Dreams of the Stars
Chapter 14

The easiest thing to do would be to go to Boddy, to tell him what Garr was planning, to pledge his loyalty right where it logically belonged—with his commander. But somehow that was as unthinkable as turning against Garr. That would be the ultimate betrayal. Wasn’t it enough to abandon Garr without suddenly switching sides like some bratty kid on a school playground who wasn’t getting his way? Regulations told him that siding with Boddy was the right thing to do, yet somehow in his gut the right thing felt like taking it upon himself to kill Garr, then move against Boddy himself. Or to let Garr have his way, activate the Boddy-zapper, and then kill him—that way the job would be taken care of. No one would be left on board but himself, Felter, and Samuels. Samuels he could handle; Samuels didn’t seem to care about much of anything—Felter would be a problem. He didn’t know how to handle Felter. He couldn’t go killing everyone or once he was commander there would be no one to command! The absurd thought brought him a much-needed smile.

He knew that Garr was almost ready. He also knew he needed to be there to help Garr with the final assembly, since several components had to be plugged in simultaneously for the device to work. So by staying here, he could delay Garr, at least for a while. Garr wouldn’t be held at bay by a single technical complication; he would replace a way around it. But for a while, at least, for a while, he could stay here, things would remain normal. Just for a moment. He lay back on his bed. Just for a moment, things were normal. The thought brought some relief. He even felt tears welling in his eyes as he basked in the moment of presentness. All is well, he thought. At least right now, all is well.

There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” he shouted, hoping it wasn’t Garr.

The door swung open, admitted Boddy and Felter. Curiously, Acker felt that these two were just who he wanted to see. Commander and pilot. The chain of command was still in place.

“Hi, guys,” he said happily. “What can I do for you?”

“We know that Garr is planning a mutiny,” Boddy said. “We also know that you’re a part of it.”

Acker flushed. “Me?! No, no, I—”

“Acker, listen—Jameson and Reichmann are dead because of this stupid mutiny,” Boddy said. “Look, the rule of law is meaningless now—most of what we know about the real world is meaningless now. But we have to deal with Garr. You help us do that, I don’t care if you were ever a part of the mutiny.”

Still protesting his innocence, Acker said, “Well, whatever you need me to do, I’ll do.” He knew it was a gross contradiction to things he had said in the recent past. Felter, at least, knew that. But he might smooth that out later.

“Fine. I know pretty much how the device works.”

“You do?” Felter said. “How?”

“Never mind. I just...I know. Acker...at least in this reality, there are leads that Garr needs you to activate. Just don’t do it. Instead, go to the science lab and tell Samuels that the mutiny is over. It’s failed. Felter and I will deal with Garr.”

That felt like a good plan—he wouldn’t be required to actually do anything. Just tell Samuels the mutiny had failed. After all, if Boddy knew about the machine, then it was as good as over anyway, wasn’t it? So all he would be doing was telling Samuels the truth. “Sure, sure, you can count on me.”

“Good.” Boddy turned slightly to the side and smiled—he seemed to be looking at someone—someone Acker couldn’t see. Then he and Felter left together.

Once the door had shut, Acker felt ashamed of himself. Sure, it would be easy to go to Samuels and deliver Boddy’s message—but he’d be doing what he had always done: run away. Just like when Brittani Madigan had caught her hair in that lathe in wood shop...he’d seen it coming, he could have warned her, but he hadn’t...he was close enough when her hair got tangled, he could have hit the emergency off button, but he’d sat frozen...And just like when he’d lost Duke Bullingdon’s necklace and blamed it on Logan Tweed...And just like when Cherisse Svenic, his prom date, had been bullied by Doug Searfrost while Acker was in the bathroom, and when he’d come back and saw her almost in tears as he taunted her and shoved her, he’d hung back in the crowd, pretending he didn’t see what was happening, rather than come to his lady’s rescue. It would be easy to run to the science lab and tell Samuels that it was all over—but there was no nobility in that. He had a chance now really to make a difference, and he would take it. Screw Garr, screw Boddy, screw Felter. And for that matter, screw Acker. Everyone hated him, he hated himself. He didn’t deserve a coward’s way out. It was time to do something hard.

Perhaps it wouldn’t be so hard, grabbing a welding torch and incinerating Garr. It might even be fun—surely Garr wouldn’t be expecting it. No, he’d never imagine that meek little Acker, his loyal, panting lapdog, would ever bite him and bite him but good. Sure, he might even take the opportunity to tell him, tell him how little his opinion meant. He could see it now: “You’re no better than me, Garr, and now your life will end by my hand!” Poof! Yeah, that would be something.

He felt invigorated by the idea. He’d had his last taste of normalcy—now, here at the end of the universe, Lawrence Acker would be the mover of events. Let God have the beginning of time—the end of time belonged to Lawrence Acker!

Before he could change his mind, he marched down the hall toward the engineering section. If he happened to run into Boddy and/or Felter, well, he’d make something up. After all, they hadn’t asked him why he was in his quarters rather than at his station. As if they’d ever cared where he was anyway; surely they were off doing something more important than worrying what he was up to. Well, he’d show them. He’d show all of them what Lawrence Acker was made of.

Drunk with his new sense of determination, he strode down the hall, exhilarated, feeling truly capable of commanding the ship. The problem all along was not that no one had listened to him; it was that he hadn’t made them listen. It wasn’t that they didn’t respect him, it was that he didn’t stand up and demand their respect.

He remembered that big gala after the Titan landing; his night to shine, since he had been CapCom during the walk on the surface of Titan. Although it was actually the crew of Perseus that the guests there wanted to meet that night, they had all heard his voice talking to Eileen Ashley when she stepped onto the moist surface. It had taken forty-five minutes for her historic words, “Yecch, this surface is kind of soft and moist, but it holds my weight just fine, no corrosion to my boots ...” and so on—but it had been the voice of Lawrence Acker that had delivered the famous reply, “Outstanding, Eileen. The whole world is logged in to see it. Half of them think it’s being faked in a studio and the other half think you’re refusing to show the alien city up there, so pan around and let’s see everything.”

Although the flight director had scolded him for the cheeky reply, the viewers loved it, and he had drunk in the adulation at the post-flight gala. He had enjoyed dining with guests who, no doubt, had listed him seventh or eighth on their “preferred” list, but who certainly seemed thrilled to spend the evening with him, and he had enjoyed fielding their questions. By the end of the evening, his hand was tired from signing autographs, but he was glad to give them, honored to be asked. He had felt confident, knowledgeable, loved, a part of the NASA team.

