Gentlemen, today I will tell you your future.
This little world we are on is located in an ordinary solar system, revolving around an average-level star on the edge of the Milky Way. Allow me to foretell you the unimaginable events that are about to happen in our tiny neighborhood and in our universe.
Let us venture thousands to hundreds of thousands of years into the future. You have already conquered the moons of Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, and various other frontiers in our solar system. You have already sent automated interstellar probes outside the solar system. Even though the different countries that still exist on Earth try to take control of these frontiers, the colonists try to establish their own governments. The first off-world war, born from a minor disagreement between Moon-dwellers and Earth-dwellers, ended a while ago. Among the many children born in Shackleton City on the moon, the first space-child is born to Sri Lankan parents. That child of wonder is not Sri Lankan; it is to the sky that they belong.
Now we are going a million to 100 million years into the future. You have spread everywhere in the Milky Way. Although your people in various corners of the galaxy call themselves humans, they have modified themselves so much to survive on different worlds under different conditions that they can hardly recognize each other as human anymore. The debate over whether artificially altered humans are truly human rages through your communication channels. Even though you feel humanity is distancing itself from its roots, your children still draw the same scribbles a child of the stone age drew millennia ago. Maybe humans have not changed so much after all.
As a billion years pass, the temperature of your sun gradually increases, turning Earth into a desert world incapable of sustaining life. The water cycle is accelerated as Hydrogen and Oxygen get separated in the upper atmosphere thanks to increased solar radiation, and Earth's water slowly escapes into space. To your people spread across the galaxy, Earth is just an annal of history, much like a house left behind when it gets old. Some still mourn that you didn't maintain Earth as it was, even though you had the ability to do so. But your focus has always been your expansion, your people's progress. As you advanced, you never once looked back. Earth is but another waystation from your past. Some of your people have completely separated from biological matter; they live only inside artificial frames you created. Others still live in organic bodies that are different from ancient human bodies in many ways, yet similar in some.
The next milestone in your cosmic journey is the 'death' of the sun. After 5 billion years, the hydrogen gas on the sun runs out, and the helium within begins to undergo nuclear fusion. With the start of helium fusion, the core pushes the outer layers outward, and the sun expands to become a red giant. The sun, which gave light, warmth, and life to Earth for billions of years, arrives like an oversized reaper to swallow your ancient home. This momentous event is but a footnote in a news bulletin to all your people spread out across the galaxy. Some of you still remember your mother planet and hold silent vigils across the stars. Earth and the solar system are just a picture hanging on the museum walls of your people, who are still on their cosmic journey. Your children ask you what it is; your floundering explanations on the epic journey of Sol and her child Earth do not do justice to its former grandeur.
Let us travel to the future between 20 and 50 billion years from now. Due to the unstoppable expansion of the universe, all galaxies except those in your 'cosmic village' move out of your observable horizon. As you are bound by the physical laws of the speed of light, you cannot leave the galaxy cluster you are in now. Apart from the Milky Way, Andromeda, the Large Magellanic Cloud, and a few other small cosmic outliers, you can only travel into the unfathomable dark of the universe. Yet, even though this is a relatively small village, it is unimaginably large; you have all the space you could ever want. Having known about this event for billions of years, it is not a terrifying occurrence to you. There is plenty of space in this cosmic village for your people to spread and for their future children to live.
As a hundred billion years pass, your universe has become a dark and quiet place. The creation of new stars, something that has continuously fed the universe with light and hope for the future, has completely stopped. Therefore, you, whose survival depends on stars, have to extract energy from the remaining ones. Your people have now become brilliant stellar engineers. Even though you don't have the ability to create stars, you are now skilled at getting the maximum use out of them. You know that the end of the universe will arrive someday. Even though you have completely removed yourself from the constraints of matter by this time, you cannot escape the need for matter and energy. Although you are completely separated from organic bodies, genes, and childbirth, the wonder you held in the distant past and the desire to go on long journeys still remains in the tales your children tell each other.
