First we assaulted death with pills and targeted radiation, and then with nanites, gene therapy, and anti-ablative cladding woven into human flesh. Next came imprinted lightwaves that held the mind, the record of a human, railed against by the Catholics and the Protestants and the Muslims as a slight against the soul. Shinto ancestor worship became a tangible thing: venerating lacquered cubes of hardwood that contained quantum records of great-grandfathers.

Soon we left Earth behind, a crowded homestead, and made our way outward. We molded worlds to our liking, and then, later, wrote our consciousness into the foamy black of spacetime. After a large but finite number of eons, we left the Galaxy behind, a crowded homestead, and ventured further.

We left identity behind, merged ourselves with the godhead, and wrote poems on the surfaces of stars, sang songs to the iron cores of supernovae.

And now it’s all unspooling, the stars all gone dark a trillion years ago, and we think to ourself, we had a good run.