Now that feeling came back to him. He was a hero. He had earned his place on the Eldorado. And it was time for him to take his place in history—even if this was history’s grand finale.

As he rounded the bend into the service area, primal terror welled up in him and he nearly screamed. He felt his face contort as he stared at himself, his chest impaled on a lifting hook. Garr stepped from the shadows, stared at the corpse. “Damn fool. I can see the parallel realities, can’t you? Didn’t you think I knew you were coming to kill me?”

Acker threw himself against the side of the door, searching for Garr—his Garr—and any sign of that deadly hook. But there was none.

But that other Garr turned from the dangling corpse, stared right at him, right into his eyes, grinning, and said, “All of you are damn fools. Whatever reality you’re in, you’re a damn fool, Acker.”

That was the end of Lawrence Acker’s sanity. From then on, thoughts made real by Einstein’s equation, images from alternate timelines, and hallucinations all melded together into a high-adrenaline running nightmare that followed him no matter how fast he ran, no matter how loud he screamed.

TWENTY-FOUR

Boddy knew there was no saving Acker. He also knew that mentally deficient people weren’t supposed to qualify as astronauts; perhaps the shipboard gossip was true, and NASA had sent Acker on the mission to get rid of him. Or perhaps this was just another indication that they were in a realm the human mind was not meant to handle. They must adapt or go mad. He was adapting, Acker was not.

Acker ranted and raved, muttered gibberish, shouted phrases that evidently meant something to him, cried out to beings around him, some of whom Boddy could see, some of whom existed entirely in Acker’s mind, and finally Acker fell to the floor sobbing, clutching Boddy’s pantleg. “I ought to just put you out of your misery,” Boddy said, watching Acker with a combination of pity and contempt. He watched one of the other Boddys stab Acker through the head with what looked like a hunting knife—now, what the hell? Boddy had nothing of the kind on the ship. Well, each timeline to its own.

Felter entered through the open door. It took a moment for him to take in the tableau. Then, frowning, half-smiling, he said, “Acker? What’s going on?”

Acker’s head snapped up, his red-rimmed eyes trying to focus, trying to see from whence that voice had come, but his eyes couldn’t seem to replace Felter. He saw only swirling shapes, faces, memories, other Felters. Then he screamed in a high, woman-like screech, “NOOOOOO!”—and fled, not past Felter, not away from him, not left or right or up or down, but...that way. Boddy watched, amazed, envious, as Acker ran like an ostrich down the corridor of the timelines, at last liberated from the tyranny of three dimensions, free to dance sideways through one of time’s other dimensions, free to interact with his other selves, to experience the universe the way it really was rather than the way man’s mind had evolved to see it.

The Ackers blurred, blended, became a cloud. Part of Acker now extended through the room, hazy and indistinct, and finally, because irrelevant, invisible. And mad. Forever mad.

Boddy blinked, his head pounding. He himself no longer existed entirely in three dimensions, but nor could he yet handle the infinite contradictions of the Boddy-cloud he knew he really was.

He saw Felter staring in awe at where Acker had been.

Suddenly irritated with Felter, Boddy snapped, “Well? Did you cut the power to Garr’s circuits?”

Felter struggled to re-acclimate himself to the conversation. “Um ...” He shook his head. “What?”

“Your assignment, Felter. Did you cut the power to Garr’s circuits so that he can’t engage his device?”

“Oh—Ed, did you see that?”

“That’s Commander Boddy, if you don’t mind!” Boddy had had enough of Felter. Enough of the posturing, enough of the condescension, enough of the constant interruptions when he was speaking, enough of the disrespect and the attitude of superiority. It was time to replace out just what was really going on with this man. “Did you fulfill your assignment?”

“Look, um, Commander Boddy—we know that Garr set the thing up to trigger if any component of it is disconnected. How do we know he hasn’t set it to go off if—”

That was enough. Boddy reached out and grabbed Felter’s throat and squeezed his Adam’s apple. Gasping, Felter reached up to push him away, but Boddy grabbed both of Felter’s wrists with one hand and squeezed the blood vessels, effectively paralyzing his hands. Felter twisted and turned, but couldn’t pull his throat from Boddy’s grasp. “Shut up,” Boddy said very quietly. “Just once, just shut the fuck up. I am tired of you questioning my orders, I am tired of you acting like the commander of this ship, I am tired of you lecturing me about facts which I know just as well as you. I gave you an assignment. You did not obey. Should I just consider that mutiny and wring your neck right here and now? Or maybe you should just tell me what’s going on with you? Whose side are you on? Why didn’t you assume command when Jameson wanted you to? I want the truth!”

He then hurled Felter across the room. Felter crashed into the wall, clutching his neck. “Just what the hell’s the matter with you?” he gasped. “I’ve never been anything but loyal to you.”

“Bullshit!” Boddy spat. “You’ve had a bug up your ass this whole mission because I replaced Owen James. You’ve had it in for me ever since.”

Felter was beginning to recover his voice, but he still massaged his neck. He seemed genuinely bewildered. “It showed? Well, Jesus, I’m sorry about that...I mean, yeah, I guess I resented you, but it was—I mean, I never was part of the mutiny. I mean, when Jameson and the others came to me and asked me to take over, I mean, God, man, I was furious! I’m not gonna relieve you of command just ’cause you replaced a friend of mine.”

“More than a friend, from what I hear.”

Felter stared at him. “What the hell are you?” he whispered. “How the hell did you know that?”

“Never mind. I know it. That’s all that matters. So how about that?”

“How about that? Nothing, I mean—” Felter gasped. “Jesus, man, you almost killed me. Look, this is nothing. I—look, I know I can be a bit condescending. People have told me that, but I don’t mean anything by it. I mean, I don’t mean to be. I just try to help out by telling people things that they might not know. Doesn’t have anything to do with wanting to relieve you of command.”

“It doesn’t? How about not obeying my orders when I tell you to cut power to the guy who’s planning on killing me?”

Felter nodded, coughed. “All right, okay, I guess I overstepped there. But I’m being honest with you. Have you considered that Garr might have booby-trapped the power systems?”

Boddy stepped across the room and whacked Felter across the head with his palm. “Bullshit!”

“Ow, man! Will you cut that the fuck out?!”

“How the hell can a device operate without any power?!” Boddy raged. “Tell me that, Mr. Know-it-All! How’s it going to sense that its power has been cut when it hasn’t been plugged in?!”

