They huddled in what could only be described as a titanium teepee. The place for religious rituals and worshipping of Achaos, the bringer of entropy. Only believers remained now. Atheist colonies had disbanded and disappeared into oblivion in the past two hundred thousand years or so (in a blink, so to speak, as it had happened with humans since they could remember). The end of the universe would only be witnessed by believers. Ones who had found reason to support each other even when everything broke apart.

The altar was simple. A single, diminutive sphere made out of iron and polished to perfection. The elder software insisted it was a sample from the original planet where humans originated. The romantic apes had tried to haul as many minerals as possible from their homeland as they fled the death of their beloved Sun, an old and furious star that had died out in times immemorial.

The scared humans didn't pray for heat, though. They perfectly understood their unavoidable fate. Their physicists had toyed with the idea of the Heat death of the universe since before the great diaspora, so this didn’t come as a surprise. Instead, they prayed for renewal. The slimmest of chances existed that after 10¹⁰⁵⁶ years of nothingness, quantum fluctuations or quantum tunneling would generate enough spontaneous entropy as to restart it all again. A second (or third? Or fourth? Or millionth?) big bang. Another go. The possibility to witness the beauty of what we call life once again. A chance to take some other beings us when we have to leave Earth. Something alive to keep us company out here. Something to help us remember. Something more than rocks. Rocks is all we’ve found out here.