He reached out toward it. Even before full contact was established, there was a curious exchange of energies like a fleeting touch of fingertips. It destroyed his processing powers. All his work froze, and in the same moment he sensed who it might be.

A mixture of emotions-hope, joy, fear, longing, love-spread through his extended self and thrilled him with wild surmise.

"Ana?"

"Who else?"

"But where did you come from? Can you be real? I mean, to just appear ..."

"We've really got to stop meeting like this, eh? I certainly think I'm real." The cosmos filled with quiet laughter. "I think therefore I am. I think I'm me, Drake, I really do. But you know the theory as well as I do; as the universe converges toward the eschaton, there's no limit to what you can know about anything. We're getting close to the end now. So it's not beyond question that I am your simulation, a construct of your mind. You think, therefore I am."

"You are not a simulation." Drake hated the suggestion that Ana might not be real, even though it had come from him.

"You can't be. Don't you think I would know if I was creating a simulation?"

"You might. But maybe you have powers that you don't know about. Mm. That doesn't sound consistent with being omniscient, does it? Let's put it another way, with a question: Is self-deception possible, even for an omniscient being?""I don't know." The gentle touch had come again, closer and more intimate. "All I can say is it doesn't matter. When you are with me, nothing else is important. It never was, and it isn't now."

"All right, let's avoid an argument by agreeing that I'm here and I'm real. So before I do anything else, let me say thank you. Now I have another question. How much time do we have?"

She had always been the practical one, the clear-eyed realist, raising issues that Drake was happy to push under the rug. And as usual she was asking the right question.

Drake looked beyond himself, to the universe that he had been ignoring. It roared and blazed with energy. The cosmic background had become as bright as the stars around which most of the composites clustered. And still the pace of collapse was accelerating, rushing giddily on to the final singularity.

"We have a few more years of proper time, at most, before the final singularity." He found it impossible to worry. Ana was with him, never again would she leave him.

"Is that all?" The visual construct that she had chosen was her old self, and she was frowning. "Just a few years? I mean, it's more than I ever expected, but it's not much of a return on investment for you. Think of all your efforts!"

"I had it easy. It's enough. We'll stretch it subjectively. We can run multispeed in electronic mode and make it seem as long as we want."

"But it won't be real. I still don't like it." She was inside his mind, gently feeling her way around. It was the delicious touch of knowing fingers, exploring his most private regions. "A few years isn't nearly enough time. We need to get to know each other all over again. I know what I've been doing-nothing-but I want to hear all your adventures. And don't pretend you haven't had any. I know about the flight to Canopus, and Melissa, and the Shiva. I even know about the other Ana. But I want to hear it all from you directly. And you're telling me we won't have time. Don't you think you ought to do something about that?"

"Ana, you're talking about the end of the universe." Drake laughed, delirious with happiness. He could feel music swelling inside him, for the first time in aeons. "It's the end of everything. The Omega Point. Finis. There's no da capo marked in this score. That's all there is."

"I remember a different Drake. It was you, wasn't it, who once had a quite different opinion?"

Drake knew it was no question. She was teasing him. Ana was well aware who had thought what. And she must have been happily plundering his data banks of memories for longer than he had been aware of her presence, because he had never spoken aloud the words that she said next. "'Science has come so far. Surely no one believes that it can go no further.' Remember thinking that?"

"That was when there was time, what seemed like an infinite amount of it. Now there's no time. Not for new science, not for anything but us."

"Once you knew next to nothing, Drake, and you were able to work a miracle. Now that you have all the information in the cosmos available to you, who knows what you'll be able to do. The universe is ending because it's closed, right? It doesn't care-but we do. So open it. The knowledge you need already exists. We just have to look."

Ana picked him up and carried him with her. He found himself cascading through space in all directions at once, while ghostly data banks swirled to him and through him, an accumulation of knowledge unimaginable at any earlier epoch.