“But we don’t know that, for cryin’ out loud, Ed, for all we know he’s got some sort of sensor plugged in to measure the power levels.”

Boddy knelt by Felter’s fallen form, leaned close to him so that their eyes were even. He put a hand gently on Felter’s shoulder. Softly, paternally, he said, “Joe, I am the commander of this ship. I am capable of weighing facts. I have determined that it is safe to cut the power. I ordered you to do that. From now on, you are going to obey my orders without question or I will consider you to be one of the mutineers and I will kill you. Okay?”

Felter stared at him uncomprehendingly. Boddy put on a fake smile and nodded. Felter nodded.

“Good,” Boddy said. “Let’s begin now. Let’s go down to Power and cut off Garr’s circuits. Think we can handle that?”

A note of resentment entered Felter’s voice as he said, “Yes, sir.”

“Now. Here we are, the ship is in trouble, the crew is in mutiny, the universe itself is coming apart around us. Is there anything about this mission and your part in it that you haven’t told me?”

Boddy expected Felter to deny it, but to his astonishment, he nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess you might as well know now. Just take it easy on me, will you?”

Boddy helped Felter to his feet. He started to guide him to a chair, but Felter brushed him aside. “I’m fine, all right? I’m fine.” He slumped into the chair. “I guess it doesn’t matter now; not much does. Okay, I’ll tell you everything.”

Boddy sat across from him. “I already know about the, uh, relationship between you and Owen James. I also know about how you found out about the Chinese mission, and about Senator Rashawn.”

Felter nodded. He wiped sweat from his brow. “I don’t know how you learned that much, but if you know all that, you must know that this whole mission was thrown together as a big political compromise.”

Boddy nodded. “Just like the Space Shuttle. And then after the glittering romance wore off and the Challenger blew up, for the next thirty years the taxpayers were asking just what in hell the Space Shuttle was for.”

“Pretty much—only in our case, the mission means a lot to us, but the human race will never benefit from it. So that’s why—” Felter took a deep breath. “That’s why the Deke selected the astronauts from the bottom of his list to come on this mission.”

Boddy closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. He had always suspected that to be the case, but to hear it confirmed...and now the human race was more than likely extinct, and here were the dregs of the astronaut corps unlocking the secrets of creation. Could Deke Elmore Skedd have seen the irony?

His voice subdued, defeated, Felter droned on, not in his usual loud, lecturing tone, but resigned and despondent. “Garr the walking time bomb, Acker the borderline obsessive compulsive, Jameson was a genius but not a team player, Samuels is a fine pilot but a pain in everyone’s butt. Reichmann had to come, it was his baby, and no one was sorry to get him out of everyone’s hair—and then there were James and me, the passionate volunteers.”

“So if no one cared what was to become of the seven losers, why did they pull James?”

Felter shrugged. “The Deke figured it was bound to come out what was going on between me and Owen. He didn’t want NASA to lose face. We’d never return, but the U.S. would still have to deal with the political consequences of our departure. He would have pulled me out of the rotation too, except that I knew too much about the mission. They had to send me along in order to prevent a security leak.”

“What the hell’s the problem with people replaceing out the Chinese were planning an interstellar mission?” Boddy asked. “Hell, I’d think they’d put that on the cover of every newspaper in America to drum up support for our mission.”

“Well, there were a few reasons. One, the Chinese plan was initially kept secret because we didn’t have an interstellar mission. Then, by the time we did, the Chinese mission was canceled, and they didn’t want people knowing they’d ever had one because they didn’t want it to look like the Chinese had nearly one-upped us again. Nobody wanted to think the Chinese were capable of a relativistic mission, because if they could do that, who knows what else they could do? And the Chinese weren’t anxious to talk about it because it was a failure.”

“Yeah, but come on, you can’t keep a secret forever. You’d think it would hit the Web in minutes.”

“Well, yeah, but there are so many crackpots and rumors and conspiracy theories out there that one more doesn’t mean much. No, they’ll keep the secret as long as they can, twenty, thirty years, till everyone in Congress has retired, and the poor loose-lipped astronaut who knows the whole story is packed off on a one-way trip to the end of time.” Felter rubbed his throat. “You really hurt me, you know that?”

“So why didn’t you relieve me of command?” Boddy asked, feeling not the least bit remorseful.

“Because you’re the commander, end of story. I don’t know why the Deke picked you as Owen’s backup. I mean, you know why I’m here, and I’m sure you can figure out that I pulled a hell of a lot of strings to get Owen named. Otherwise I’m sure the Deke would have picked just another screwup. But he picked you, a qualified, capable command pilot with loads of experience and seniority. I’m surprised he was willing to lose you.”

Boddy laughed without humor. “For a man with such a high opinion of me, you’ve sure made life difficult.”

“Yeah. I hated you for replacing Owen. That doesn’t mean I didn’t respect you.” He smirked. “Okay, I did try to show you up, but I know you’re the man for the job. I’m no commander, I’m a pilot, I know that. Can’t you see that? I’m not handling this situation too well. But you, you’re Captain Kirk.”

Boddy was embarrassed by the admiration he was receiving from his rival. Embarrassed for Felter and embarrassed for himself, because he didn’t know how to take it. “So you refused command because you didn’t think you could handle it.”

Felter nodded.

They sat in silence, Felter wallowing in his humiliation and Boddy reeling in amazement at the secrets that had been kept from him. He wanted to ask why Felter hadn’t told him all this before, once they were away from Earth and on their way—but he knew the answer. It gave Felter an advantage over him, to know the savage truth of their mission while the clueless but talented commander guided them obliviously with an optimistic smile on his face and an idealistic song in his heart.

Politics. Politics had made the space program possible since its inception in 1957, but had also dogged its progress. He wondered what the human race had accomplished in the millions, billions of years that had passed in the last few days.

Finally, when he had recovered his wits and Felter appeared to be able to swallow again, Boddy said, “We’re wasting time. Let’s get to the power center and cut Garr off from his machine.”

Felter nodded. “Okay.—But I was being honest before about my concerns there.”

“Okay, I’ll believe you, but I’m still willing to take the chance.”

As he led the way, Boddy wished he had one of those handy welding torches that had incinerated Jameson. Well...why not? There, now he had one.

He realized then that he hadn’t been paying attention to the other timelines around him. Perhaps that was for the best; for now he needed to solve the internal problem, then he could evolve into a higher state of being...or something. But at the same time, he didn’t want to lose the progress he had made.

