From what is known, apparently the universe has been expanding forever. Or almost forever, but so much time has passed that most people call it forever and it is not inaccurate to do so. Space itself has expanded so much that it has separated nearly everything–people, stars, cultures–so that the sky at night is black. More than black, it is nothing. Literally nothing, not a particle is to be found far beyond homes and stars. Space expands, and immediately sucks in almost everything. But that problem was solved long ago. There was lots of time to solve it, of course.


It is uncertain how old the universe really is, but at its youngest it would be trillions of years. At its oldest it might be infinitely old and people have just managed to preserve local parts of it, make it livable. The curious thing though, about its extreme age, is that nearly every problem that exists or can be thought of, has been solved. A very long time ago many species and cultures had basic problems, like apathy, anger, inequity, the inability to be wholly compassionate, the inability to...and insert the problem in the blank. And as an ancient saying begins, if one sits enough monkeys at enough typewriters for enough time...


At first, there were difficulties and challenges that different cultures had. There were wars, tragedies, accidents; there were people who followed only their self-interests, there were the usual conflicts that any living being might go through. Conflict and anger and apathy were universal and impossible to contain. But over unthinkably long spans of time, new ways of behaving oneself were figured out, and thankfully people chose to behave better toward others, and it benefitted everyone. Supposedly the skies were beautiful then, on fire with innumerable stars and galaxies. It's said that life was everywhere visible, one only had to look up. It must have been pretty then. Of course it was full of strife, but it would have been so comforting to know that one's neighbors were that close. During that bright time of the universe, lots of problems appeared and were solved. Now, the problems were not sidestepped–they were solved. Anesthesia for example–it didn't make surgical operations or pain disappear, but it did solve the problem of preventing pain during an operation. Similarly conflict and hate and lack of character still happened, but there were finally ways to remedy these things, and so people went on slowly, sometimes painfully, learning to behave well. And then when they were just learning how to live, the sky began going out.