Quartet for the End of Time

Trigger Warning: death, violence

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, / And swear by him that liveth for ever and ever . . . that there should be time no longer: / But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall begin to sound, the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets.

Book of Revelation 10:6-8, KJV

Once upon a time, there were four friends, and one day, they swore an oath upon their souls that they would remain friends until the end of time. The devil, overhearing their conversation, took on a mischievous mood, and at the end of the first day, when the first friend laid his head down to sleep, the devil gave him months and months of dreams, all compressed into a single night.

The sun shines, and the branches are losing their leaves, saying goodbye to their children one-by-one as the wind tugs them apart with a kiss, and the different shades drift, divorced. Some leaves land in a nearby river, carried away by the creeping current, breathed into the vortex of the Volga Sailors. The Volga Sailors have lived since before the age of the dinosaurs, even before the era of sponges, long before the Volga River was ever known to this Earth. They roam the endless seas of life, passing through the lives of mortal men with indifference, carried by the swirling tides and confused currents of Fate. In number, they are few, but in what they have seen, they are many. They have known no great men but the ones who die quickly, for their histories are the easiest to eat and digest. They live in isolation, but every so often, their paths cross, and they find someone like themselves. It’s a futile longing, to wish for something that only comes for a moment. What else can come after a second of convergence but a hundred years of solitude? The leaves swirl together too, clumping together in their sticky situations, but soon they too part without a goodbye, and they each follow their own separate paths.

The next day, the first friend recited all of his dreams in a trance, and the friends were frightened by the future. At once, they were strengthened in their resolve never to drift apart. The devil laughed. On the second night, he gave the second friend years and years of dreams.

What happens when a giant dies? A loud, loud thud, and then a cheer. This giant was slain by Robin Hood, who roams by night the woods near here. But you too, Robin Hood, must die, and all your band of merry men. And all your Yoricks turn to dust: the ancient bonds are dirt—what then? The first funeral will be stocked, a positive party, but who attends the funerals of the funeral-goers? The days pass blue, and in hues of grey. There are many giants alive right now, and in the future many more, but the world is none the better for it all, and the ants are still crushed by the boots. The giants live longer and suffer more despair; the gnats buzz by and quickly die. Societies turn to mush and then mush to civilization. Where is the asteroid strike to end it all? When we find death and turn to nothing, wherein lies our precious love, the vision that we’ve chased all this time? War gives birth to more war, and peace to still more. The idealistic die, and the world remains. One giant dies with a momentous cheer, but the rest remain and live their sorry lives.

The next day, the second friend recited all of his dreams in a trance, just as the first friend had done before, and the friends cried in the face of death. They cried and lamented, and they became even closer still. The devil laughed again. On the third night, he gave the third friend centuries and centuries of dreams.

The last men smile and nothing more. The Glass Arm beats them with a whip, and when it’s finished its bloody schlogs, they turn it on again sans quip. What’s history all this time led to? Nothing but the best! Man is perfectible, and we have perfected him. Every day, the Glass Arm is built, piece by piece, the sum of all our lofty thoughts. The rainbows prosper and shine in a flurry. Nothing’s left except what was already there, the future that we made for ourselves, a future of our collective happiness, with no more strife. In the past, history shaped people, and people shaped history, but now, it is the end of history! What’s left of magic and mystery? Nothing more than shall change in man’s frivolous course, and the Glass Arm shall go on beating humankind with a whip for as long as the last man is still alive.

The next day, the third friend recited all of his dreams in a trance, just as the first and second friends had done before, and the friends became even more determined to stay together. They saw the weight of everything they did, how it all built up to the last days of history, before everything would start to recur indefinitely, and on that weight, they promised even more fervently to keep their bond alive. The devil laughed again, this time more heartily than all the times preceding. On the fourth night, he gave the fourth friend millenia and millenia of dreams.

The Angel of the Rainbows descended unto the Earth, who had appeared to me so long ago. He announced with trumpets that there should be time no longer, that the mystery of God should finally be finished. Thus stood the end of time, the insurmountable barrier I had been pushing towards all of my life. Everything stops. What is is what will be, and what will be is what is. It is the unchanging abyss, the Purgatory that lasts forever. I hear the Angel’s trumpet making fanfares that grow longer and longer, until soon, all of the universe will be summed up into one continuous note. What is the end of time? It is this, God’s mystery done, everything at an end, time at a crash, the dragons nevermore, the blossoms ever-blooming, the leaves wind-waiting, the cars never-going, the rivers never-flowing, the machines movement-forgetting, the voices left-in-air, the magicians out-of-charms, the stars ever-fixed, . . .

The next day, the fourth friend did not wake up. He slept and slept throughout the day, dreaming about the end of time. And throughout the next night and the next day, he slept and slept, dreaming about the end of time. The three friends stayed beside him while he slept, for they had sworn an oath upon their souls. They talked to him and laughed with him and cried with him, while he dreamt about the end of time, and they all grew old together while he dreamt about the end of time, until the first friend passed away, and then the second friend, and when the third friend passed away, on a bed beside the fourth, he whispered into his dreaming friend’s ear his last words, the words he had saved until the end, and when his dreaming friend heard those words—for dreaming then, there was time no more; the revelation had been postponed; the sleeping man had found a better birdsong to listen to; with a flash of light, something new was born in the final moments of a just-awakened dying soul, a love that would truly go on through the end of time.