Anything For You

“Will you stay with me?”

“I’ll be right here.”

“Will you?”

“Yes.”

A silvery shadow fell from the sky. A chain, as wide as the moon and the length from it to the Earth, lumbered down into the western horizon. A billion rockets, burning til they exploded, slowed its descent. Vincent, a tall and slender man, would have faced quite the wind if not. The rockets worked fine, though. In a moment, the chain will slip into its bolt with the force of a feather. Seeing the rockets, unaccountable sparkles surrounding a metal megalith, he sighed at his lack of amusement. 

Eons have passed for him. Enough time that nine of them were memorable. As a kid, he was taught that the world was old and bookmarked by things like fish, land animals, dinosaurs, mammoths and, finally, humans. Whopping chapters of proliferation with some catastrophe happening to lead to the next. The world was some big book, instead of the stack of leaflets it was.

There was not one world filled with water and fish, but a million, each with its own batch of sea monsters. Vincent ate the first land species on each first appearing land mass so often that he started to tick off the world’s cycles that way. This became pointless, since it was no use of him to keep track of a number that high. The dinosaurs always came to roam the earth and keel over. How did the dinosaurs die? Gee, how “didn’t” they die?!? The furry mammals got big, then smart. As smart as they could get before they died or moved somewhere else.

In the last billion years, he stopped caring at all. He skipped the first land critter and slept through all of the dinosaurs. He only awoke because the mammoths stepped on where he was sleeping. When the mammals got smart again, he walked into their cities, did some party tricks then fell back asleep in the temple they quickly erected.

He was revered as a god by them (yet, which ones hadn’t). They would pray to him, build for him, create governments designed solely on his needs, adore him in every way possible, and occasionally kill each other for his favor. One weird day, they even wept for him! A young man who roamed the world for all of eternity, this had struck some chord with them!. He wiped all their tears because they were annoying and he wanted some shut-eye. Vincent would only wake again a thousand years before his final deed and the construction of his great chain.

This last thousand years for these people was nothing but body breaking work, yet, it was a time of unprecedented advancement. This past century was the first that they themselves would beat old age and disease. Only direct actions could kill them. They kept labored for their lazy god and his strange ambition, though, even with their own great achievements. They were geniuses forced to make their God watch the Sun die.

“Will you stay?”

“I said I would, baby.”

“I know you did. I feel bad though.”

“Don’t feel bad, honey.”

“You shouldn’t see me like this.”

“You look-”

“You shouldn’t see me like this! I know it makes you sad and I hate it. I hate making you sad. I’m making you sad and I can’t do anything about it!”

He takes her bony hand. “Don’t worry about that, baby, I’m fine.” He kisses each knuckle again and again. “What can I do for you?”

A deafening clank sounds as the chain locks into place. Fireworks, miles wide, blip like mere bottle rockets from where he stands. The sounds obliterate Vincent’s eardrums. Blood pours from his pinnas, while his eyes vibrate in their sockets. The world rumbles and splinters. The dry sea beds crumble into canyons that span the world.

The geniuses shatter like glass. Their bones broke to splinters as they vibrated in their skins. Their muscles stretched and compressed till they tore or exploded into red puddles. A billion or more died in an instance, as well as the future of the Earth.

This will be the end. Vincent thinks.

Whether from the complete destruction of the world or the Sun, this was it.

This was it for him.

His eardrums grew back in seconds after the vibrations. All of him always does. Whether by a bullet, rope, cancer, war or comet he came back intact and healthy. He simply would fall down dead then jump back up onto his feet. If he were torn atom by atom and the atoms split, he would appear somewhere else completely fine. This trick did a number on many of the mammals that grew smart, not for Vincent. He stopped flinching at death after the hundredth atomic bomb dropped on him.

Vincent looked around him. An endless desert on all sides. The water was burned away by the Sun some 800 years ago. On top of his stone pyramid, he could see the ruins of the last age, Rubble dotted the horizon line. Around his own monument, a crimson carpet of soaked sand spread far and wide. The sky, once a yellowish tint, fades to a sheath of black as great vents suck the ozone to the center of the Earth.

