Standin’ here, admirin’ this bit of snow, that bit of grass. How it came to be here without any help, its aesthetic properties all shinin’ just as beautiful as anything that lot useda spend their whole lives constructing. That lot. Ain’t much left of ‘em now.

The last ones- the stragglers- they were all afraid of this, calling it “the end”. The end. All their concrete and an’ glowing lights an’ clocks an’ fences, they disappear, and it’s the end. But I look around here, an’ it’s not the end- it’s an infinite number of beginnings. Guess it was hard to see that from inside their fences, their glass caves an’ whathaveyou. Never did see many look up before all this happened. Hell, even when they realized all their so-called “oneness” with each other was for naught, that in “the end” it was of no more use to ‘em than a shitbrick, well… Guess they wouldn’t understand how to cope with somethin’ they done labeled as “nothing”.

Most of ‘em didn’t have the stomach for it, I suppose. They just kinda festered in their anthills, dying all slowlike, as if eatin’ by a cancer. Saw it comin’ from out here- little devices in their ears all the time, eyeballs attached to glowing shitboxes, and all their obsessions with each others. That was the most peculiar thing from out here: Their constant want of each other, an’ how they’d fit one another into molds all specific-like, afraid if they didn’t it’d be all unbearable. It was almost like they were settin’ themselves up for ruin, you know, all interconnected and comingled. I suppose, it could be said, their individuality died ‘fore they did.

But a few, they stumbled out. All grey skies and dead browns from their perspective, no doubt. And of course they strapped everything they could to their backs- that level of hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. No sir. Had a good chuckle over it.

One of ‘em stopped here. Standin’ there, on its road, looked at me with the most ghastly ordeal of pity on its face. It kept sayin’ how much it wanted to take me with it, how it wished it wouldn’t have come to this. Wanted me to go along, play whatever role it thought I should have, be comfortably normal in its eyes. What a horrid notion.

It finally left- on its little road with its little belongings, more than a little embittered, no doubt. I feigned no sign of interest, an’ that seemed to unnerve it. ‘How could anything, standing out here all alone not want to be part of my lil’ world?’ I imagined it thinkin’ all over its precious concrete.

If I had to venture a guess, I’d say sometime after they done amalgamated into one another, they decided that there was nothin’ left to want outside their own selves. That constant interaction, their facades to sustain that interaction, the rubble after those facades collapse, and the never ending cycle thereafter. All that bein’ wrapped up in each other, gets to the point where yer just terrified of the vast.

See, they can’t take standin’ in the infinite. Infinite. It’s pretty literal out here- the colors and features spread out ’round you, shoot up in the distance, maybe roll down a few places; a stand of trees here, a prairie there, a glacier here. It’s everything. But that lot, lost in their growing and glowing specks, never could see that. Was the end of ‘em.

I stand out here, lookin’ at their failing structures and dying lights, and I wonder how anything could be so terrified of this beautiful, quiet nothin’.

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