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From the author: “Loose Ends” is a literary supercut composed entirely of last lines from 137 science-fiction and fantasy books. After gathering these lines, I found they fell into a number of patterns—some surprising, others obvious—in how writers end their stories. With these patterns in hand, I arranged them into a sequence of interconnected vignettes. In these ways “Loose Ends” doubles as narrative and archive, short story and data analysis. To read a version without the names of the books, click here. —Tom Comitta
Miles grinned sleepily, puddled down in his uniform. “Welcome to the beginning,”
he said quietly. “We have a long way to go.”
“But I can’t speak Swedish,” I said.
“You’ll learn,” he said. “You’ll learn, you’ll learn.”
He threw on some more brush and watched the dark smoke spiral up under the sun, a warm and now comforting sun.
“Let’s sail till we come to the edge.”
“Not until we can deliver our secret to our respective worlds. And acquire an intact ship.”
“Let’s go talk to Folimum and see what he says.”
He turned back to his Master. He was ready to go.
“I think that could be arranged,” I said. I turned away from the bridge and Diane offered me her arm. I hesitated a moment, then took her arm.
Miles smiled.
“Let the blind man show the way.”
He did.
We gladly followed.
We walked hand in hand down the street.
Somewhere on that road was Gerrith, and at its end, the starships waited.
And high in the sky,
an intact ship
ascended until it was a mere speck,
an enormous dim comet, with tail pointing along its path rather than away from the sun—and like comets of old, an omen of change.
Amerie blinked, and the speck became invisible against the bright vault of the heavens.
We turned our backs on the comet and went into the house, hand in hand.
Rogi closed the door and got on with it:
“To the everlasting glory of the Infantry?”
“To the everlasting glory of the Infantry!”
“To the brave, ingenious, and honored survivors of this planet? Including the dinosaurs?”
“To the brave, ingenious, and honored survivors of this planet! Including the dinosaurs!”
I handed the bartender my empty glass. “I just found out where we’re going:
Unto the end of the world … Unto the end of the world.”
“Yes, the end is not yet! Let us go!”
he said. “ … someday soon. When I have time.”
“We’ll take a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe … ”
How the Family Ghost must have laughed.
He looked thoughtful, and added, “But what becomes of Willis? I wish I knew.”
“I think he’s working hard on his soul,” I said. “I think he’s becoming a real person.”
“Counting the Neanderthal, that makes three of us.”
“Alone, together. The way it always used to be.”
Then he smiled. "Well, almost always …
If I have anything to say about it.”
He raised his tankard, clanked it against my own. “Enjoy!” he said. “Life is a cabaret, old chum!” The cat on the stool beside me just kept grinning.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”
“Lean on me.”
I did.
And drank more beer. And went up.
“Now,” he breathed, “about that exploration … ”
Once out of town, he did not look back.
No one dared disturb him or interrupt his thoughts: and presently he turned his back upon the dwindling Sun.
Mary Vaughan continued on past the wall, forward, into the future.
She nodded solemnly and went to him. They held each other until they could no longer tell which of them was trembling.
“Tell me,” she said, “about the shadows of the past.”
“Not yet,” he said.
Then she settled down alongside Joseph … alongside the world … prepared to await the awakening.
The sky began to change colour, subtly and slowly at first, then faster and wilder than anyone could dream.
Beyond the clouds the sun had set, and the light leaked out of the empty land.
“My sunset. And sunset for humanity.”
“I understand,” she said with a smile. And understanding is happiness, she thought.
So they sat together, symbols for an empire that had seen too much death,
watching the sunset cool into night, bringing uncountable stars and a promise that dawn would come. Someday.
She was silent awhile. More stars appeared. The wind had gone cold.
She thought of the rows of beans and the scent of the bean flowers. She thought of the small window that looked west. “I think we can live there,” she said.
There was no answer but then she had not really expected an answer.
She unslung the sonador from her shoulder. It was programmed for guitar. She strummed a few chords. In a short while she was singing, while her feet went blithe in the measure:
Go gladly up and gladly down.
The dancing flies outward like laughter
From blossom fields to mountain crown.
Rejoice in the joy that comes after!
He stopped hesitating.
“You want to know something? We are still in the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages—they haven’t ended yet.”
The words remained in her mind.
“It seems to me that we do not know nearly enough about ourselves; that we do not often enough wonder if our lives, or some events and times in our lives, may not be analogues or metaphors or echoes of evolvements and happenings going on in other people?—or animals?—even forests or oceans or rocks?—in this world of ours or, even, in worlds or dimensions elsewhere,”
he said solemnly, leaning into the wind as if he could will the future forward.
Then she grinned. “Healers mend quickly, you know.”
His anger faded. Left behind was a feeling he was not used to experiencing. It was fear.
“How strange are the ways of the gods!” he gasped. “How cruel.”
“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.”
He stood up and kissed his intended, and forgot all about Walter Strawberry.
“Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland and into the hills, I have come to—”
“No!” she cried, and thumped him on the chest, then jammed the ring over the knuckle of his ring finger. “This is for life.”
He looked a long time.
Behind them the sky rumbled and turned black, another late storm rolling down from the Blight.
“Goodbye and hello, as always.