“We’ll both have to DNA code the entrance to the power center simultaneously,” Felter said.

“I know that,” Boddy said, then decided to cut Felter some slack. For the first time since the mission had begun, Felter was being straight with him, even deferential. Perhaps he really was an ally. And even if not, Boddy had finally won their contest of wills. He wasn’t sure how, but he had. Felter now trailed behind him, shoulders limp, inner strength gone. Somehow Boddy had come out the alpha male. But how? He had no idea.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” Felter said. “Once we cut power, we might have time to make it to the escape launch and get out of here before the ship blows.—Not that it’ll make much difference, I suppose.”

“I’m not that ready to give up. Reichmann thought the energy levels might even themselves out. I’m banking on that. Doesn’t do any good to do otherwise. If we resign ourselves to death, we might as well just sit down and wait for the end rather than do anything.” And that was not an astronaut’s path in life. Every human who had ever lived was on a collision course with death. The oblivion they now faced was no more final than that faced by everyone who had preceded them in this universe. But no astronaut acknowledged that his own number was up. If he did, he would never climb into a spaceship.

Felter apparently agreed; he said nothing more. They continued in silence, each mildly distrustful of the other, Boddy assuming that Felter would continue to obey, Felter unsure what course to follow except that laid down for him by his commander.

That was when Boddy realized the disadvantage he had put himself to by ignoring the other timelines; had he been paying attention, Samuels might not have taken him by surprise by klonking him on the back of the head. Stunned, he dropped, falling in slow motion in the one-third of a gee. Felter turned, startled, his surprise giving Samuels the time to grab the welding torch from Boddy’s arms.

“I’m sorry,” Samuels said, breathless. “I’m really sorry. But this has got to end, one way or another.”

Boddy sat, dazed, aware of what was going on but momentarily paralyzed. He saw Felter pick a police revolver out of thin air and aim it at Samuels. “Yes, it does,” he said.

But before he could pull the trigger, Samuels had fired. Boddy squinted as the intolerable flare of light engulfed Felter. Samuels, too, seemed surprised by the intensity of the blast. Boddy scrambled to his feet and ran while Samuels was distracted. Without Felter, he had no access to the power center; he could head straight to engineering and hope to surprise Garr and finish him off, but that would mean backtracking and running across Samuels and his lethal torch. So he headed to the only place he could think of: the control center. Perhaps from there he could circumvent Garr’s device. He doubted it, but at least it would give him time to make a new plan.

How strange to think that for so long he had wanted Felter out of his hair, and now that he was gone, he realized just how badly he needed him.

TWENTY-FIVE

The control center was a strange place now, haunted by ghosts. Not just the ghosts of the dead crew members, but all those around him—himself, multiplied numerous times, and Felter, in a nearby timeline where he had killed Samuels rather than the other way around, and farther away, some unfamiliar faces who had never been on this ship in this timeline.

Boddy slouched in his chair, despondent, hopeless. Perhaps he had nothing left now but to wait for Garr to switch on his device. If the damn thing even worked. Wouldn’t that be funny, if it turned out to be a dud after all...after all this trouble. He laughed to himself.

He was startled by movement. He looked up and saw Samuels, unarmed, his eyes bloodshot. He reached for a gun, found one in the palm of his hand, and aimed it.

“No, please don’t!” Samuels cried. “Please—before you shoot, I just want to talk.”

“Enough talk,” Boddy said. “I’ve talked and talked and let this crew turn against me, let this ship come apart, let four men die. Enough talk.”

Samuels broke down in sobs. He sunk to his knees, nodding as he sobbed. “I know,” he croaked. “I know. But what’s the point now?” He wiped his eyes, sniffed, and continued without looking at Boddy. “Look, it’s over, can’t you see? Felter’s dead. There’s nothing you can do now. Let’s go to Garr and surrender. What’s it matter now? Let him have command and see what good it does him with everybody dead.”

Boddy kept the gun pointed at Samuels. “You killed Felter. It’s a convenient time for you to decide it’s hopeless to take this any further.”

“I just wanted to end this, I swear.” Samuels had recovered some of his dignity. Slowly he rose, though he kept his hands out, palms forward. His expression was imploring. “Look, Ed, you know me. Come on, how far do we go back? Let’s just talk about this. It’s just you, me, and Garr left; I’m sure the three of us can come to an understanding.”

“There’s only one understanding I’m interested in,” Boddy said, cocking the pistol. “I am the commander of this ship, and there is no other. If you’re okay with that, then I’ll let you live and you can help me to finish off Garr.”

“Look—I’ve already finished off Felter. I don’t want to do that again, ever again, to anybody else. I’m through with it. I don’t give a damn who’s in command. Seriously, Ed, really, just the three of us, what does it matter?”

Boddy’s finger tightened on the trigger. “Suit yourself.”

“Wait! Wait! Okay! You’re the commander and no one else. Okay, all right.”

Boddy relaxed his grip. He flashed a toothy grin. “That’s better. Now, since Felter is a pile of ashes in the corridor thanks to you, it’s up to you to help me to take out Garr’s machine.”

Samuels shook his head. “I told you, I’m through. The mutiny is over, and so is the mission. Garr has got to be aware of that. He’s got to come to his senses.”

Boddy rose from his seat. Samuels stood, slumped, his eyes vacant, as Boddy paced in a circle around him. “You know, Dennis, there is one thing you haven’t screwed up on this mission, and that’s your speculation that the Deke picked Felter for this mission just to get rid of him. Pretty damn close to the truth, except it applies to all of you, everyone on this ship—except for me.”

Samuels started. Boddy stood still in front of him, staring him down. Comprehension dawned in Samuels’ eyes. “Me too?”

“You too. Your constant whining, your constant visits to Skedd’s office, your opinions, yeah, you were qualified for every mission you ever flew, but Skedd wanted to get rid of you. He wanted to get rid of Felter, too, though for very different reasons that I’m sure you can figure out. But me? You did a number there; you spelled out all my qualifications and for some reason it seems he really truly picked the most qualified astronaut to command this ship. How ’bout that? Does that change your thoughts on Garr? Knowing that he’s here precisely because the Deke knew he’d someday blow a gasket? And that I’m here because I’m the most capable command pilot in the corps?”

Samuels seemed to have lost his voice. Only a hoarse whisper came out as he said, “Are you absolutely sure of this?”

