble at exactly the speed of light, the stars themselves flicker for a moment before plunging into darkness.

The first warpships to leave the seed system warn others, collecting a quickly growing armada of ships trying to escape the eternal night.

And thus begins the final 180,000 years of the galaxy - the final end of days.

Ok that ending is kinda weak but I couldn't think of a better one >_>

If anyone wants to do anything with this world consider it open source =P

@StarshipAmelia liu cixin did sort of a riff on this one in the three-body trilogy

the remnants were bubbles of higher-dimensional spaces that were all that were left after the deployment of vast dimension-collapsing weapons that had made a physics desert out of a once-rich universe

it was p harsh actually :(

@amphetamine Damn that does sound harsh. I should really get around to reading/listening to that series sometime, I've heard good things about it!

@StarshipAmelia it fails completely on gender and other anthro, but it's got huuuuuuuge ideas and is interesting for that

i guess it's sort of like an SF fable?

@amphetamine Ah, ty for the warn ^^

@StarshipAmelia I actually really like the idea of the galaxy having that limited amount of time, which by all accounts is a tragedy, but is so long on human timescales it would be hard to wrap your brain around

@StarshipAmelia (unless human timescales then are not like the humans timescales of today)

@blackle I was thinking of it in the context of transhumans having very long lifespans, but I left it deliberately open-ended ^^

And yeah, definitely! I think it'd be cool to have a society that's constantly on the move away from the bubble of night, Just stopping at stars as long as they can to extract as much energy as they can before it goes out too.

Oh there's where I got the idea prolly, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schild%27s_Ladder (Not actually read this book, but the premise seems similar?)

@StarshipAmelia creepy and I love it. This is the kind of stuff I daydream about.