AREN'T YOU AFRAID TO DIE? the universe shouts. It challenges me with the end of everything, over and over and over again. When I discover for the first time that I can survive crashing into the sun, being separated from my ship on the other side of a black hole, drifting out into space until my oxygen runs out, I am thrilled. Nothing can stop me. I am immortal and I will uncover all this world has to offer. What could possibly get in my way?

And then the sun explodes for the first time. I notice it out of the corner of my eye, just an expanding sphere of fire, an ever-increasing roar -- by the time I realize what's happening, I have died and been reborn. Is this a random event? When I die for the second time to the supernova, I know that it is not. Even as I am granted the gift of immortality, the universe turns to balance that out by ensuring that I will die every 22 minutes. And so begin my desperate attempts to escape this fate. Without so much as a word to tell me what I must do, I know that I must explore every inch of this miniature solar system, uncover the secrets and history that lie underneath, and figure out how to stop the sun from exploding.

The beauty of this game is that the hopelessness of your task is right in front of you the whole time, if you only know where to look. It is not your star that is exploding -- it is every star. As each 22 minute lifetime comes to a close, you can look out upon the observable universe, and see your struggle repeated in miniature a million times over in the span of a few seconds. But you probably won't understand what this means. It's not really significant. You are immortal, you will last forever, and all you have to do is figure out how to either stop the sun from exploding, or escape beyond its reach.

And then you finally do it. You understand the intricacies of every planet in the solar system, the secrets of history locked away beyond the reach of any others, you go through hell and back, and you find a drive, a code, and a ship. Your heart starts to race as everything falls into place in your head. You can do it! You can fucking escape from here, run far away to where no explosion can ever reach you, and finally live beyond the 22 minute lifetime that you have repeated over and over and over again to the point that there is nothing left for you in it. All you have to do is risk your immortality. If you fuck it up, you're dead. It's all over. And when life is just within reach, death feels serious for the first time. You practice the necessary maneuvers, plot out your route, and sit by a campfire and die a peaceful death for the final time. And then you finally do it. You escape.

And the universe ends, despite it all. After dozens of deaths, death had stopped scaring me, right up until I made myself vulnerable and believed for the first time that I could live. Then death became the most terrifying prospect ever. AREN'T YOU AFRAID TO DIE? the universe shouted, and I gave my whole life to prevent my death. And I lost. I died one final time. Everything did.

And it was beautiful.

Because at the end of it all, I always would have died. No matter what you do, the world ends, and the life fades from your eyes. Even if it had just been my sun exploding, and I had escaped and lived until an old age in some distant galaxy circling a far younger star, I would have one day sat down and died. But I fucking fought with my whole being to prevent this inevitability. I uncovered millennia of history, explored an entire solar system, and bent the fundamental laws of physics to save myself from death. And I lost, but who fucking cares? I did everything I could, and along the way, I saw the beauty of the universe around me, befriended other travelers, even learned a little musical tune. And we played that tune together around a campfire while everything ended.

I died, but I could only ever have died because I FUCKING LIVED!

It was a brilliant explosion of light, color, sound -- a transcendent harmony of everything that ever was, sung by a chorus of loved ones, it was a moment that exceeded all physical experiences, indescribable by senses alone, and above all else, IT WAS -- and it was over before I knew it.

And after the universe dies, and everything is empty and cold, another one is born. It is born despite everything! It is beyond what any person could ever hope for, could ever possibly believe: Not a chance for us to live again, not even for our friends or family or species to live again, but for something else to experience the beauty of existence, and the welcoming arms of death. In the end, it was all worth it. Even if there was nothing after the end of the universe, our struggle would have been worth it. But despite the sheer impossibility of it all, life goes on.

And to the universe, I answer: Of course I am afraid to die! But I have lived, and others will live after me, and that is enough.