Who Mourns for Methuselah?

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Chapter 17 is up

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9654576/17/Who-Mourns-for-Methuselah

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

chapter 18 is up
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9654576/18/Who-Mourns-for-Methuselah

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

The final chapter for Methuselah is now up.
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9654576/19/Who-Mourns-for-Methuselah

I hope you enjoyed this tale.

By the way, this is now my longest fan fiction story, at over 47K words it almost qualifies as a novel.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

First of all I'd like to thank AprilSeven for a most beautiful review! She saw things in the story that I didn't even realize I put there.

There are some members on this forum that are definitely better writers than I am, I'm really just beginning to discover how to put together a story. The Fan fiction site sorta pushes one to write in piecemeal, developing the story one chapter at a time in a fishbowl. Everyone gets to see your mistakes. (Well you could hold off publishing ANYTHING until its ALL done ... but what's the fun in that?:w00t

Sometimes a story emerges in my mind "fully there" and just needs to be written. Along the way I might tweak things a bit of course. These kind of stories are usually short.

The longer stories start as a vague idea that gets filled in along the way. My two longest stories (This one, and Eureka) are of that type. With Methuselah I had only the beginning and the ending in mind when I started to write it: Atom as an old man at a funeral for his wife, and a typical Tezuka like ending for him running out of energy in some inaccessible location.

Along the way several sub story arc's came to mind. One borrowed a bit (OK a lot!) from Dune, and another allowed me to invent a head canon for a character not seen very much in the anime or manga (at least not outside of Japan). I also got to come up with a new OC based on the "Mission to Mars" episode from the anime/manga. And of course I threw in a few "Atomic Fart" gags.

I had fun writing this, and I also enjoyed finding out through the comments of others some insight into aspects of my own observations of life I didn't realize I'd made. Amazing how one can actually be blind to their own thought processes until someone else decodes them!

This was the longest FF story I've written so far (except for the NNWM effort, which I may eventually edit and post). I don't think I'll EVER reach Dannavy85's output though.

I'd like to encourage anyone on this forum who might have the slightest inclination to take up pen (or keyboard) to write their own fan fiction to do so! Join FF.Net (It's EASY) and don't be afraid to post something (you can always hide behind a "nom de plume"). You can also post a story here under the fan creations topic. You'll have to break up your story into chapters short enough to fit the site's character limit though (that's why I like the freedom of FF.NET).

[AprilSeven]

awwwww . . . you're welcome . . . but hey, it was a GREAT story! Probably the singular most unique fanfic I've read because you kept to the original characters - but moved far into the future to where their lives would be significantly changed.

We get to see ALL the siblings as their full-developed selves. And we get to see how each individual destiny is different. It's very thought-provoking. Perhaps younger fans might not fully appreciate the value of seeing our heroes at a different stage of life, but it really meant a lot to me.

And yes, it is a lot of fun to write a fan fiction (something I need to get back to, myself! :whistling

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Given what time of year this is I had a bit of a "vision" for a possible post script for this story. I may have been influenced by the last few feet of the last reel of "When World's Collide" its my own head canon of creation if you will.

Who Mourns for Methuselah?

Epilogue

The universe had continued to slowly expand ever since the big bang. Matter, antimatter, energy, dark energy and dark matter all interacted and fought for domination. Entropy was the grim reaper that wound down the clock. It took time, but the universe had been created with a huge amount of that in reserve.

In the first few billionths of a second the universe was so tightly compact that it was scarcely bigger than a molecule. Atoms and subatomic particles did not yet exist, and temperatures were close to infinity. Eventually the first bit of creation had expanded enough to allow matter and energy to separate. Photons were confined to the small space available and bounced around like billiard balls with the universe's still small confined space, resulting in a haze of light which wasn't seen since there weren't any eyes yet.

After a long time the universe had expanded enough to allow space to cool enough so that the first atoms condensed out of the atomic particle soup. Only the simplest atoms existed, just a single electron captured by a single proton. It was the most common element in the universe, it still is. Vast clouds of hydrogen started to clump together under their own gravitational forces. As enough of these clouds came together they clumped into tight balls which grew in mass. Eventually the atoms of hydrogen started to rub against each other and heat up. The larger the clumps grew, the hotter they became. The early universe was dense with the stuff and tremendous collections formed, growing hotter and hotter. Eventually, they reached the ignition point and they started to fuse. Four atoms of hydrogen merged to form one new atom of helium. There was a tiny amount of extra atomic force left over in this reaction, and it was released in the form of energy. Stars were born!

