Story:The End of Eternity/E19

When next he opened his eyes, Eternity found himself alone.

The erasure and compression of all time had left the destruction of the world paused. In the moment when all became one and one became all, eternity had halted and died in the stage of apocalypse.

The final duel against the self was won. All ties to the human, the ethereal, the missing, the beloved, the attentive, the passionate, the loved… All was gone. All that remained was Eternity.

The landscape left was scarred and bizarre. In the far-off horizon to the north stretched an endless sea of pure white. The water did not move or undulate, but simply was. That which was would always be, now that time had been erased. To the south stretched the earth, no longer marred by tall skyscrapers or the ruin of civilization. Now it was as if humanity had never existed, with the land coated in a uniform black sand that matched that which Eternity wore. The sand gently rolled as if painted by a calm brush, flowing up and down with quiet hills and moving onwards into the horizon beyond vision. Under closer duress, it was clear that the skyscrapers and constructions synonymous with human creation had been buried, not eradicated. The tips of steel peaks and outcroppings of shattered glass were visible beneath the heavy packing of the black sand, not obnoxious but not invisible. There was creation out there in the deep sea of nothingness, but it was unraveled by the eradication of existence. The sands did not move and the earth did not advance, just as the seas did drift and the tide did not flow.

The sky was unmoving and lonely. It was painted in a light red shade, just pale enough to border on pink but not bright enough to be blood crimson. Even though the atmosphere was bright, stars shone through the light and glittered. They seemed to cry out into the still world that there persisted something out there – that something still existed – that all had not ended. But like everything in the world now that all had been erased, there was a still and timeless quality to the stars, like they were drawn with the utmost detail, but were in the end entirely lifeless.

Eternity looked about the world devoid of all time and smiled. No longer did he exist. No longer did anything exist. Just as he wanted, all of time, space, reality, creation, and himself had been ended.

The end had finally come.

He slowly put his hands, devoid of any shackles, into the pockets of his cosmic clothing and looked towards the horizon. The black sand hid his black-clad feet as he walked down the shore, voyeur to all tragedy and being. He started to walk down the beach of nothingness alone and thought only of his eternal love.

There was plenty of time for him to revel in his salvation. He shed a final set of black tears and smiled.