“Sure. The only thing was, nobody told the commander of the ship the truth about its mission. But I got my information from the one man on board who really knew everything.”

Samuels shut his eyes. “Felter.”

“Bingo.”

Samuels sighed. “Ed, I’m sorry. I mean, how could I have known?” Sagging, defeated, Samuels slouched over to his science station and collapsed into his familiar chair. He looked at his console as though seeing it for the first time. “Quite a detective, aren’t I? Didn’t see this coming, though. Even a scientist isn’t immune from vanity.”

In a neighboring reality, Boddy took the opportunity to blow Samuels’ brains out. Well, that was a possibility and therefore had to be played out, but he considered it an odd choice, since now was the time he needed to win an ally, and he was so close to doing that with Samuels. As near as he could tell, Samuels had neither seen nor heard that particular outcome of this conversation—either that or he no longer cared whether he lived or died.

Boddy had to admit, when Felter died he’d felt the same way. Even now, he felt hope dwindling with every passing second. Garr might engage his device any time, and yet he still felt little urgency to do anything about it.

“Do you realize we don’t even exist?” Samuels said.

Boddy eased into Jameson’s old chair, happy to enjoy for a moment the old companionship he and Samuels had once shared. “What do you mean?”

“What I mean is...I never told you this, but I’ve been working on a chronicle of our mission. A kind of a prose treatment, something that goes beyond the bare facts and figures of the official log. I thought it was appropriate to really have a record of what we saw, thought, felt, said to one another—it hasn’t been easy, the last couple days.”

“Hmph,” Boddy chuckled. “Since when were you a writer?”

“I didn’t say it was a masterpiece. I just thought it was important. I never gave much thought to the fact that if we ever made planetfall, our all-male crew would be the last of the line. Or the fact that by the time we conclude our mission, there’d be no universe left, no humans.”

“I don’t know—humans are smart. Our species may have evolved, may be out there somewhere, somehow. They might be laughing at this archaic relic we’re flying.”

Samuels shrugged, made no reply.

“Well, go on—what did you mean when you said we don’t exist?”

“If there are no more humans, if there’s no more universe, then this is it, we’re the end. We are literally the end of time. And if no one ever reads my chronicle, what have I gone to the trouble for? What have we done this whole thing for? If reality is determined by observation—which—“ From thin air, Samuels grabbed a James Bond action figure. “—we can see that it is—then with no one to observe us, no one to know what we’ve done—then we don’t exist. In fact, if we’re at the end of the universe, if spacetime comes to an end around us, then think about it: the universe never existed, and we never existed.”

Boddy nodded. It was a disheartening thought. Yes, if time itself came to an end, then Samuels was right: all history would be erased.

“Does it matter, then, if I contributed to the mutiny? Does it matter that I killed Felter? Because, really, I didn’t. There never was a mutiny, there never was a Felter. There never was a me or a you. That’s why I can’t participate in this anymore. That’s why it doesn’t matter if Garr engages his device or whatever happens. I mean, look around you—if every possibility plays out, if our lives are just a cloud of equal probabilities—then nothing really happens at all. If everything exists, then nothing exists. I mean, put all the colors of the spectrum together, what do you get? White. If the sky was green, you wouldn’t know where to stop mowing your lawn. This whole damn thing has been an illusion. It’s like—like the Big Bang itself was a dream. The Goddamn Hindus were right. The whole universe is a dream. And we just woke up Brahma. Blink, we’re gone. Just dreams. All of us. Just dreams of the stars.”

“Or we’ll transcend it,” Boddy said. “We’re still here. We’re still conscious. With our consciousness, we may be able to reorder things. We just need to adapt to a new way of looking at the universe. Just like the early astronauts had to adapt themselves to a world in which there was no up or down, just like scientists had to adapt themselves to a universe in which there’s no simultaneity, we have to adjust to a universe in which there’s no absolute reality.”

“However many of us are left after we’re through killing each other. We’ve tried hard to meet the universe on its terms, but we just keep taking human nature with us everywhere we go.”

“What else is there?” Boddy asked. “If we’re the universe’s consciousness, then human nature is the nature of the cosmos. Unless we have an independent set of values by which to judge us, like those intelligent aliens nobody’s ever been able to replace, then we only have that one perspective, and the same rules that allow me to summon up the woman of my dreams—hey, why didn’t I think to do that before?—the same rules allow us to impose on the universe our very human foibles. This is our chance to dominate the universe. Show it a little of the mocking contempt that it’s always shown us. We can use it as a tool, just like the mariners in the old days figured out how to use the wind and the water.”

“Figure it out then,” Samuels said. He looked from his console up at Boddy, his eyes moist. “Good luck with Garr.” Then he died.

For a moment, Boddy wasn’t sure what had happened. Samuels was staring at him, then his eyes slowly went blank, almost as though they were a pitcher of liquid that slowly drained, and his head sagged to his chest. For a moment he thought Samuels had fallen asleep. Then intuitively he knew that was not so. He reached out and felt for a pulse; there was none.

Before he could formulate the question of what had killed him, he realized the answer; here, it was easy to commit suicide. All you had to do was decide not to live.

Then Boddy did something decidedly un-captainlike. He leaned over Samuels’ body, hugged him, and cried. Cried for his lost friend, cried for his lost universe, cried for this mission, begun with such hope and excitement and ended with such tragedy and disaster, cried away the last remnants of his connection with his old life.

Then, drained of emotion, he returned to his cabin. Garr was far from his thoughts; if he died he died. Let Garr have his lone empire on a ship of ruin. He planned on meeting his end with dignity. He was about to die one way or another, either when Garr killed him or when the ship blew up or when the universe imploded. Like Samuels, he no longer cared to participate in the human drama. A larger drama awaited him. If he concentrated all his energy, perhaps he could merge with his other selves, as Acker had done. But unlike Acker, he would have the sanity to transcend rather than become a meaningless wave. He could evolve, he could join this time world that had come to greet them.

But when he opened the door to his cabin, he was in for one further surprise. There was a stranger there. A middle-aged, bearded man who resembled a cross between Moses and James Bond. His white tuxedo matched the action figure Samuels had created from pure energy.

“Ah, Commander Boddy,” the stranger said. “Well, we have a lot to talk about.”

Gaping, Boddy searched the other universes for any Eldorado crew member who matched this description, but there were none. Further, all the other Boddys were staring here, in this direction, at this one stranger. “Who...are you?” all the Boddys asked at once.

