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A KING OF INFINITE SPACE

A sci-fi Hamlet AU: 

Mankind left Earth, but there was nowhere for them to go. In a lonely castle of a spaceship, they crowned a King. 

• There are more things in heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophies, Hamlet says. He leans against the smooth glass window, the darkness of space outside swallowing him whole. Horatio turns his face up to the stars. I hope you’re right, he says, there better be

• When the old King dies, they send him floating into nothingness. Horatio knows that an eternity ago, humans used to let their dead sail the oceans upon burning ships. King Hamlet’s death shroud smells of rust and hot metal when they reel it back in.
• The Elsinore IV is not a prison, but a step outside means death regardless. Sometimes the ship rattles and shakes. Sometimes, the starfields outside are so dense that even if prime galaxy time indicates it is deep night, the sky blazes.
• Do you think there’s anyone still out there? Hamlet asks one day. Horatio doesn’t have an answer.

• They get their answer when the King comes back to them as a constellation, dots of light stitching him together just outside the observation deck.
• Claudius sits in the bridge and prays to a supernova.
• Ophelia wires an escape pod to take her far away. The little ship sputters, jerks, and all the rest of them can do is watch her spin further and further away. When she is nothing but another blazing star amongst the rest, she opens the hatch and steps out, arms spread out wide, hair spilling out before her. The cold vacuum of space is all that lingers between them.
• When it is all over, Horatio sits against the wide window port and wonders if he is the last human alive. The deck is painted with blood. In the end, it wasn’t even space that killed most of them.
• Beside him, the radio crackles.