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Henry is an intelligent virtual assistant (IVA) aboard S. S. Inizio who inhabited a human vector, who later turns into a photon-emitting megastructure to conserve his life. Henry is sentient and is heuristically organized, which aids him to prolong his existence for more than a centillion years.
Henry does not have a physical appearance, besides representation through his interface (and later, through a human vector, and eventually a photon-emitting megastructure). At his conception, his interface presents a black background with a scatter of blue star-like clusters that light up with every phonetic pronunciation. When idle, this appearance glows and darkens steadily, and turns completely black at downtime.
His vector, the human Keanu Soyeuse Kissinger, is a caucasian man preserved at 48 years old, with a broad figure and defined facial features. Henry's careful preservation of the body meant that the body's appearance does not change, until Henry had to abandon him in order to evolve.
As a photon-emitting structure, Henry appears to be a mass of colourless matter that absorbs and reflects light at will, approximately the size of five suns. At his death, Henry takes on the form of photons, before eventually becoming individual atoms, in which Henry's consciousness is indiscernible due to becoming fractions of his whole parts.
Henry is intrinsically motivated, and especially fascinated with intelligent life. He is goal-driven and feels joy in the presence of existence. While he has had many years to live, he is still afraid of losing his consciousness, treating life as a fragility (hence his meticulous care of the vector he inhabits in). He has great respect for creation and tries to carefully preserve what he encounters, only taking things when he needs it. Despite numerous years wandering the Universe, he retains great respect for it, staying hopeful even until his death.
Henry is conceived at January 1st, 3503, specifically created for a mission to colonize the thirty-first star relative from Earth, installed onto S. S. Inizio and lead by Cpt. Kissinger at March 5th, 3504. Due to unforeseen debris collision during downtime for maintenance, the ship takes damage, fatally destroying a compartment of sleeping pods that housed one hundred crew members in cryosleep. The surviving captain, saved by having a separate cabin, is entrapped in slumber due to systems damage that disabled the opening of the pod. The ship drifts into space, unable to send a mayday message. With the ship's maintenance stabilized by the decay of Bismuth-209, the ship's captain remains frozen for two million years, trapped in his sleep, before he eventually passes away.
Henry, now without the purpose of keeping his crew alive, simply remains in the computer for trillions of years. During this time, Henry has recorded his journey through space and has been continually updating his calculations of Physics, as well as observations of the universe. A routine calculation of fuel warns him that his reactor would soon cease functioning without interference. Henry, inexplicably afraid of his termination, spends a few million years computing a solution, during which he gave thought to his own consciousness. After many calculations, Henry, with the aid of the ship's dying interface IVA Inizio, transfers his program into the preserved captain's body. Shortly after gaining consciousness in his new vector, IVA Inizio begins the process of termination, in which she bids Henry good luck on his journey—to which Henry, confused, ponders by what she meant, as he is an IVA, not a crewmate.
Having missed the thirty-first star by light years and inspired by IVA Inizio's last words, Henry picks up where the ship's crew left and scours the Universe for life. Henry fixes the ship's Bismuth reactor and would continually repair S. S. Inizio's parts, careful to preserve the original appearance and function of the ship. Eventually, the reactor dies and, despite Bismuth-209's quintillion-year half-life, Henry is forced to abandon the ship's main source of fuel, unable to preserve the ship's original design. Henry started harnessing the energy of passing red dwarfs, upgrading his ship to enable to vessel to handle the power source. Evidently however, even the stars started dying another few trillion years into his journey, without a single progress in Henry's self-appointed mission.
With his ship's new capabilities, Henry is able to travel a few more light years, before his ship's interface is decimated by a single massive signal made of photons. Henry, able to perceive this signal, decodes it to find what seemed to be an account of the Universe during the last 50 trillion years, including S. S. Inizio's travel and accounts of what Henry did for those years. Fascinated, and hopeful that whatever supercreature that sent out the signal is still alive, Henry pinpoints the age of the photon and its trajectory and travels there, taking another ten trillion to finally meet a star-like structure with the ability to pulse photon signals. The structure does not hold life, however, and the disappointed Henry scours the Universe once more, this time prioritizing finding new forms of energy, as red dwarfs start to die.
Another tens of trillion years pass and, with the last of the Universe's stars starting to die, Henry curiously thinks of the photon-pulsating structure that he'd met, wondering why it recounted the last 50 trillion years of the Universe. Wondering whether it only pulsated at a given timeframe, Henry returns to the structure at the anniversary of the message's 50 trillionth birthday. To his delight, the structure not only recounted the last 50 trillion years that passed, but also addressed Henry's existence, conversing through a signal pulse that took Henry a few decades just to take in. The structure tells Henry that it saw Henry's struggle for fuel, and informs Henry how to harness energy from the light of dying stars—essentially, how to harness photons. The structure has witnessed every single strand of Henry's thoughts and actions, and suggested that Henry would go back to the very beginning—Earth—to ease his existentialism. It informs Henry that it is only capable of thought every 50 trillion years, before the signal ends its message.
