writing-prompt-s:

They say you die three times, first when the body dies, second, when your body enters the grave, and third, when your name is spoken for the last time. You were a normal person in life, but hundreds of years later, you still haven’t had your “third” death. You decide to find out why.

“Who is still speaking of me?”

My ghost roamed the earth. Centuries. Through every wall, every hidden room, but found no one still saying my name. Where was it? Why was I not yet at rest?

Millennia. Eons.

What remained of humanity evolved into other forms, some still speaking languages, some not. In a few of those languages I heard sounds that happened to echo my name, but only by chance. Nothing in memory of me. 

The surface of the earth had turned over again and again, like the boiling of a pot. If any buried record of my name existed, it had been stirred back into magma countless ages ago. Why was I not at rest?

Where could the memory of me have gone? If not on earth…

My ghost roamed the stars. Followed the paths of radio transmissions that called out from towers on earth, thousands upon thousands of years ago when I was alive. 

My ghost wondered. Perhaps one of them might still be speaking my name… a mention of me in some electronic communication from ages past, when there were still those cosmically tiny few who once, long long ago, thought of me.

But an automated transmission carrying my name would not be enough to lay me to rest, would it? That would require someone alive, thinking, speaking from a soul on the living plane of existence.

These beams were made of light, near-eternal. Their paths did not end unless they collided with a body. My ghost traveled to planets and stars and belts of asteroids, seeking some outpost built by someone still capable of listening. Seeking a dish that could have caught my name and given it to a living ear, a living mouth.

Millions of years. Billions.

Entropy. Heat-death. The stars ran out, dimmed, died. Fewer and fewer left. Nearer and nearer to impossible odds, that anyone could still know my name, could still be speaking it.

But still I was not at rest.

Only a few of those beams of data still traveled. Nearly all had met their end, through eons of random luck, to collide with lifeless rock or burning starstuff. Nearly all of that, even, was gone now. Where in the universe could my name be?

My ghost could not rest, but took a moment to pause, to slump in restless exhaustion on one of the few worlds still alive. 

A happy world, which by its own standards had a long future ahead. Its star would last millions of years more. Only from the perspective of the old, old, old, dying universe was it anything but young and hopeful. 

Earth, once, had felt like this.

My ghost knew this was not where anyone was speaking my name. The people here were not any offshoot of humans, but their own independent lineage. They knew nothing of earth. It had died before their microbial ancestors were born.

They were only just beginning to indulge their curiosity about life beyond their star. Only just building receivers that could search for transmissions from outer space.

The chance of receiving one, at this point, would be one in many, many millions.

But my ghost had paused on many other worlds like this. Many, many millions of them.

And today, that chance of one in many, many millions came to be.

The scientist watching the receiver did not smile, for its body was far from human, its responses unfamiliar to my human soul. 

But there was a change in its pose… and somehow, I knew.

It saw a pattern, one that could not be the random noise of space. And it gathered its colleagues around, to discuss, to wonder.

Science. Research. Bodies and minds all around, excited. Analyzing what they found. 

Oh, the people here were clever. More clever than I’d guessed. The radio signal was interpreted, run through machine after machine… 

And it reached, at last, a speaker. 

One which spoke it in the same voice that, long long long long ago, had spoken knowing who I was.

Obituaries on local radio. 

My home town. 

My name.

Impossible, for anyone here to know what it means.

But they are capable of hearing and capable of making sounds, and they mimic it, sound after sound until they can speak it from memory.

They know not what they refer to. 

But, oh, oh, after all these eons of silence…. all these eons when it felt my name must long, long ago have been spoken for the last time…. they are referring to me.

The transmission did not bring a great wealth of information, but it was enough to spark interest. They still work to analyze, to make sense of it. Their curiosity is bright, engaging, as they try to piece together this trace of my world.

I learn their language as I watch them. I smile, as they draw their own strange conclusions about what they heard, what it meant… who or what I once was.

My name has not yet been spoken for the last time.

It is often spoken here, now. As the emblem of a discovery, a mystery, a historic moment. 

They will never know me as I remember myself. But, is this not true of everyone who is remembered long after the first and second death?

I find I am happy to watch them remember me like this. 

The impatience that made me rush through the billions of years til now… it calms, it quiets.

It slows.

For the first time in a very, very, very long time… the millions of years remaining for this planet begin to feel to me like a future.

My ghost settles in here. 

No longer waiting for the last mention of my name, but content, finally, to enjoy new mentions as they come.

Perhaps this is a way of being at rest.

…