In the distant past, your people, roaming in groups in the dark forests of your world, lit campfires to try to chase away the darkness. Your life depended on that campfire. A trillion years later, a cruel twist of fate forces you to keep your species alive by gathering around similar campfires; the only remaining type of stars in the universe: red dwarfs. These slowly burning stars are all that is left of the countless, diverse stars that once existed in the universe, and they are all that is left for you. Living in this gradually darkening universe, you still tell each other stories that are not entirely true, still create music, and still shout into the endless void that you are here. Your technological advancement is unimaginably profound, advanced enough to defy the physical laws of the universe. Even after a trillion years, though the river of humanity still exists, it flows slowly, but the river still flows.
As a hundred trillion years pass, even the last stars in the universe die out and become black dwarves. You get your energy from dead stars, but as you have already separated from matter and your physical shells, the amount of energy you need decreases. It takes you thousands of years just to complete a single thought. You are in no rush to go anywhere; only existence matters now.
As you leave physical matter completely behind and travel through trillions, quadrillions of years, the era of proton decay begins. I truly do not have words to tell you what kind of state you are in now, what kind of people you are. As more time passes, the only energy-producing units in the universe are black holes. The darkest era of your time is now beginning. Foreseeing the end of the universe and the endless darkness that comes with it, you begin thinking about what measures you could take, how could your species survive? Some of you think searching for existence even after the end of the universe is foolish. What is the point of trying to live in a universe where there is absolutely nothing?
In the era of black hole decay, which comes next, the most unshakable of cosmic objects are finally dying through Hawking radiation. The only usable energy left in the entire universe comes solely from the last gasp of black holes that are melting away before your eyes. Yet you are clever enough to use even that. You congregate once more around these final flickering candles in the void. Before the final death of the universe is destined to happen - before the final black hole decays - you make a final breakthrough and gain the ability to create energy and matter. This is the absolute power you always sought, and using it, you can create a brand new universe. Does the creation of a new universe make you God? Was the universe you were in for so long also created like this? You do not accept divinity; you simply solved a problem that was presented to you as you have always done. Are you God to the other beings living in the universe you built for yourself? You do not know, and do not care.
What will your future be like, going to live in a new universe you created? Do you start from the beginning, going back to basic organics? Will you exist as an invisible force in the new universe? Your story doesn't end here. Gentlemen! This is just another beginning for you."
"What in the world was that guy on about? I thought this was supposed to be some fortune-telling, not a science class."
"What a waste of time, man. We could've been back at the hotel having a drink right now. But of course you guys will not be content with that; you want to go out and do some random crap."
"Dude, your son looks like that story hit him hard."
…
"Son, why do you look scared?"
"Dad, he said the sun and our world and everything is going to be destroyed... is that true?"
"As far as I know, it is true. Based on what we currently know, the universe fading away is also true. But think about this: how can we know what humans will have achieved by then?. Looking at what we've discovered and built in just the last 100 years, how can we say what they'll have done at the point when billions and trillions of years have passed?"
"But dad... won't it be a big problem for them when Earth is destroyed? It makes me sad, wouldn't they be sad too?"
"Maybe, maybe not. M'boy, we're only here for a short time. There's no point in us being scared now about something happening billions of years in the future, right? The only thing we can do is live well in the time we have. Keeping the people close to us even closer, and working hard to do good - isn't that what matters? You never know, maybe through something you do, or something you discover, you can help the people at the end of our solar system 5 billion years from now. Even a tiny thing we do today can change the future. We should only ever worry about whether we were happy in the short time we had, whether the people we love were happy, whether we tried not to cause trouble for anyone, and whether we were able to be satisfied with what we had."
"...Okay, dad. But he didn't say anything about aliens, did he? Do you think there's no one else anywhere in our universe?"
"In a universe this huge, it's hard for me to believe there aren't other living beings like us. Maybe he just didn't have time to talk about that today."