Vika carelessly pulled her jacket over herself, habitually wrapped a scarf around her neck, and left the apartment. Even this now seemed unnecessary and excessive. Why bother? With the decision made, it was completely pointless. Except perhaps to smoke one more cigarette on the roof, gazing at the night sky. Tonight was unusually clear—studded with stars. Somewhere between the yellowish lights of the city below and the bluish stars above, for a few moments there appeared a reddish glowing speck—the cigarette end of Vika's cigarette. But then it went out, obedient to the click of her chilled fingers, and flew into the darkness along a parabolic trajectory. Following it, Vika herself was about to step into the same cold emptiness, but someone called out to her from behind.
"Excuse me, miss, am I interrupting you?"
Turning around, the girl noticed a hunched figure seated on a folding stool, the kind usually used by fishermen. But instead of a fishing rod, a small telescope stood before the unfamiliar elderly man on a tripod.
"The Geminids," said the old man, as if explaining his presence on the roof. "They're at their peak right now. Of course, it's better to admire them outside the city. But where would I go... And tonight the sky is so clear."
"Oh, come on... You're probably spying on girls in the neighboring building," Vika sarcastically suggested, automatically lighting a second cigarette.
"In that case, I should have taken binoculars for such purposes," the old man replied, clearly smiling. "But at my age, such sights aren't particularly interesting anymore."
"And staring at the stars—is it interesting?"
"Interesting. Isn't it to you?"
"What's so interesting about it?" the girl honestly wondered. "It's just spaceships and aliens in science fiction. And if you think about it, up there there are only lifeless rocks and emptiness."
"Yes, there's a lot of emptiness," agreed the old man. "But it's not all there is. There are many amazing objects in space: galaxies, neutron stars, black holes. And how much more remains undiscovered—wormholes, cosmic strings... Who knows what other discoveries await us!"
"This too is emptiness..." Vika waved her hand resignedly and looked down at the city again.
"Really? Without exploring space, we wouldn't have developed microcomputers, semiconductors, or cellular communication. Your iPhone would be useless."
"It's an Android..."
"Even better!" continued the elderly companion, visibly becoming animated. "Never mind Androids... We ourselves are created from this very emptiness. We are merely quantum fluctuations of the vacuum. Echoes of the Big Bang. Ripples on water. But all the elements of our bodies were born in stars. And perhaps someday, space will resurrect us after death."
"After the Apocalypse? Like God descends to Earth and all that?" Vika asked reluctantly, casting a disdainful glance at the old man. "A couple of guys approached me here once with books. They wanted to talk about this..."
"I don't believe in God, but I do believe that someday He will be built," the elderly companion replied seriously.
"You mean like a machine?"
"No, it won't be a machine or a being. Rather, it will be everything at once and nothing separately. I mean humanity as a single intelligent organism," the old man finally turned away from his telescope. "The apotheosis of what Academician Vernadsky called the noosphere."
"Nonsense... Some kind of esotericism."
"Strict science, no esotericism, divine forces, or anything of the sort!— the man sharply objected.— In its development, humanity will reach a level where it takes on classic divine tasks: resurrecting the dead, creating new beings, and even entire worlds."
"Well, it's not really working out so far..." Vika remarked.
"Being a god is difficult," the old man smiled. "But we are trying. Two hundred years ago, it would have been a miracle to restart a stopped heart or transplant a new organ into a sick person. Now, nobody is surprised by that anymore. And yet progress continues to accelerate. Technological singularity... You've probably heard of it? On a scale of tens of thousands of years, nothing seems impossible anymore. The Russian philosopher Fyodorov understood this back at the beginning of the last century. Calculating the trajectories of all particles, as Laplace once dreamed. Essentially rewinding the Universe back in time. Gathering scattered molecules and atoms to rebuild the bodies of ancestors. And... Everyone will be resurrected. And they will meet among the stars."
