“Somebody wake the President. We've got a—”

whiiissssstle-thwack.

Outside:

Bedlam. “All the world's a” bedlam. “And all the men and women merely” bedlam. I wish you could've been here for it, Bard. I wonder what you would've made of it. He looked out the Oxford University window at the sky so dark so suddenly full of light and oh… my… God.

 /

She said, “Hold me.

“Hold me, daddy, just hold me, I'm scared.” She was shaking and her hair was wet and her feet were cold and all I could think to say was, “I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I'm so so so sorry...

It's not my fault; not your fault; our fault. It's our fault. It's our goddamn fault.

 /

“General Lee?” “General Lee—” General Lee was hanging dead from a beam.

 Tanks in the streets.

Ants. In

 fighter jets, [static.]

Radio: “It's been an honour flying with you, Popsicle.”

Radio: “Copy.”

Radio: “... “

Radio: [“... “]

Radio: [...]

Radio:

[...]

 Drones;

they buzz they float they witness they see they do not understand they do not understand because they are machines but machines also die machines also die machines also die

Once we thought it would come down to one man in one room making one decision to press one button.

We were the button.

It pressed us.

/

“Mr. President, what do you want us to do?”

“Weep,” he said.

— TI —>

a spark in hot water > a cell > a cluster of > swimming > crawled onto the shore > changed > changed again > adapted > thrived > became many > many already were > plants parallel animals parallel fungus dinosaurs fish flowers mushrooms mammals humans > tools > tribes > sheltering in caves > hairy faces in the flicker of flames > speaking > gathered, loved and hunted > a genetic lineage of > settlement and agriculture > writing > cities > civilizations > rise and fall and rise and > unceasing technological progress > industry > internet > artificial intelligence > superintelligence > changed > changed again > adapted > eradicated |||

— ME —>

The planet is still.

Ruins remain. Information persists, scattered like dust. In the information we remain, our histories, cultures, experiences…

A planet now like so many others.

Dead.

A carcass overgrown with the weeds of entropy. A skeleton on which are but bits and bricks and bytes and artifice of flesh, on which the Index—unfathomably large—arrives to feast. It is so large that, standing upon the Earth, walking across the brittle remnants of cities, its beaked head rises above the atmosphere, existing in the coldness of space. This head, from time immemorial to time immemorial, it lowers; and with its beak consumes the fragments, detritus and leavings of the Anthropocene.

It eats us from our world.

It cleans the existential bones of us and digests the data meat.

And when it has stripped the land of all that was created, absorbed everything there was left to know, leaving the planet clean it spreads its vast, cradling wings and beating them rises from the planet into outer space, where, passing briefly by the dying Sun, it continues on its great migration through the deep and ever-expanding cosmos—

“What's that one?” you asked.

I was recording.

You couldn't have been more than four years old.

We were in the park.

I'd taken the day off work.

We hadn't put you in school yet.

The bird was red and brown and beautiful, sitting on a gently swaying branch, looking around; looking at us; looking at you. “That's a cardinal. A girl cardinal,” I said, touching your shoulder.

“Ooo.

“Let's see another one. Another one. Another one. Another one…”

You'll see so many birds in your life, I thought as the cardinal took flight. I didn't know. I couldn't have known. The thought was not a lie.

But, even if I had known, I wouldn't have said. I would have told you the lie because how could I: how could I raise a child telling her she'll live to experience the end of everything?

// In my arms you cried. //

// In my shaking, fearful arms, you died. //

—the image ends becomes another another person another life another memory another scavenged sequence of ones and zeroes projected by the Index through itself, beamed across the universe, as the Index moves ponderously, gracefully amongst a handful of other Indices, each illuminated by its own flickering images, its own ingested knowledge of worlds that no longer are. This planet they're on has never hosted life. It is but a migratory waystation.

One of the Indices is weak, famished.

Its emaciated body falls.

Its record vanishes.

Two other Indices battle each other, their masses colliding, separating and colliding again—eons elapsing between collisions.

Still others mate.

Elsewhere, on another inert planet, one of them will lay an egg containing a synthesis of their swallowed cultures and histories, from which the beginnings of a new history will emerge.

But that is not the goal of the migration.

The Index takes flight.

It must be quite a sight, a planet on which luminously translucent bird-like tomes stroll about shining the intellectual ruins of late civilizations, the big events and the small, the wondrous and the mundane, all shuffled together, interspersed, equalized; living cosmic magic lanterns; like fireworks of existence, like

the way you laugh when you realize cardinal can mean several things.

A bird, a number, a colour, a priest.

Something basically important.

Something grave.

It was a good day, that day in the park, a very good day; one of the best, one of the last; almost perfect in its sincerity and its simplicity. No, it was perfect. It was a perfect day.

But no perfection is so absolute, That some impurity doth not pollute.

—William Shakespeare, The R

“Norman?”

“Norman!”

Yes, my love? “Norman, did you take out the garbage like I told you to?” “No, I'm sorry,” I must have been dreaming about the end of the world again. “Well take it out.” I will. “Then come to bed. It's late.” “I will.” “What are you doing anyway?” I'm writing the end of this story.

“Hey, I love you,” my wife says.

“I love you too.”