I can remember the day the rain started like it was yesterday. The lab was unusually quiet that night, or at least, it was unusually usual. I was a philosopher at the Department of Philosophy and Arts, an initiative created by the academic council to study the inner structure of meaning. At least, I was.
The weeks leading up to the rain were hectic, to say the least. We were on the verge of a breakthrough, a breakthrough to end all breakthroughs. In just a few short days, we would uncover the meaning of reality itself, and be unbound from the chains of time armed with the master copy of morality.
Everyone was there to see it. The media, the governors, the academics, the common folk. Absolutely everyone was attending the Department of Philosophy and Arts that day, by telepresence if not physically. As the hours grew closer though, the room grew still. The very air in the laboratory seemed to cool until everyone attending was wrapped in their coats, shivering.
By the time the final hour was upon us, nobody dared speak a word. We felt as if the slightest breeze could cause the room to explode. Everyone was filled with a great fear of the answer, but we were used to it: This was the Age of Discovery, all new things in this world would make the bravest man tremble, and yet they would make the greatest artist yearn for more. We were afraid, but also more determined than any human had ever been before.
The time finally arrived. A single computer monitor slowly glowed to life, filling the midnight laboratory with a gentle violet light. We stepped in front of the monitor, and the whole of humanity read the meaning of life itself.
We knew then that we had made a mistake. Not our yearn for answers; no, that was perfectly human! Rather, it was the lives we had sacrificed to get here. Humanity had finally achieved enlightenment, and yet all we could think about was the suffering of our predecessors. For a few seconds we just stood there in silence, shocked and chilled. Then the rain started.
It filled the streets, and soaked our very souls. A slight drizzle grew into a torrential downpour. Soon the entire planet began to flood. Some tried to ignore it, other tried to forget. Others still tried to leave the planet and find life elsewhere, but soon the transmissions started coming in. Through the entirety of the human empire, all throughout the galaxy, everywhere our truth had been heard, the blood rain followed. Nobody was quite sure if it was the blood of our predecessors, or the blood of our own. Or both.
Life in the universe had not ended, but for humans it had. I am left nothing more than a refugee from my creation, living with only a handful of my coworkers. We do not hope to recover, but only to discover why humanity died by its own hand. The game is over, there is nothing left, but still it continues. The rain never stops.