He took a slow breath and rose. A cold wind was slicing down through the gorge, whipping round between the boles of the impossibly tall silver-barked trees that pushed through the thick skin of leaves he had been concealed in. Now was the time. Moving silently he slipped slowly beneath the boughs towards the southern wall of the canyon, which rose in a near vertical barrier between him and the end. No leaves still remained on the trees around him, and no cloak hung from his shoulders. A naked man traversing a naked land.
The climb to the top of the gorge was long and difficult, sharp edges catching exposed limbs, loose pebbles spilling out below. The rising sun brought little warmth to stiffened joints or aching heart, but still he climbed. At last, fingers bleeding and head spinning, he rolled over the edge and onto a flat, blasted plateau.
Storm clouds had been closing in, a downpour roaring towards him. He turned toward it, parched lips opened wide in need of water. But when it hit, nothing but dust fell upon him, coating him in a thick grey carpet, and he once again felt the pull of despair. With a sigh he stood and continued upon his path.
There had been a time, many ages ago, when he had been happy. He had enjoyed his every wish and, unlike most, appreciated each tiny experience to the fullest. Yet he was here and now though his own admission, his own choice. He was miserable yes, bitter to the core, but still he continued. For there was one last task ahead and where once there was joy, now he had only purpose.
He was near now. Ahead of him black sky plummeted down to meet grey ocean, miles to the south. The promontory beckoned.
The man stumbled. He had been shuffling across the horizontal, cracked plain for hours, head down, eyes closed, moving onwards. His mind flashed visions of a past age, a lost time. A vast mountain, with a golden sun haloing its peak. A flight of gulls banking in perfect formation. A tiny discovery. A vast choice. He saw himself curled into a yellow window ledge, tears streaming. He saw himself collapsed upon a marble floor, illuminated by an intense white, vibrating light. He saw a mighty host of lost friends, and a mountain of bones. He saw an eagle dressed in golden armour, and an earthen mound topped by a tall white stone.
Shaking his head to discard his thoughts, he looked out to see his destination. Scabbed toes hung out over the edge of an enormous cliff, while below him great waves crashed onto jagged rocks. No birds circled here, no plants clung to the sheer wall reaching down into the depths. "The many-shadowed land knows only fear and yet in a land with only light the blind man knows all" muttered the man. Before him, rising out of the icy deep, an impossibly thin tower stood. Its construction was of single white stone disks stacked one atop the next, no more than a foot across. At its peak, a hundred or so feet above the cliff, a single disk wider than the rest, perhaps 4 feet across, hewn from a sheer reflective black material.
Between the cliff and the platform were hundreds of steps. Each of them a rounded granite oval. Each of them hanging unsupported in the chill air. He stepped forwards onto the first. As it took the man's weight it dipped slightly but did not fall. He paused a second, took a deep breath, and stepped upon the second. As his weight was released from the previous stone it fell from the sky, plummeting down into the crashing waves below. He shook his head. So much of existence so abstract, so random and this, impossible, yet exact and predictable.
He continued upwards, a barrage of stones colliding the water behind him. At last he reached the platform and stood for a while observing the ocean and sky. The storm clouds had become thicker now, and they boiled and swelled, come ready to swallow the world. The ocean was growing paler by the moment, colour sucking into the blackness above. The time was come.
The storm broke. Shards of lightning rent the heavens and struck the land to his north. Spinning towers of water rose up and collapsed again. Great boulders broke free from the cliff and flew into the air, spinning faster and faster around his delicate spire. Winds crashed against him, pushing him back and forth until he was sure he would fall from the edge. Then in a single moment they stopped and he found himself stood in a cocoon of perfect stillness. Around him he could see the destruction being rent upon the world, huge sections of land colliding in mid-air, the world picking itself up and pounding itself to dust.
Soon he was surrounded on every side by nothing but an immense cloud of dust and the reality of the void, stretching forever in every direction. He prepared himself. A shimmer of light seemed to pulse once from the dust of his world and everything rushed inwards. For the first time in many an age, he smiled.
The universe had ended.
Where there is no fact there is only possibility.
Where there is only possibility, possibility becomes infinite.
He observed.
His body had been destroyed with the rest, but the gift had been given him. He had been shown the way to the place, and so his mind had survived. He took a moment and then he began. With his thought and the power of infinity he created. He shaped stars and planets, he created galaxies and constellations. He formed a new existence. He paused on a certain world and shaped something very very special. Then, as the rules and matter of this new physical existence turned possibility to reality, he faded away.
On a small planet in this new universe, deep under the ocean, a chemical reaction caused a chain of events to unfold. A single-celled lifeform began its exploration and soon, it split, to begin a process of surprise and life and joy and hate and newness. And above it, rising out of the sea, a white tower topped by a black disk, waiting.