The first stars were huge, and they didn't last very long. They consumed the available hydrogen quickly, transforming it into helium. As the heavier helium condensed in the core of the star, the lighter hydrogen continued to burn around the cooling core. As the helium piled up, it began to condense under its own mass and frictional heating began anew. The helium atoms began to fuse, and a new inner core of carbon began to build up. The star became a multi layered affair like an onion, with each inner layer burning the ash of the one just outside of it. Carbon begot Neon. Neon gave rise to Oxygen. Oxygen became Silicon. Finally, Silicon burned into Iron, and there it ended. Every previous transformation produced more energy than was there before. Each new transformation was less efficient that the one before it. Iron was the end of the line. As the iron piled up in the huge star's cores it absorbed energy. Mass increased and with it gravity. The heat of the fusion was no longer strong enough to hold back the gravitational monster and the stars imploded.

These supernova explosions released huge blasts of energy. Most of this was thrown outward into space, but not before touching off a match to the heavy matter piled up in the star's cores. A massive burst of new fusion took place, absorbing the energy released. New forms of matter were created and were seeded into the universe by the shock waves from these stellar bombs. Thus all elements that ever existed from atomic number 1 through 92 and beyond were created.

New generations of stars rich in heavy metals now formed. Billions of new stars were drawn together into the first galaxies. Clouds of heavier matter left over from star formation accreted together to form the first rocky bodies, the first planets. On some of these conditions were ripe for spontaneous chemical reactions to occur forming random chains of molecules with the ability to replicate themselves. From these random chemical bondings the first living cells came into being. Life developed the ability to form complex systems capable of using electrical forces to carry messages. The first rudimentary forms of memory passed hard earned knowledge valuable for survival on from one generation of living cells to the next. As these mechanisms became more capable of storing more information the excess was put to use to solve problems, and life began to think, eventually becoming self aware. Intelligence found a way to jump from matter to energy and the universe itself became sentient.

The living energy of the universe began to pile up. Dark energy was in a tug of war with light. The space between everything began to increase faster and the universe slowly started to fly apart. Matter beyond the visible horizon, that which was so distant that light had not yet had the time to travel from as it was further away than the age of the universe became lost. Thus the universe began to age and dissolve. Time and space however had a curve. All lines were eventually parallel, all points eventually met. Dark holes in the very fabric of space time had been dug out by the gravitational forces of long dead cold stars that had fallen together into enormous black holes. These gravitational booby traps tugged at the universe, and guaranteed that all points would eventually come together.


The comet had traveled through interstellar space for billions of years before it fell into the wormhole of the black hole. It was distorted out of shape as time itself ceased to exist in as all of the primal forces of the universe merged into a singularity. Then it popped out someone else and drifted for a while.

In another corner of the universe the derelict remains of a spacecraft drifted slowly toward the event horizon of another gravitational monster. The pockmarked craft was in amazingly good shape for the billions of years that it had floated between galaxies. It too was transformed and transported though time to somewhere else, and found itself along side of the ancient ball of ice.

At the edge of the old universe forces were starting to break down and the “branes” holding the fabric of the universe were weaker. According to string theory, developed by far thinking minds on earth billions of years in the past, parallel universes could exist, and at critical junctions between them matter and energy might be able to pass. The wormholes created by super massive black holes might have the ability to bridge these gaps. And so they did.

Time may be cyclic. Universes may recreate themselves. Maybe our past is older than we think.

They had been well preserved by though the fickleness of fate. They had been brought back together by the slimiest of odds. The living energy of the universe filled them out of its own curiosity. It liked what it saw, but it had its own ideas. It read into their past, and it turned back their clocks, restoring what had been lost. It made them as they once were. Vibrant. Strong. New. Yet different. It remade them it its own image.

Below them the planet sparkled with blue green seas. The air was clean. The sky was clear.
The natives lived simple lives, they fished the oceans, and raised crops for their food. Their technology was still simple. They had simple machines driven by water and wind. They had electric light powered by energy generated by the natural machines that drew clean energy from the world.

Into this civilization they emerged. Humanoids from an other time, another place.

Titan and Uran woke up first. They were lying on the ground next to each other in the middle of a grassy field above a populated valley. A few yards away the two younger ones saw the two others of their kind lying on the ground also opening their eyes . Atom and Cobalt looked at each other and at the younger members of their group.

“What's happened to us? Where are we and how did we get here?” Uran and Titan asked. Atom and Cobalt seemed just as mystified. A voice filled their heads. It was a kind voice and it reassured them.

“Go forth and enter the world you see before you. Do good deeds. You have been rewarded for your kind hearts and souls with another chance. You are now one with this world, where you can start anew. Do so with my blessings.”

There was a stream of water flowing by and Atom looked at his reflection in the water. He was no longer a robot, but a flesh and blood person. So were Cobalt, Uran and Titan. They had truly been transformed by the universe's intelligence and energy. They were the same as the people in the valley below them. They walked together down into the valley to start the first days of their new lives in their new world.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

I've updated the Epilogue and posted it on Fan Fiction.net

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/9654576/20/Who-Mourns-for-Methuselah

With this final chapter, Methuselah is now a Bonafide novel at over 50K words long.
Sorry April, I beat you to the punch on this (Where is your latest chapter?)