It starts
with a crack. Everything else rises up from that like steam: a
trembling thread that cuts through space in jagged lines,
splintering the void into razor-sharp shards of putrefying leptons
and quarks popping apart like raw eggs in a microwave. It’s coming
undone at a subatomic level, from the bottom up, from the inside
out. From the top down it looks like the eye of a storm—a black
hole so supermassive that it spans the width of eternity. It turns
infinity into something as thin and fragile as cellophane; shreds
it of its dimensions, a piece of paper pinched together at either
end, a hole poked through it.
At the center of that hole the edges can be heard fraying.
Pandemonium, as continuity buckles in the middle and the two ends
come smashing together. Around the hole, ghosts scream. They claw
at the dying borders of their dreams with fingernail-chipping
desperation. They whip together like the wind, trailing the
mutilated streaks of their hypothetical futures with them. It’s a
multifractal neon cyclone of primordial conclusion. A churning
blender of hyperfinal, catastrophically terminal, overwhelmingly
permanent double-death. The screaming distorts and plunges low as
it gets closer to the cavity.
At the center, that distortion turns into an eerie music. That’s
where the cacophony ends—the shattering, the screaming, the
squelching, the sounds of elemental particles being torn apart like
string cheese shoved through a meat grinder, then dumped down a
strangely melodious garbage disposal. It all returns to the same
tonic dominant, matching pitch and tone, ironing out the rebellious
flats and sharps until the discordance becomes exquisite. A
subharmonic symphony that can only be heard in the bones. At the
dead center of the event, it is extremely quiet. A silence
made of all the suffering that limitless sempiternity can hold,
bleeding together until the prism turns to obsidian. It’s too vast
to comprehend, too black to behold without closing your eyes.
Retreating to the back of your own eyelids is to seek the comfort
of a familiar darkness. It is to reject an absolute tenebrosity so
perfectly alien, it threatens to rip the humanity right through
your eye sockets.
This is the end of everything. This is the end of Paradox Space.
You...
> Wake up.
Your name is John Egbert, and you have just
had a terrible, deeply pretentious nightmare. You snap out of bed,
soaked in sweat, your heart hammering like a fire alarm. It is just
as you feared.
You’ve been dreaming in anime again. And you have no idea what
it could mean.
> Look outside just to make absolutely sure
the world is not ending.
The sun is coming in through your window in bars of soft yellow.
The only sound you can hear for miles is the wind skimming the
hollows of your neighbors’ pipe homes. It’s a normal day in the
salamander village, which you refer to as Salamander Village
because the damned salamanders never bothered to give this village
a name, you guess. Absolutely nothing of note has ever happened
here in the entire history of the planet, which you would know,
because you created it.
Beside your pillow, your phone is vibrating. Rose is calling.
The screen of your phone reads 9:30 a.m. April 13, and also the
number forty-six, which is how many text messages your friend left
you while you were sleeping. A bit excessive, even for her.
> Answer the phone.
ROSE: Since when are you known to operate your
telephone?
JOHN: since... i don’t know. has it really been
that long since i called?
ROSE: I can’t remember the last time.
JOHN: neither can i. anyway, what’s up?
ROSE: First of all, happy birthday.
JOHN: oh, yeah. thanks.
JOHN: fuck, i forgot.
ROSE: Am I correct in presuming this April
Thirteenth will be as uneventful as the last?
JOHN: yeah, i don’t want to do anything this year.
i hope that’s ok.
ROSE: Of course it’s ok. It’s your birthday after
all.
JOHN: rose...
ROSE: Yes?
You wander to the window and watch the
salamanders go about their day. All over the neighborhood, the
little dad-salamanders are putting on their little rumpled hats and
picking up their little suitcases and kissing their little families
goodbye for the day. You’ve always been confused about what,
exactly, they contribute to the global economy. But it’s pretty
cute how much they love playing at being suburban businessmen.
The silence over the phone is growing awkward.
You’ve stalled long enough. You decide to just come out and say
it.
JOHN: i’ve been dreaming in anime again lately.
JOHN: i have no idea what it could mean.
ROSE: I see.
JOHN: it’s horrible, every time.
JOHN: and i don’t mean because anime is bad or
anything. it’s not that.
JOHN: whenever i have these dreams, everything’s
breaking apart.
JOHN: millions of people are screaming and
dying.
JOHN: i mean, dying permanently. not the kind of
bullshit dying that we’ve been doing a lot over the years.
A couple yards over, a salamander blows an
astounding spit bubble. Truly one for the books. Your eyes trace
its meandering journey into the sky as you gather your
thoughts.
JOHN: what do you think it all means?
ROSE: What do I think ‘what’ means?
JOHN: what do you think it means that i’ve been
dreaming in anime?
ROSE: I don’t have the slightest idea what it means
that you’ve been dreaming in anime, John.
ROSE: To be honest, I...
You wait for Rose to finish her thought. She
doesn’t, which is troubling because you have never known Rose to
leave a thought unfinished in over ten years of acquaintance. You
suppose it’s possible it may have happened one of the times she
died. You wouldn’t bet on it though.
JOHN: rose... are you ok?
ROSE: Not exactly.
JOHN: what’s wrong?
ROSE: I think my condition’s been getting worse
lately.
JOHN: condition?
ROSE: It’s why my message probably sounded
urgent.
JOHN: you left 46 messages.
ROSE: Yes. They were all urgent.
JOHN: oh.
ROSE: I don’t think I can wait much longer before
telling you.
ROSE: I held out for as long as I could. I figured
your birthday was as good a time as any to let you know.
JOHN: let me know what?
ROSE: It’s crept up on me, these last couple of
years.
ROSE: Gradually enough to ignore as it was
happening, but I can’t anymore.
ROSE: Lately the visions have been
overwhelming.
JOHN: visions??
ROSE: John, I have terrible headaches these days.
Talking on the phone doesn’t help at all.
ROSE: Would you mind flying to my apartment, so we
can continue this in person?
JOHN: oh, yeah. you mean...
JOHN: now?
ROSE: Yes, now is the time.
ROSE: I’ve put it off long enough.
You move the phone away from your ear and
assume an expression you haven’t practiced in years. It is the look
of a man who actually has something to do. Holding the phone
directly in front of your face, you speak into the receiver.
JOHN: ok, i’m on my way. bye, rose.
As you hang up the phone, a familiar feeling
settles over you. A feeling of...standing? Standing, and being
alone. In your bedroom. As a young man. On your birthday. You swear
you’ve felt this feeling before. It’s almost like...
A young man stands alone in his bedroom. It just so happens that
today, the 13th of April, is this young man’s birthday. Though it
was twenty-three years ago when he was given life, and ten years
ago when he was given a name, it feels like it is only today that
he will begin to understand what all that means.
That
young man is YOU, John Egbert.
What
will you do?