Excerpt:
What happens to an immortal at the end of time? That was the question facing the Relic.
Immortality seemed like a good idea when he was young, but how could a mortal man possibly imagine
facing life beyond entropy--beyond the very heat-death of the universe itself?
Discussion
My second sale of 2006, and the sale that disqualified me from the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds anthology.
This story was one of three similar stories, each a little different yet very similar. (The other two are "The Cosmology" and "One Way Trip.")
I wanted to face the question of what happens to an immortal at the end of the universe (the end-game scenerio, as the editor of Neometropolis called it).
All three stories have slightly different endings.
One side note--the POV character in this story is named Martin Kent. Right about the time
I began working on this story, a good friend died from cancer. My friend's name was Kent Martin. It seemed like
a good way for me to remember my friend, and I'm glad the story was published relatively fast for me
at the time~about 8 months after I finished it.