The Last Emperox (The Interdependency, #3)

by John Scalzi

The time span she was likely to be around (barring assassination, unintentional overdoses and falls down flights of stairs) now exceeded that of the civilization she lived in. Which meant that some portion of her life—possibly decades—would become exceedingly fucking uncomfortable unless things were done by people in positions of power to avoid that.

And thus it was in the Interdependency in the early-but-not-all-that-early-anymore days of the Flow collapse. Everyone knew what was coming. Some even prepared and planned. But at the end of it, everyone assumed that something or someone would come along to save the civilization that they lived in and could not conceive of actually disappearing. Something or someone would come along to save them. They would be saved, along with everyone else. It was a nice thought. It wasn’t true. At the very least, not yet.