The Nine Billion Names of God

Another of my favorite short-short stories about the End of the Universe is by Arthur C. Clarke.

A computer technician delivers a supercomputer to a monastery high in the Himalayas.

The Head Monk tells him that the Purpose of the Universe is to have Humanity write out the Nine Billion Names of God, which the monks have been working on for centuries, and they want to use the supercomputer to speed things up.

The technician smiles, and heads back down the mountain.

When he gets about halfway down, he happens to look up at the sky, and sees that, without any fuss, one by one, the stars were going out.

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