Alone with its dark contrast, the Sun approached noon, growing larger by the minute.

“Nothing, Vincent.”

“It can be anything, Mallory.”

She turned away, pulling her hand to her chest. She clasps it with her other hand like he squeezed too hard. She looks up into a corner of the ceiling.

“It’s not fair, Vincent.”

“What is?”

She stared at the corner as if the reason was there.

“That I have to die and you live.”

She turns back to him, wet streaks glisten from the window sunlight on her cheeks. “It’s selfish, I know, but that still doesn’t make it unfair. I’m gonna die and you get to live on without me.”

“I won’t, baby. I’ll stay shut-in! I’ll eat the same thing everyday. I’ll listen to the same music. I’ll even wear the same clothes! I’ll live like time stopped.”

Mallory closed her eyes and smiled. “I mean, you already do that.”

They laugh so nice and typical that they burst into blubbering tears. It only stopped when Mallory did. So sudden, Vincent froze thinking he missed the end.

She’s alive, though. Not blinking, but alive. Vincent thinks she’s watching him, trying to study him. He moves to the side a little and her eyes don’t follow. He realizes she’s not looking at him, but at something over his shoulder. Turning around, there’s nothing but a window, empty-sky, and a low, winter sun.

The great chain was tethered to the Earth on one end and a grand rocket on the other. It spanned half the western edge of the world and pointed up at the Sun. Loaded with the cores of a hundred moons and one dwarf planet, it was well fueled for its one mission.

The Sun met its peak, then began to descend. Vincent pressed a button, a gadget the size of a quarter, and the great chain groaned and rumbled. A breeze built from the east, growing and growing to torrent gale that blasted the world’s sands to the other side of its face. The red crimson carpet vanished, leaving a bedrock valley a mile below the pyramid.

The Earth stood still.

The Sun, no longer hindered by a turning world, burned like a thousand flames on bare skin. The pain spread across Vincent’s body. Searing screams of nerve endings enveloped every millimeter of his body as skin crisped, charred, and set aflame in an agonizing instance. Yet, it would heal at the same time. Instead of burning to a pile of ash, Vincent stood on his pyramid like an immortal candle.

He watched the Sun in its black vale. Now, there was no way he would miss it. The Sun grew to the size of a beach ball. It’s whipping ropes of radiation coiled and snapped across the sky. The stone beneath him steamed. The very Earth would burst into flames soon.

Vincent wondered what it would be like. Would the Sun engulf him? Would the heat become so strong that there was no chance at his survival? Would the Sun fizzle into itself, becoming a black hole hungry for immortal prey?

Vincent lost himself in thoughts of his demise. Unbeknownst to him, a solid machine wrapped in hose and levers heaved itself up above the last step of the pyramid. It was the last of the last genius race, the smartest of them. They heard the rumors of the coming doom and their god’s unwillingness to stop it, their want of it! Unlike its brethren, it had spent every moment of its ageless life to outlast the Great End. It made a machine suit capable of surviving the biggest catastrophes ever dreamt of. It was the best that could be made. While its species was reduced to blood stains, it went on without missing a step. When the water turned to dust, its own water was recycled with no addition or subtraction. As its species built the god’s rockets and chain, it made its own final plan.

Now, at the same height as its deity, it shouted: “You, I shall kill you!”

The smartest of geniuses lunged at Vincent. Only, it didn’t go more than a few inches. Waist deep in a liquid kind of solid, it knew that it was stuck. It tried to move this way and that, but with no luck. It survived the end and climbed the god’s altar, just to be stuck right at the last few steps.

“Quicksand.” A mote surrounded Vincent, differing not a single shade from the rest of the pyramid. “I remember how scary quicksand was as a kid. For some reason I thought it would be a bigger problem in my life than it ended up being. For a species that never saw more than a raindrop, you’d never think of it.”

Vincent didn’t even glance over his shoulder to see who he entrapped. “Took me a while to make wet sand that wouldn’t dry or burn.”

He couldn’t turn away from the Sun. It filled the whole sky, now.

“I did it though.”