The stranger smiled. “I am from the time universe that you have entered. I’ve come to welcome you.”

Boddy stood frozen for some time. He was sure this was not a hallucination or a manifestation of his high-energy brain waves. This Stranger really existed. But the notion of a humanoid alien who spoke English, who popped out of nowhere complete with long beard and perfect grammar, this was something out of a cheesy science fiction movie, not reality. This could not be—and yet it was. “Are you real?” he asked.

“As real as you ever imagined me,” the Stranger said.

“What? I never imagined you.”

“Suit yourself; I really don’t know. I am communicating with you via a medium you have not yet mastered, and I lack the sensory apparatus to perceive me the way you do. Similarly, I do not perceive you as you do yourself. Strictly speaking, I am not a conscious being in the way you define it. I am not—‘real,’ as you say. I am made real by your thoughts. I am solidified by your increasing contact with my universe.”

Stepping toward the Stranger—simultaneous with all the other Boddys—Boddy said, “That actually makes some sense to me. Are you conscious now, as I talk to you?”

“Yes—I am more or less a human being as you know it, at least for your purposes. I am as conscious as you are, because I am an extension of you. At the same time, I can answer your questions because I am an extension of my universe.”

Boddy laughed. “So this universe and I made love and had a baby.”

“Not quite,” the Stranger said, laughing. “The most difficult thing is attempting to express concepts which your language was not designed to express. Time, for instance. Tense is built into every sentence in your language. I am speaking in the present tense. That is inaccurate to the laws of this universe, yet it is the only way to use your language. So the very use of your language distorts the truth as I try to explain it.”

“Hmm—So you can’t really answer my questions.”

“I can do my best,” the Stranger said. “Since I am an extension of you, with luck you will understand my answers even if the language is insufficient to explain.”

Boddy reached forward, while all around him the other Boddys did the same, to touch the apparition’s body. “Just wondering if you’re...solid.” As he touched the Stranger’s shirt, Boddy’s fingers contacted a surface, but it didn’t feel like material or even real substance. He simply encountered resistance.

“Nothing is solid,” the Stranger said. “You are not solid, neither is this ship. You think of things as solid because your sensory organs are of the same molecular density as the objects you perceive. You already knew that, of course, but I am not being obtuse; this principle is important. Most of you is empty space. Your atoms give you the illusion of substance, yet they themselves are made of perturbations in the dimensional structure of spacetime.”

“And that very structure is collapsing around us,” Boddy said. He was noticing that all his duplicates in the other realities were saying and doing the same things he was. He was becoming synchronized with them; perhaps another step in transcending the individual timeline.

The Stranger put on a very human huffing sound and screwing up of his face as he tried to explain. “There again we see the shortcomings of your language. ‘That very structure is collapsing around us.’ Not precisely true, because you are describing a process in time. You can no longer think in those terms and be accurate. You see, you have always thought of time as something invisible and forever marching onward. Your scientists describe it as a dimension. But time, or the passage of it, is simply the decay of particles. The reason you experience time dilation as you accelerate is because as particles gather kinetic energy, they retain their state longer, and as each particle decays more slowly, your very awareness slows down, as does every function of your body, your ship, and indeed every physical process taking place within the structure that is accelerating to such speeds. Do you follow?”

Boddy frowned. “I think so... . A muon, for instance, decays in about two seconds into an electron, but as it gains kinetic energy, it takes longer to decay. Ditto everything aboard the Eldorado—the faster we go, the longer it takes every single atomic process to occur, thus we perceive time dilation.”

“Not entirely accurate, due again to the time-centric function of your language, but we’ll work with it.” The Stranger sat in Boddy’s chair and summoned up a large milkshake. “You loved these as a kid,” he said, and slurped thick vanilla through the straw. “Why ever did you give these up for beer? This is delicious. –Well, anyway, to simplify things, here you are, almost at the speed of light. Here, particles decay so slowly that by the time you notice any further change, your universe will have decayed completely. But that is not the end of it, because you approach a universe which is offset ninety degrees from your own. You can see it now—but in order to reach it, you must pass the speed of light...which is, of course, a physical impossibility. In order to do that, you must use more energy than exists in your universe. As it is, you are using your universe up—which brings me to the complicated part.”

Boddy had kept up with the conversation up to now; the Stranger had not really revealed anything that he had not already, at least in part, been exposed to in all those relativity classes he’d taken as preparation for the mission.

“When you reach just under the speed of light—that is, the speed of light minus one quanta per chronon, or the smallest unit of space that exists per the smallest unit of time that exists—you will have achieved infinite mass and infinite energy. That must destroy your universe, as well as your ship.”

“Holy Christ.” Boddy turned to leave. “We’ve got to stop it.”

“There is no stopping it; I’m sure you already know the physical limitations of your ship, of trying to affect its acceleration under current circumstances. But beyond that, you cannot stop it because it is part of the very structure of your universe.”

Boddy turned. “What do you mean? Are you saying that our mission is part of spacetime itself?”

“Yes, exactly.” The Stranger sipped the milkshake again—and, Boddy had to admit, a vanilla milkshake with a touch of maple syrup did sound awfully good all of a sudden. “You are aware that the speed of light is part of the structure of your universe. But your scientists never really knew exactly why. They simply shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘That’s just the way the universe is.’ But the reason the speed of light is absolutely fundamental to the universe is because it is the exact speed at which your ship reaches infinite mass and energy and destroys the universe. Oh, but I have ruined the concept with that sentence—so hard to express these ideas in your language. Remember, the laws of physics run both backwards and forwards in time. An electron becoming excited is precisely the same as an electron dropping to its ground state; the only difference is whether you’re looking at it forward or backward in time. So it goes for the whole universe. You look at the universe from the beginning of time to the end, but events don’t really happen in that order, that’s just the way you look at them. Just as a sentence in a book doesn’t really read left to right, your eyes are simply trained to read it that way; a book in Japanese would read right to left. Your universe is a closed spacetime with a Big Bang singularity at one end and, well, an unnamed phenomenon on the other end in which the universe is consumed by the annihilation of your ship. It cannot be prevented, because it already is. It is fundamental to the spacetime structure of your universe. If you were to change it, you would hence change everything that has ever happened in your universe, perhaps even a number of its physical laws.”

Boddy scratched his head. He had to admit he was getting confused. “But wait—we’ve seen here that in other timelines, every possibility is played out. I’ve seen it all around me. Surely that means that in some other timeline, the annihilation of the universe is prevented.”