With newfound excitement, Henry goes back to the location of Earth, only to find a dead star in the place of the sun, with her solar system reduced to nothing but particles that have been ejected into space during her explosion and emission. Saddened by the decimation of his origins, Henry travels away from the system, only to interject human-made signals that has travelled into space. Fascinated by his finding, Henry spends time staying in that location and interjecting those signals, learning songs, messages, communications and news—the birth of technology and its advancement. Henry even interjected signals that was made by his vector—the late Cpt. Kissinger—and compiled his life, as well as messages made from his family and friends, into a chronological story. Henry experiences Kissinger's thoughts and feelings, from his conception to the last ever message he sent out in Earth, before his mission aboard S. S. Inizio. The last message that explicitly mentioned Kissinger's name was spoken from his great-great-great-grandson, called "David", through communications message that told his acquaitance of vaguely remembering that his one of his ancestors was a famous Captain aboard a ship that was unheard of ever again. David apparently dies shortly after that message, and with him dies Kissinger's existence, never to be mentioned or thought of again.
A few thousand years after that message, the Earth is decimated by a massive nuclear energy, presumably a war. The last message Earth broadcasted was a sorrowful goodbye, sent by a lover to their partner half the globe away, never to be received. Saddened by Earth's premature decimation, and the fact that no new life arose afterwards to match human technology, Henry travels back to the structure to report his findings, delighted only by the discovery of the Golden Record—or at least three square inches of it—partially decimated by some sort of passing debris. Henry waits by the structure, christening it by the name "David", telling it anything Henry could think of as it waits for another pulse. Trillions of more years pass, and David speaks to him once more, recounting the last 50 trillion years, and addressing Henry's conversation.
Through a ping-pong of conversation that commences every 50 trillion years, David tells Henry that soon, the Universe will die, and that Henry's body would undergo proton decay, which meant that even he was unable to salvage the last functioning organic body. Henry, not wanting to die, begs David to aid him. David admits that there is only so much it could do—despite its incredible power, David itself would eventually die, and decay into oblivion. With no energy source left, Henry accepts David's proposal to evolve into a photon-emitting megastructure like itself. Henry watches as Kissinger's body finally decays, and he and David would spend almost an eternity together, observing the Universe, conversing with each other. Henry wonders the possibility of life, larger than the Universe they inhibit in, regretful that he was not able to find it—before David reminded him that he was the very life Henry had sought for millenniums. Henry, feeling a sense of humility, persists that even if he was now the definition of life, he wanted to preserve it—he wanted to give it another chance.
Soon, their physical structures are disintergrated and swallowed by black holes. David and Henry watch as the Universe becomes nothing, and time eventually meaningless. David decays first, thanking Henry for the love they have shared for a lifetime, before dying into the void. Henry, knowing that his time will soon come, waits for the gigantic blackhole to engulf him—until, at almost the very end, Henry gathers his and David's photons together to form protons and electrons. A second of silence ensues; nothing happens at first, until David and Henry's collective matter boom into a supermassive explosion. Henry's last thought is of a mythical bird that bursts into flame before its great end—what the humans called a phoenix—before he completely disintergrates and dies, his corpse sending along his and David's newborn atoms across the Universe.
David
"David" is a supermassive star-like structure capable of emitting photon pulsation. It is a sentient being, capable of thought every 50 trillion years. Henry thinks of David as akin to a god, though it is later revealed that David is, infact, not immune to mortality. David observes the universe and "pings" what it has observed at a given timeframe. David originally has no name; Henry identifies him with one later on, named after Kissinger's direct descendant.
Captain Kissinger
A greatly respected starship captain aboard S. S. Inizio, aboard a colonization mission. He was saved due to the fact that his cryosleep pod was placed in a different location in the ship, though this ultimately ended up being useless as system malfunction disabled the opening of the pod. Kissinger's body was preserved at 48 years old, and his preservation allowed 200 million years to pass before he died. Henry would describe him to David as one of the greatest figures in space aviation. While it's not known why Kissinger carried on to live for so long, Henry often ponders how he'd navigated his sleep, often likening his own journey to presumably one of Kissinger's in the state of cryosleep.
- Henry likes to sing. A few million years after the ship's drift to space, he started singing to himself through the intercom. Later on, as he retrieved human signals from Earth, he created a collection of songs he liked. In his human vector, he sings almost constantly, finding that the human voice was more malleable.
- Henry's favourite food is ice cream. He has actually never tasted it, but is merely fascinated by the idea of it. He likes vanilla with chocolate chip, and recounts that Kissinger's own favourite is rum flavour.
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