The Last Question
By Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was the most prolific science fiction
author of all time. In fifty years he averaged a new magazine article, short
story, or book every two weeks, and most of that on a manual typewriter. Asimov
thought that The Last Question, first copyrighted in 1956, was his
best short story ever. Even if you do not have the background in science to
be familiar with all of the concepts presented here, the ending packs more impact
than any other book that I've ever read. Don't read the end of the story first!
This is by far my favorite story of all those I have written.
The last question was asked for the first time,
half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the
light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs,
and it happened this way:
that on coal and uranium.
Ask Multivac, if you don't believe me.
You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars
says it can't be done."
Jerrodd, Jerrodine, and Jerrodette I and II watched
the starry picture in the visiplate change as the passage through hyperspace was
completed in its non-time lapse. At once, the even powdering of stars gave way
to the predominance of a single bright shining disk, the size of a marble, centered
on the viewing-screen.
VJ-23X of Lameth stared into the black depths of
the three-dimensional, small-scale map of the Galaxy and said, "Are we ridiculous,
I wonder in being so concerned about the matter?"
Zee Prime's mind spanned the new Galaxy with a faint
interest in the countless twists of stars that powdered it. He had never seen
this one before. Would he ever see them all? So many of them, each with its load
of humanity. --But a load that was almost a dead weight. More and more, the real
essence of men was to be found out here, in space.
Man considered with himself, for in a way, Man,
mentally, was one. He consisted of a trillion, trillion, trillion ageless bodies,
each in its place, each resting quiet and incorruptible, each cared for by perfect
automatons, equally incorruptible, while the minds of all the bodies freely melted
one into the other, indistinguishable.
The stars and Galaxies died and snuffed out, and
space grew black after ten trillion years of running down.
Matter and energy had ended and with it space and
time. Even AC existed only for the sake of the one last question that it had never
answered from the time a half-drunken computer [technician] ten trillion years
before had asked the question of a computer that was to AC far less than was a
man to Man.