The Stranger shook his head. “No. Remember, you are using up all the matter and energy in the universe, and because of time dilation, you are using up all the time as well. Your journey to nearly the speed of light is identical to entering a black hole—the universe disappears from your observable universe, time slows down to a crawl, until finally you literally reach the end of space and time. But when you reach that point, you have used up the universe—hence, the cause and the effect are inseparable. Have you reached the end of the universe or has the universe ended because of you? Both at the same time. They are inextricable. As you can see around you, the various realities are becoming synchronized. Soon you will observe fewer and fewer of them as we come to the end. Ultimately there will be but one timeline, one possibility, and that is the destruction of your universe.”

Boddy sat on his bed. He saw now that several of the Boddys merged into him as he did so. There were visibly fewer of them around him. “Then it’s all hopeless. There’s no point in taking any further actions. The end of the world is nigh.”

“It’s only natural that you would feel hopeless, but you are still looking at things from your linear, three-dimensional perspective.” The Stranger rose, crossed the room, and sat next to him. Even amidst his hopelessness, Boddy observed with interest that the sheets conformed to the Stranger’s bottom as he sat. “There are other possibilities, but here any attempt to describe them in your language fails me. For the time being, you must deal with Garr.”

The comment was so unexpected, so incongruous, that Boddy began to giggle, a hysterical, unsmiling, spasmodic laugh that sounded to him purely insane. He tried to get a grip on it, but couldn’t. It felt good, a healthy release of endorphins; perhaps it would refresh his emotional armor to handle whatever was left before the annihilation. The Stranger sat patiently until his emotional outburst subsided. Wiping his eyes, his laughter nearly turning to tears, he said, “Why the hell would an advanced being like you be concerned about the petty squabbles of a handful of humans?”

The Stranger smiled. “Firstly, I am not really an advanced being. Remember, I am partially an extension of you, and therefore my continued existence in this form depends upon your survival. Secondly, the petty squabbles of humans is a fundamental part of the structure of the universe. All your fighting and your money and your politics mark the origin of your mission which leads to this point. Try to look at the universe as a painting. We are at the right-hand side of the painting, near the frame. There is a great red blot which forms the entire right-hand side, but it tapers the farther left you go until it is but a thin line which merges with swirls of various colors. Those swirls are the dynamics of the human race; an important part of the ultimate destiny of the cosmos—as well as your personal destiny. What lies beyond for you, I cannot say. Perhaps you’ll die in the annihilation. I don’t know. I do know that, as I said, there are other possibilities.”

So the very politics he had been despising were a vital part of the universe. If that wasn’t the ultimate irony. “So how do I deal with Garr?”

“You can be protected,” the Stranger said, touching a forefinger to the side of Boddy’s head. “From the assassination machine. Your consciousness is the most powerful in the universe now—and as you have seen from the tricks you have done, which you consider magic, consciousness has mastery over physics under these conditions.”

“You’ve got to be kidding. Are you going to tell me the assassination machine won’t work if I believe it won’t work?”

The Stranger shrugged. “What do you think? It’s your ship. But you kill Garr, your consciousness is the last in the universe—and that sheer power will ripple both forward and backward in time.”

Boddy’s jaw dropped. He nodded. “Of course—the temporal feedback loops. My God, from one moment to the next, I could reach back in time and save my own ass.”

“You’re getting the idea. You said as much to your friend Dennis Samuels. Spacetime is your tool. Play with it how you wish. It’s yours. And once Garr is out of the way, it’s all yours. Yours will be the final consciousness. You will be the universe itself.”

Boddy scratched his head. He tried to imagine marching into Garr’s office and—and just killing him. “I can’t do it. I’m the commander, I’m responsible for the lives of my crew. Yeah, fine job I’ve done so far protecting them, but...I can’t just kill my engineer.”

The Stranger shrugged. “He would take no hesitation in killing you. But that is the last divergence in the timelines—either you will kill him or he will kill you. One of those events will be the Last Event.”

Perhaps so. It was a bit theatrical; the fate of the universe resting on one final conflict between the last two humans. But on the other hand, if the Stranger was right and human nature was part of the very structure of the universe, then perhaps it made sense that the story of the universe was structured like a human play.

“I’ll challenge him,” Boddy said, “but I’ll not kill him except in self-defense.”

It had taken some thought, some rewiring, and the addition of some extra parts, but Garr had worked out a way to activate the assassination machine despite the inconvenient death of Acker. The ship had become pandemonium; realities merging, people dying left and right, his own awareness of events becoming confused. It was time for the man at the center of it all to die.

He realized it hardly mattered now whether he employed so discrete a measure as the Boddy-zapper or simply walked up to him and shot him, but after putting this much work into the device, he might as well use it. All was connected, his computer screen showed all the components functioning, the little screen in the corner matched the target DNA in the nanobots with Boddy’s—all was well.

He flipped a switch, a motor hummed, and all indications were the machine was on. In a few moments, Boddy would die.

“Turn that pathetic thing off,” Boddy said.

Garr swung around, startled. Boddy stood in the doorway to his office, confident, determined, grim. To Garr, he actually looked physically taller. For the first time, Garr found himself intimidated by the formerly skinny and understated commander. Garr gestured to him with one finger. “You...you...you just back off now. You might as well just head off to your cabin where you spend all your time. The machine’s been turned on, the nanobots are in the air, so there’s no stopping it.”

“Oh, yeah, that.” Boddy looked at the machine and it was gone.

Rage bubbled up in Garr; it hardly surprised him that Boddy had done something that any engineer could easily prove was physically impossible—for after all, such things had become commonplace aboard the Eldorado—but that Boddy had so contemptuously wiped away his concentrated labor. He didn’t doubt that the nanobots were gone too.

“We’re at the end of the universe,” Boddy said. “The whole crew is dead except for you and me. We are the last two consciousnesses in the universe. Are we going to fight each other?”

Garr could not believe his ears. His jaw clenched. His eyes narrowed. He felt a new single-mindedness of purpose, to remove this cancer that had infected the mission, and to avenge the unnecessary deaths of, my God, the entire crew! “All of them? Our whole crew, you sonofabitch?”

“The universe is ours, Garr. We’re carrying almost all the matter and energy that exists. There’s pretty much nothing left except you, me, and this spinning box we’re in.” Boddy extended his hand. “Let’s bury these silly arguments, what do you say?”