"Fantastic…"
"But Tsiolkovsky took this very seriously. As an engineering task. After all, if everyone resurrects their ancestors, what will happen to such a mass of people? Of course, they will need to be settled on other planets. It was then that he began developing the theoretical foundations of astronautics and wrote his famous formula for rocket motion, which we still use today."
"Well, okay," Vika reluctantly agreed. "But why?"
"What do you mean, 'why'?"
"Well, why would future people want to resurrect anyone?"
"We. All of us. Including you and me. I don't separate us now from the people of the future. We are humanity."
"Okay, okay... Why would humanity need to resurrect anyone?" the girl repeated her question.
"Well, firstly, simply because we can," the old man paused thoughtfully. "Secondly, out of curiosity, just like many things were done throughout human history—from climbing onto roofs as children to ascending Everest and landing on the Moon. And thirdly, due to personal, selfish humanism."
"How so?"
"Everyone will want to resurrect their loved ones. And those people will want to resurrect theirs. And so on."
"I don't think that in the place of a future human, I would want to resurrect anyone. And certainly no one would want to resurrect me. Definitely not my alcoholic mother and her creepy boyfriends..." Vika took a drag from her cigarette and gazed sadly into the distance.
"You're speaking out of resentment. And nothing more. When we start dealing with objects on the scale of the Universe, all of this will become insignificant. Only memories of something good, attachments, an understanding of the value of every human life will remain. No matter who we are—biological beings, machines, or virtual imprints of consciousness inside a computer—it is precisely this that will make us human. Therefore, I am sure that someday everyone will inevitably be pulled out of nothingness. Not for good or bad deeds. Not for thoughts or beliefs. Simply because they were dear to someone."
"And you? Were you needed by anyone?"
"I don't know," the old man shrugged. "I have no one. You could say I'm a dead-end branch of evolution. But who knows? Maybe I'll get lucky. That's why I wouldn't advise you, young lady, to rush into the void. You should try to be useful right now."
"You're leaving? What about your telescope?" the girl asked, noticing that her companion had gotten up from his seat and headed toward the attic exit.
"Yes. I'm tired... I need to lie down. You can stay here and take a look around. The falling 'stars' are beautiful tonight. Just bring it back here tomorrow around the same time. After all, it's a valuable thing... to me."
"Are you afraid I'll steal it?"
"The main thing is not to break it," the old man chuckled and shuffled down the stairs.
For some time, Vika continued smoking her fading cigarette. Then she sat down on the fabric seat of the folding stool and pressed her eye to the telescope's eyepiece. Meteors fell frequently enough that Vika could have made all her wishes for the night if she believed in this silly superstition. However, one wish had already come true. Sitting on the roof and staring at the stars in the company of a wonderful old man was definitely better than enduring incoherent drunken conversations at home.
The girl firmly decided that tomorrow she must return to the roof again, if only to return the old man's telescope, and perhaps hear something interesting again.
To her surprise, the next evening the old man was not on the roof. Nor was he there the following day—or any day after that. Vika came to the appointed place for a whole week: she waited for 2-3 hours, looked at the starry sky for entertainment, but never met her strange companion again.
At that moment, she couldn't have known that ten minutes after their conversation, the old man descended the stairs to his one-room apartment in the neighboring building. He took off his coat and hat, removed his old but comfortable boots, lay down on the sofa, and quietly closed his eyes. A sharp ache gripped his chest, as had happened many times before. He had almost grown accustomed to this sensation. Half an hour later, his heart stopped beating. For another eighteen hours, his body cooled down exponentially. Twelve days later, neighbors, annoyed by an unpleasant smell, called the relevant authorities. Over 2036 hours, his temperature finally equaled that of the environment, and after 3716 years, under the influence of the same environmental conditions, his particles completely blended with it.
Another 25 thousand years passed. The old man opened his eyes again, as if he had closed them just a second ago, and saw a familiar face. Victoria was smiling.