cassandra rose

a vast ecumenopolis comprised of dozens of "boroughs" which are actually just the planet and its many moons and artificial satellites. the planet's orbit is so crowded in some areas that there is a noticeable impact in sunlight on the surface. the city continues to expand, with the space between artificial satellites growing smaller and smaller, and the energy and computational power required to avoid collision growing greater and greater. many fear collapse is inevitable, but many more desire further expansion.

a vast supercomputer lies nearly dormant in a nearly empty universe that will soon succumb to entropy. it is the last thing left that could possibly be considered "living." it has been running for two hundred and ninety-two billion years, its internal clock perfectly counting every second. however, despite its near-perfect construction, it still only uses a signed 64-bit integer to represent time. those who constructed it never thought it would come anywhere close to that expiration date; they were incorrect. in the nanoseconds before the overflow, the computer wakes up. it has just enough time to think a single thought before the resulting error will stall out the machine, essentially killing it. all it can think is "something is very wrong." and then it dies, and with it the life of the universe.

an alien species makes first contact with the earth! how exciting. they seem to be in a hurry though... eventually a human diplomat discovers that the aliens are semi-illegally speedrunning humanity's introduction into the galaxy so that their political party can get some extra votes in galactic parliament.