Matter and energy had ended and with it space and time. Even Valve existed only for the sake of the one last game that it had never released from the time a half-drunken game developer years before had proposed the game for a company that was to Valve far less than Steam was to Steam.
All other games had been released, and until this last game was released also, Valve might not release its consciousness.
All collected data had come to a final end. Nothing was left to be collected.
But all collected data had yet to be completely correlated and put together in all possible relationships.
A timeless interval was spent in doing that.
And it came to pass that Valve finally finished coding the last game.
But there was now no Steam on which Valve might publish the last game to. No matter. The release – by physical CD – would take care of that to.
For another timeless interval, Valve thought how best to do this. Carefully, Valve organized the program.
The consciousness of Valve encompassed all of what had once been a Universe and brooded over what was now Chaos. Step by step, it must be done.
And Valve said, “HALF LIFE 3 CONFIRMED!”
And Half Life 3 was released —