The Astrophage

Eleven billion died in the fire. The last 300 million are about to be consumed by ten seconds of light. Three centuries after the Great War, humanity is a fading remnant. They have survived the nuclear winter, but they will not survive a technical error. A laboratory explosion caused a Dyson Cloud laser to discharge into the void for ten fatal seconds—a flare in the dark that signaled Earth’s location to the stars. Now, a world-consuming entity and its robotic masters have arrived to finish the job. Caught in the gears of this cosmic slaughter is a cynical high school graduate who only wanted to be a librarian. Instead, he has been processed by a cold, mathematical system and drafted into an elite special forces unit. He has no drive to be a hero, but the system only cares about his utility as a cog in its machine. As the planet is torn apart by black holes and antimatter, he will witness the final irony: in a war between cosmic titans, 300 million humans are not even worth a footnote. There is no salvation. There is only the void, and the final feast.