Epilogue

Equis swore sharply under their breath as their shoe caught on some sharp bit of metal twisting from the floor, scuffing the leather off their boots and knocking them off balance.

“You okay?” Yi called back from the entrance of the old hallway.

“Peachy,” Equis responded wearily, “how far is it now?”

“Just up here!”

They looked up just in time to see their friend dart up a mound of rubble, or what was left of the ceiling, forming a crumbly path to the roof. They considered the mossy stones and sighed, following.

They found Yi sitting on the bent remains of some metal unit, legs swinging and grinning cheekily. The roof was pockmarked and strewn with scrap metal and weeds, great chunks missing and edges slumping into the streets below.

“Yemma knows you wouldn’t have found this place yourself, but I thought you’d like to see it. The view is great from up here,” Yi said quietly.

Equis followed his insistent gestures beckoning them forward to peer into whatever sight their friend insisted they see so badly. Whatever they were going to say was lost in the scenery, and they dropped to the edge of the building with a slightly awed thump.

They had never seen anything like this, and for a moment, they forgot to breathe. The split belly of the great city yawned beneath their feet, ivy and grass carpeting the great spires of rusted iron that pierced the ground like jagged teeth. The sun, burning angry gold against the violet sky, cast long shadows over the rusted shells of cars and busses that were strewn over the weed-covered roads, looking, from this distance, like scattered handfuls of insect carcasses. The city was a moss-eaten testament to the potential of the millions of lives that used to call it home, and it showed in the paint that lit the walls and the bikes that twisted around poles and car remains. It was worn into the woodwork for centuries, pounded there by the millions of feet, the chatter of endless voices, and the stubborn bullheadedness to refuse to accept defeat even after its own demise. The city would remember them, even if the world did not.

Yi sat next to them after a moment’s thought, much more delicately and with much more amusement than awe.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” he said in barely a whisper. Equis could only just catch the words over the sound of the wind, “Fifty years after…after…well. Humans have always been good at refusing to die, you know? But imagine what this place must have been like at its prime. It must have been stunning.”

Just out of the corner of their eye, Equis caught the flutter of movement as someone peeked quickly around the corner of a street and ducked behind a curtain of ivy that covered a cracked doorway, something tucked beneath their arm. A scrawny mutt followed close at their heels, its muzzle patchy and covered in mange.

“…Yeah,” They finally responded after a long moment, “…yeah. Wow, I…How could something like this happen? Where did everyone go?”

Yi spoke gently next to them.

“One war led to the next, medicine advanced and was lost and advanced again, and everything has its lifespan. Humanity just began to sag under its own weight until eventually whatever was just barely keeping it afloat finally crumbled. This is all that’s left, and eventually, even that will go.”

The streets were cleaner what must have been decades ago, not long after Equis first opened their eyes to the sight of a world so familiar yet so alien. Moss had only just begun to creep over the edges of the street, but sickly-hued air filled the scene with its grainy flatness. They had stood in the center of the road, both feet lined up to the chipped yellow paint. At the mouth of the road stood a man. His back was turned to them, moving, moving away. The air tasted of copper and resolution, and before they could think, they were surging down to meet him.

“Sir!” They had called, “Sir, who are you? who are you? who are you? Please,” they  panted, feet carrying them slowly, far too slowly, “where is everyone? It’s so lonely. What is this place? Where did everyone go?”

The man turned at that, hand on a doorknob. They caught the barest glimpse of a sympathetic eye just before they skidded to a halt behind him, and then they were alone. With a horrible certainty, they knew he had been forgotten. They had woken just hours before with muddled memory and the sense that something was going terribly wrong, forgetting something so, so important. Was this it? Was reality leaving its inhabitants behind, scorching their memory from the very earth?

Panic washed over them, and they spun in a circle trying to find where he went. The street was barren, and something was still missing in the puzzle tangling their mind.

“Sir? Sir? Oh no, oh please no,” they dropped to their knees and scrambled over the broken ground, shredding their palms on the sharp stones in the weak hope that perhaps the man was simply hiding somewhere impossible. “Don’t leave me alone here please sir I. . . .”

Their frantic flurry of words broke off when their fingertips scraped on the base of a rusted door, the very same the man had been reaching for. It loomed over them, reeking of potential promise, and they nervously grabbed the handle and pulled.

The inside was blindingly dark when they first tumbled in, but as their eyes adjusted, they soon saw that this was not truly the case. A giant room, a theater gutted of its seats and stage, boasting a wide pit burning low with flames illuminating the faceless huddles of people around it. Their forms were rendered into silhouettes, and the shadows lingered on the cold walls just slightly longer than they should have, afterimages that stayed carved into the stone before flickering away. Every once in awhile, a figure would flicker and vanish just like the man outside, and the space they occupied would fill itself back up as though the milling crowds didn’t even notice.

They could feel the eyes landing on their body, weak and distrustful, edging away from the stranger in their midst. The image sank into their fear-ridden mind, but before they could do so much as squeak, a hand wrapped around their mouth and they were hoisted away into a small, uninhabited corner.