Amen. And all that cal.”
He had said his last good bye.
He walked away and he kept on walking.
She would not leave him:
“There has been joy. There will be joy again.”
When he stopped at last, she looked at him with eyes that mirrored her smile and she said, “Kiss me again, please.
I cannot let it end this way. Perhaps the next tunnel, or the next … ”
And he thought of Markham and his mother and all these uncountable people, never loosening their grip on their hopes, and their strange human sense, their last illusion, that no matter how the days moved through them, there always remained the pulse of things coming, the sense that even now there was yet still time.
“You asked me, ‘Do you call this living?’ And I answer: Yes. It is exactly what I call living. And in my best hypothetical sense, I envy it very much—
but not because of my strength—obviously—”
They kissed once. Then he turned upon his heel and disappeared into the Darkness.
It was some time later that he failed to notice it had started to rain.
“I am an island,” he thought.
“A warning. Demon.”
He broke into a run;
then he spread his wings for the long flight away.
Up into the air he jerked, kicking and twisting, up and up and up.
It felt like free falling into the future. He squeezed back, and soared.
On he flared …
Footsteps on the air.
So he left the lagoon and entered the jungle again, following the lagoons southward through the increasing rain and heat, a second Adam searching for the forgotten paradises of the reborn Sun.
For an instant Ocean lay blue and white beneath him, the whitecaps sharp and cold.
The dark man began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. Life was such a wheel that no man could stand upon it for long. And it always, at the end, came round to the same place again.
As he forced out another grin, t’rifically funny, changing,
the bureaucrat fell to the sea.
Suddenly there was blinding light and noise and pain, then nothing.
He was soon borne away by the waves and lost in darkness and distance.
A long time later, when people had come to see what the shouting was about—Elihu, Gideon, scores of anonymous faces—he allowed Norman to take his hand and lead him quietly away.
New Chusan rose above them, a short swim away, and up on the mountain they could hear the bells of the cathedral ringing.
And a universe away, a triple mind watched, ordered its own knowledge of war, and made ready.
The Alien watched them as a sea creature might watch from an aquarium, seeing them pass and disappear into the mist.
“To Earth,” she said.
“Hear, hear!” Lunzie lustily agreed.
And, feeling better, fixed herself at last a cup of hot, black coffee.
The ship rushed on, nearer and nearer Earth.
On the screen dawn coming over the Eastern Ocean shone in a golden crescent for a moment against the dust of stars, like a jewel on a great patterning frame.
The planet spread across thirty degrees,
a shining planet known as Earth …
“What is this place?” Maya cried.
“This is home,” Hiroko said. “This is where we start again.”
“Home?”
“Yeah, home seems about right.
It’s time to be more than a pirate-chaser. But not less.”
Victor:
“I am where I belong. And I’m going to stay!
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn’t mean we deserve to conquer the Universe.”
With some of those folks such a thought never crossed their minds.
“So what? They’ll still be an enemy!”
Russell shook his head and laughed.
“Not an enemy, Klara. Just another resource.”
But the idoru said that that was where they wanted to live, now that they were married. So they were going to do it.
And if they do, Chia thought, hearing the hiss of the Espressomatic, I’ll go there.
“I only know,” she said, “that whatever we may someday become, we will never be God.” Suddenly her laugh rang forth,
filled with a feeling she hadn’t experienced in ages: a longing and excitement to just go home.
“But we can have fun trying!”
“Toward home!”
The sociotech sighed. He’d have a lot of work to do in the coming years.
Then frame and pattern shattered, the barrier was passed, and the little ship broke free of time and took them out across the darkness.
On Earth
the launch had been observed. The spatial direction of the torpedo noted and the report forwarded to those concerned with such matters.
The nightmare images had coalesced into one great menacing message:
Put out the welcome mat; the Cylons are coming.
And so after three years of a war which was certainly the most unfought war on record, the Republic surrendered unconditionally, and Hober Mallow took his place next to Hari Seldon and Salvor Hardin in the hearts of the people of the Foundation.
The Helix shut off its containment-field gravity, stored its air, turned off its interior lights, and continued on in silence, making the tiniest of course corrections as it did so
through the boundless fields of ether and ALL AROUND THE MOON!
“History doesn’t start until we land,”
said Lasher almost gaily. “Forward March.”
(If stars had ears, they’d have heard the vast hallelujahs ringing from the partnered ship.)
On Earth
the sky was bluer still.
The sun was yellow on the distant hills. And those were made of the good brown earth of home!
“Mission complete, Colonel,”
said Trevize.
“Not yet,” he said.
He paused, then stepped over the threshold and felt himself start to glow.
“I’m HOME!” he yelled. Then he passed out.
The cheering crowds
all rose in couples and little groups; and presently they gathered round the door,
waiting for the moment when they would step down.
Baley, suddenly smiling, took R. Daneel’s elbow, and they walked out the door, arm in arm.
“Time for the young’uns to flee the coop. When it’s that time there’s no way you can hold ‘em to the hearth,” she said.
He grinned softly and put a reassuring arm around her waist. “No way on Earth.”
He might as well have been singing.
They turned their faces to the new sun
and walked together into the future:
The final end of Eternity.
—And the beginning of Infinity.