The smartest of geniuses blubbered, not listening one bit. “No fair, no fair! I was supposed to kill you and- and- everything would be better! It would be okay!”

The smartest of geniuses slumped in his misery. It looked down into its gloved hands and, finding nothing it could do with them, fell into quiet despair.

A twinge of sympathy struck his heart. Though he didn’t move his gaze, Vincent felt compelled to ask, “What are you-

-thinking about?” He asked Mallory. Her eyes watched the Sun like it was speaking at her. Like she was attentively listening to every word it said and nothing was more important.

“I think I hate it.” She muttered.

“What, Mallory?”

She sat up, color filled her cheeks like they haven’t done in months. Her shoulders set back, her chin tilted up, she raised her finger and said quite stern:

“I could yell. And I could get mad. But I want to say this with whatever dignity I have left.” She pointed to the Sun. “I hate the Sun because it gets to out live me and you. It lives longer than everyone we’ll ever know and everyone before us. And that’s just bullshit.”

Mallory’s whole body trembles from the effort. Vincent is stunned, unable to understand how she could manage this. Mallory then looks at Vincent.

“Vincent, you asked what you could do for me. I want you to stick it to that thing. I want the Sun to know what it's like to see something live when it dies. Vincent, baby, watch that bastard die for living without us!”

“And I promised my beloved to watch you die. To watch you, an evil, vile, uncaring, unloving monstrous god draw his last breath!” The smartest of geniuses gasped when it finished that last word. It glared at the burning man, waiting for a response, an argument, a rebuke of any kind.

Vincent did not oblige. He stared at the Sun. The smartest of geniuses waited a moment more, then resigned to join the viewing.

“It’s weird how things don’t die so easily, my friend.” The smartest of geniuses tried to think of a response, Vincent took the opportunity instead. “But the Sun…the Sun may only die once. And I’ve seen it watch things die. More things than you could imagine. More things than I can even say…but things always did seem to come back.”

Vincent turned back one last time, “I just hope I and the Sun are finally done, because I am sure tired of caring about it.”

When Vincent faced back to the burning giant, it began.

A boom, not a sound, but a sense of one spread across the world, a gong saying as it were. The Sun, which filled the sky and beyond the horizon, burned the world and its life, and caught the attention of the whole cosmos, flickered once, twice, three times then stopped glowing.

A gray shadow of a sphere hung up above. It made no light or heat. It was as if the Sun was a light that went out, and Vincent and the smartest of geniuses were looking at its burnt out bulb.

Vincent sighed. It was over, it was-

From the southern horizon, no, not the horizon, but the very blackness of space, from between each star and galaxy, long wafting clouds of black steam reached out towards the dead bulb. The stars and galaxies blinked in and out of existence as the black passed over them. Reappearing when the swirling murk warped away. They spiraled around the Sun’s old shell, spinning and spinning, a pinwheel of ether, till they melted into themselves, morphing into two enormous tentacles of void. 

They moved in tandem around the dead star. A tentacle reached, wrapping its enormity around its empty glass till it fully enveloped it. Away it went with the Sun, while the other tentacle squirmed and rolled out on its arm another star bulb. This one was smaller than the last. The tentacle placed the star bulb where the old Sun resided. Before the tentacle receded, it placed its tip on the center of the sphere and twisted it clockwise. And, like a light bulb, it turned on.

Where the deadly old Sun was, there was now a new, warm and loving Sun. A star from a time before Vincent, and it shone gladly for its existence.

The last great tentacle, before fleeing into the cosmos, slashed the tethering chain. The Earth was freed and spun like it always had. The darkness then mushed back into the spaces between space. The sky took on a bluish hue and a cool breeze caused a dense fog across the heated world.

Vincent looked up at the new Sun and smiled, “Doesn’t seem like I should care anymore, turns out we're all in the same boat.”

Vincent collapsed.

The smartest of geniuses couldn’t think of any words to say. From its dead god’s body a fountain sprung and filled the valleys of the world. Fish schooled across vast oceans till the lands rose above the tide once again. This time, the dinosaurs died of an ice age.