“You should not be here yet,” a foreign voice hissed. They were spun around to face their captor, but all they could make out in the low light were eyes that burned in the same shade as the unnatural sky outside. “This is not your time. Why are you here?”

“Who…who are you?”

The eyes studied them in shock. Try as they might, Equis couldn’t focus on the stranger’s features, their gaze just sliding away from the sight of skin just as soon as they thought that maybe they could achieve it.

“You don’t know? How long have you been awake?”

Something niggled at the back of their mind, something important and just out of reach.

“Um… A week? I think? Does it matter?”

“More than anything. This is just the beginning of your end, and it’s come far too early.”

“But who are you? What are you talking about?”

The grip the stranger had on their arm loosened, but only slightly. The thing that had been pushing insistently at their thoughts returned in full force, crashing over their mind until their face tightened in pain, but still just so tantalizingly far from understanding.

“Call me Yi,” the stranger said in a tone that suggested that this should be known already, “and as for that last bit, I’ll leave that for you to remember. Go back to sleep, I’ll find you when you wake up again.” Even as the stranger spoke, Equis could feel the darkness overtaking their vision. The whispered murmurs of the crowds faded into a sound like the rustling of grass that filled their ears, and somewhere in the corners of their consciousness the pressing thing flickered forward images of growth where no growth should have taken place, of impossibilities where even the impossible was a contradiction to the nature of the pressing void they only could name home. The stranger’s- Yi’s- gentle hands caught their body as they slumped to the ground, and before the darkness overtook them completely they were struck by how much those mournful eyes reminded them of the last sentence in the last page of a book.

“It’s not that bad. I mean, for the end of the world.”

Yi laughed at that, fingers stretched out in the warm wind. “You’re certainly right about that. Of all the endings I’ve seen, I’ve never encountered one so…calm. And so, humanity’s last breath is not a last cry of defiance but the last breath of release.”

“You make it sound like you see apocalypses every day?”

Yi blinked at them, shoulders betraying some ancient form of sadness and acceptance but eyes regarding them carefully. Like always, it was only those eyes that stayed in their mind once Equis looked away, Yi’s visage sliding out of their thoughts almost as soon as they were registered.

“So what about you, then?”
Equis furrowed their brows at the sudden shift in topic, but

didn’t comment.
“What do you mean?”
“What will you do, when all this is over? Try to come back? Just

leave it be? You have your options, you know.”
They looked away, chewing at their lip.
“Do I really, though? I mean… This is pretty inevitable. Doesn’t

really matter what I do, all this-” they waved their hand to the city- “will be just a dream once it’s all over. I can’t… I can’t help but wonder, once I’m gone, what will happen to all that’s left?”

Yi spoke hesitantly, knowing they were thinking of the man who had blinked away just before their eyes, of one who represented the sad few who remained of the once great race they had just seen flitting through the ruins.

“You were…Early. Very early. Usually. When others like you pass, everything they represent has already gone. I’ve never seen something like this happen, so I can’t say for sure what will become of them but… I think they’ll fade too, just all at once. They won’t know. They won’t remember. But maybe you will.”

Yi put a comforting hand on their shoulder.

“You know, I’m sure Yemma will be happy to see you again. None of her children ever return to her, not like they do the others.”

“…I think I’ll do that. That sounds nice… I do miss her. Just- will it-” they took a breath and focused their eyes on their chipped fingernails. “Will it hurt?”

Yi smiled softly. “Not at all. It’s just like falling asleep.”

“Oh. That won’t be too bad, then.” Equis leaned back until their shoulders hit the roof, arms

stretched over their head until the joints cracked. They exhaled loudly, staring up at the clouds. Their fingertips and toes tingled faintly, light beginning to shine through their nails. They could hear the slowing rush of heartbeat in their ears, fake blood in this fake body trying to bring oxygen it didn’t gather into muscles that don’t need it. After a long moment of consideration, they nodded decisively.

“Well, I’ve waited this long. I don’t want to rush it but no sense in delaying it, either. Will you stay with me, Yi?”

“Until the end.”

Yi uncurled its body from around the protective ball it had made around the fading little universe it gently cradled. It flickered weakly, the Nothingness around it creeping into its seams until, even as Yi watched, the young little universe flattened and dispersed. Yemma truly would be overjoyed to see it again. Nothing in this void was ever permanent, not even death, and nothing can truly kill what is little more than an idea.

Yi closed its unseeing eyes and wished the passing of the universe well. Time did not pass here, time did not survive here, and yet it could trace the memory of the thousands of universes it had visited in their dying dreams. It joined them as they watched their own fading, in their last moments of life, comforting them, giving the little solace it could ever give.

Yemma breathed creation into her ideas, the Nothingness homed them and Yi bid them farewell. Such is how it was, such is how it would always be. And so, it stretched its gargantuan body and moved on.