How could it have come to this? Garr knew the science, he understood relativity, but the complex interaction between the human mind and the pure physical processes had left him shattered. And now, to think that only he and Boddy were left—in the whole universe! —He could think of nothing to say but, “This universe ain’t big enough for the both of us.” He lit his flaming sword.

Boddy, looking resigned, lit his own. They crossed their swords, then, pouring his rage into his muscles, Garr thrust. Boddy parried. Feint, parry, lunge—Garr was the more aggressive of the two, but Boddy the more thoughtful. Garr couldn’t quite get to him. Blades crashed and hummed, and with each feint, several Boddys merged, several Garrs were killed. Garr swung his sword, Boddy deflected the blow, but the force knocked him backwards, down a series of stairs, into the middle of an amphitheater. Garr leapt from the top of the stairs toward him. Boddy rolled out of the way, and as he did so, he looked up in the stands, where humans throughout history watched and cheered. There was Augustus Caesar. There was Plato. There was Aristarchus. There was Abraham Lincoln.

Garr ran toward him, sword extended. Distracted by the sight of the historical figures staring down at him, Boddy was vulnerable, and Garr managed to swing his—No, it didn’t happen that way. Boddy swatted the sword aside with his own, sending Garr stumbling. Two Boddys merged into one as he rearranged the past, brought the duel one step closer to its final, cataclysmic conclusion.

The sky swirled red above the amphitheater, all remnants of the Eldorado gone. History watched and, in its own way, judged, as all the collective history of the human race, and of the cosmos, became a part of these final two consciousnesses, as Boddy and Garr achieved infinite mass and infinite energy, as they encompassed Everything.

“This is your culture,” the Stranger said as he watched the duel from the stands—and Boddy could hear him. “There is no physical reason that the end of your universe should take on this physical form, except that these images carry a powerful emotional resonance for you. Does your culture paint the End of Time in this way because of some identification with natural phenomena of your planet, like storms and volcanoes, or have you always been aware that the Universe’s final moments would look like this?”

Dust was swept from the amphitheater, swirling upward into the vortex above. Trees, skeletal, blackened, their leaves gone, ripped loose from the ground, whirling round and round as they were sucked into the red sky. Beneath the doomsday panorama, surrounded by the audience representing all time, flaming swords clashed in an endless duel—a duel which might, in fact, be endless, for can one ever truly reach the singularity at the end of time? Would this go on forever?

Garr thrust, Boddy dodged, Boddy swung his sword, Garr parried. The howling wind began to tear the amphitheater apart. Garr swung, and in a distant corner of the amphitheater, John Milton lost his grip and was swept up to meet the hell he had envisioned. Boddy fell backward, deflecting Garr’s charge as Tutankhamen lost his own battle with destiny and was sucked into the nonexistence of the sky. Kicking at Garr’s shins, Boddy regained his footing. The Ming Dynasty was ripped clear and swept away, lost to the sands of time, as Garr stumbled and fell. The Roman Empire collapsed in a heap of scrap iron, ripped away from this amphitheater which so resembled its iconic Coliseum.

Boddy turned to slice through Garr’s torso, but Garr edged out of range. Boddy reached down and grabbed a shield, held it before him as Garr ran at him again. Garr’s sword clanged off of the shield. The referee blew his whistle. Garr was distracted. Boddy swung his flaming sword and decapitated him. The universe ended.

Garr, the amphitheater, the three remaining other Boddys, the ship, the universe, all snapped shut, like a balloon popping, collapsing into Boddy’s head. At the same time, he seemed to expand, to encompass all that was, all that had ever been. All of human history, events and people and knowledge that he had never before known, was his. Facts and experiences of animals who preceded man on Earth, the epic of the fall of the dinosaurs and the stories of billions of other creatures, became part of him. Also the sad stories of the rises and falls of civilizations on other planets, none of whom had mastered relativistic travel, were encoded into his indestructible being. Yet even as it all became part of his knowledge, it also ceased to be, ceased ever to have been. He was nothing and he was everything.

Yet the Stranger was still with him.

His mind still clung to human language, and in his thoughts he floated in blackness, still human, conversing with the stranger.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You are in infinity,” the Stranger said. “The end of all consciousness in the universe except for yours expanded you to encompass all that was, even as your universe collapsed. You finally achieved infinite energy and infinite mass. The destruction of the universe gave you the final boost you needed to achieve the velocity of light. You crossed beyond your dying universe and created—no, became—a new one.”

Samuels was right...Brahma woke up...and I am Brahma.

“Then I am the universe now.”

“You are a new universe. What physical laws govern it, we have yet to see. How large a part you will play in it, we have yet to see. How much control you have over your place in it, we have yet to see.”

Yet in his own mind, he could already see the energy of creation settling, cooling, forming bubbles which would coalesce into new galaxies.

... And Boddy created space and time...and space and time created energy...and energy created matter... And Boddy said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. Fusion started in the most massive coagulations of hydrogen. The stars turned on. How much time did this take? Boddy did not know, for he was extradimensional and no longer passed through time. His universe spread before him like a painting which he could see in all its beauty.

“What will I do now?” part of him asked, the part that still persisted in thinking like a three-dimensional human. Another part of him chided himself for the contradiction in the sentence; for the tense did not apply to him.

“That which is, is,” the Stranger said. “That which isn’t could never be.”

Then the Stranger was gone, no longer a part of Boddy, for Boddy no longer needed him. The universe of which the Stranger was a part went on somewhere else, while Boddy absorbed all that the Stranger had told him, all his knowledge. Who he was or where he had come from was not only irrelevant, but not applicable.

Timeless, spaceless, Boddy looked upon his universe with pride and fulfillment, for it was full of life. The rise and fall of civilizations sat before him, there for him to experience in linear time if he so chose, or simply to watch their symmetry with an aesthetic appreciation that no human could have comprehended.

Humans might wonder if he would become bored; but boredom came from the uneventful passage of time. Boddy knew not time, so how could he be bored? He did not have an eternity, he was eternity.

What human would not have wanted to experience this infinite joy and satisfaction which spanned time? This was the most blessed feeling of achievement, this was the ultimate thrill, this was total peace and contentment, this was an orgasm that never ended, this was a cold vanilla milkshake with a touch of maple syrup, this was a moment in time that had no beginning or end, this was an elation that if a human could experience at the moment of his death would make his life and his death worthwhile, and which since the moment of death could not be reached by consciousness, would seem to span eternity.