He recognized within them a million bare possibilities; but they were no more than that.

"We can't avoid the eschaton, Ana. It's there. It's a feature of our universe, a global reality."

"I thought the eschaton only existed in a closed universe."

"It does. If the mass-energy density had been below the critical value, this universe would be open. But the density is too big."

"So. Reduce it."

"That's impossible." Except that before the thought was complete, Drake had seen a way to do it. The caesuras, created so long ago in the struggle to contain the Shiva, sat as scattered and forgotten relics across space-time. They could still be used to receive any amount of mass and energy.

She was inside his mind, and she had caught the idea as it came into being. "Well, Drake. What are you waiting for?"He could not reply. He was engaged on a dizzying involution of calculation, every one of his selves operating at its limit. The answer, when he had it, was not one that he wanted her to hear.

"It's still no, Ana. We can dump enough mass-energy into the caesuras to form an open universe. A tiny fraction would reemerge into this universe, although not enough to make a difference. But we would have to go far beyond that to do any good. We need enough structural bounce-back to avoid a final singularity here."

"So that's what we do. You say the caesuras can handle any amount of energy and mass."

"They can." The irony of the situation was revealing itself to Drake. "But there's one insoluble problem. Information is equivalent to energy. And I-with all my selves and all my extensions and all my composites- represent enough energy equivalence to make the bounce-back impossible. It's the ultimate catch: Any universe that I am in must be closed."

"You mean with the physical laws that apply in this universe. What about other universes, the ones that form the end point for caesura transfer? Look at those, Drake."

He was already looking. There was speculation in the data banks but no solid information.

"Ana, it's still no. Even if we had all the information possible in this universe, it would not be enough to tell us what lies in other universes. There's no way to find out."

"Not true. There's one very good way. We go and see. Come on."

Suddenly they were hurtling through space, faster and faster. Dangerously fast. Relativistically fast. At this speed, a few subjective minutes would bring them months closer to the eschaton. The little time they had together was melting away. Drake coordinated his countless selves. All would have to fly, exactly in unison, into he myriad caesuras that gaped black against the flaming cosmic background.

At the edge of the caesura horizon, he slowed and hesitated. Mass and energy was swirling past them into the infinite maws, draining from the universe. But as long as he remained there, the final singularity could not be avoided.

"Second thoughts?" Ana was tugging at him, urging him on toward blackness. "Bit late for those."

"Not second thoughts. I was thinking, it would be just our luck to emerge into some place where the laws of physics are too different to permit life. Or some of us might find ourselves right back here."

"What's so bad about that? If we do come back here, won't it be to an open universe? You worry too much." She was bubbling within his mind, an effervescence that he could never resist. " 'Life is a glorious adventure, or it is nothing.'

You were the one who first quoted that to me. Have you changed so much?"

"I don't know. I can't bear to lose you again."

"You won't lose me." She was reaching out, enfolding him, confident as he was nervous. "This universe or another one, wherever we go, we go together. You'll have me for as long as there is time. Come on, Drake. You always said you wanted to live dangerously, now's your chance."

They were on the brink of the spiraling funnel of oil and ink, close to the point of no return. Ana was laughing again, like a child at the fair. "Here we go," she said, "into the Tunnel of Love. And don't forget now, make a wish."

"I already did." It was too late to turn back. Ahead lay total, final darkness. Behind them he imagined the radiance dimming, easing with their departure away from the hellfire of ultimate convergence. The universe they were leaving would become open, facing an infinite future. Not bad, for a man and woman who only wanted each other and had no desire to change anything. "I wished that-"

"Don't tell me, love-or it won't come true!"

"Won't matter if I do tell." They were passing through, heading for the unknown, the last question, birth canal or final extinction. Was it imagination, or did the faintest glimmer of light shine in the vortex ahead?

Drake reached out to embrace Ana, squeezing her as hard as she was holding him. "Won't matter if I do, love. Because it already has."

end.