And So It Ends

"You know your green from your red.

You know your quick from the dead.

So much better than the rest

You think you've been blessed,

But I know you." -Peter Gabriel 'Steam'.

Reggie fell nearly ten feet after leaping through the dimensional fork. Not a terribly large distance on Earth, but the gravity on the red planet was somewhat greater, and he landed awkwardly, twisting his ankle and falling to the ground. The wind was knocked out of him, and when he looked up, he saw a the black clothed legs of a figure standing directly in front of him.

"The Tall Man" He thought. He tried to raise his 4-barreled shotgun, but a boot stepped on his hand, pinning it to the red sand. The gravity prevented him from raising his head more than a few inches, he couldn't see the Tall Man's face. But it had to be him. Who else could it be.

"I've been waiting for you," Said the black suited shape in front of him, "For a very long time."

Long fingers reached down and pressed into his skull. For a few useless seconds, Reggie tried to free his right hand and the shotgun it still held. Then everything went black.

One hemispherical half of a sentinel lay partially buried in sand. The motor that operated it's drill had been removed by expert hands, hands that had certainly had a long enough time to practice this skill, among many others. The owner of those hands had unwound several dozen feet of fine wire from the motor and was now rewinding it around a nearly cylindrical section of bone it had obtained from the decomposing remains of one of the numerous dwarfs that lurked in the area. After carefully covering a six inch section of the compressed femur in wire, the hands selected a sharp rock from the ground and carefully scraped along the wire, removing the varnish from a line of copper approximately 1/4 of an inch wide. Eventually, the owner of the hands was satisfied with the tuning coil thus created and picked up and odd framework made of two halves of a sentinel held apart with several drills that had been thrust through the edges of the silver hemispheres. The hands twisted the framework apart, thrust one of the drills through the center of the tuning coil, and put the frame back together. Now the patient crafter walked slowly along, gazing at the ground, and occasionally picking up chunks of rock. One mineral specimen after another was rejected, until the search finally yeilded it's object, a grayish chunk of galena crystal.

It did not take long for the galena to be placed near the tuning coil. A single wisp of wire hung down on it from above. A thicker wire had been wrapped tightly around the base, leading away from it. Also present in the device were the powercore from a sentinel that had been disassembled while still functional- what a job that had been-, several peices of thin foil that lined the interior of a sentinel's globe and that had been carefully spaced with only the tiniest of seperations between them, and an odd contraption made out of yet another half a sentinel that had been covered with a single large peice of the silvery foil, carefully glued around the edges. The manufacturing of the glue had been a messy and gruesome job in itself. Not that the creator of the makeshift radio, which is what the device was, minded...at least not all that much.

A final wire was twisted around one prong of a dimensional fork to act as an antenna to the world of Earth, and the radio was finally ready. With a flick of a switch on the powercore of the dismantled sentinel, the distinct sounds of Duran Duran filled the space between the otherwise empty red dunes. The radio's maker grinned from underneath a mop of fluffy brown hair and peeled off a black tailored jacket that was getting too hot after all the work. Besides, it didn't fit her all that well anyways.

Almost as if the doffing of one of the Tall Man's discarded garments had been a signal, a large gold sphere floated out from behind a rock and swooped towards the solitary inventress. She heard the hum of it's approach and turned to greet it.

The sphere could not speak, didn't need to speak, for that matter, but circled around her head like a planet around a sun while it communicated telepathically with her.

"Well, of course he's awake" The woman said peevishly. "The Jebadiah creatures don't sleep forever. And he'll find me when he's ready to. That's why I left him a note on one of the blackboards."

The sphere circled faster, offering a number of suggestions, none of which the young woman approved of. She scolded the sphere. "First of all, his name is not 'second Jebadiah creature'. It is 'Reggie'. I saw that when I took his mind earlier. And you are NOT to do what you suggest to to him. In fact, never do that again. Now get out of here. I have things to do."

She dismissed the sphere with a wave, took a peice of chalk in her hand and turned to a second dimensional fork. After a moment of concentration, a chalkboard appeared between the two silver pillars, joining a line of such chalkboards which stretched beyond the crimson horizon of the Red Planet. All of them except the most recent were filled with cryptic mathematical symbols. As the radio's maker turned back to her equations, she smiled for the first time in a long while.

Reggie woke up with a very bad headache. His mouth hadn't tasted this bad since an undead cop had bled yellow fluid into it. In fact, it hadn't even tasted this bad even then. He sat up and looked around. The dimensional fork he had come through was gone. There was a strange sound in the air, not the humming of a dimensional fork or approaching sphere, but something more irregular. It seemed oddly familiar, but it was too dimmed with distance to quite figure it out.

Suddenly he remembered a the black clad figure that had reached toward his head right before he had passed out.

"OH SHIT!!" He jumped up, and pressed his head with his fingers. It hurt like hell, but there didn't seem to be any recent wounds or scars in it that would indicated that a sphere had been removed, or inserted while he was unconcious. But how could he be sure? The Tall Man obviously had technology far in advance of what was currently in use on Earth. Reggie thought for a moment, and took a small folding knife out of his pocket. He opened the smallest blade, drew it across the tip of one finger, and gazed anxiously at the blood welling out.

Thankfully, it was red.

He hoped. The fact was he had no idea if he could save Mike, even if he could get the sphere away from the Tall Man. But he had to try. After all, he was Mike's only friend and only hope. The pain in Reggie's head was finally subsiding, and he took in his surroundings. In front of him was nothing but brick red sand and blood red sky. There were no footprints or other clues to indicate which way the Tall Man had gone. Disappointed Reggie turned around, and was confronted by one of the last sights he had ever expected to see in a place like this.

Stretching from right to left, as far as his eyes could see were a row of chalkboards suspended between the twin silver columns of innumerable dimensional forks. Every one of them was covered with a combination of numbers and cryptic symbols that were meaningless to him. That is, every one except the one currently directly in front of him. The writing on that one was very simple indeed:

Reggie gazed at the sign for five long minutes. Finally he shrugged and began to walk.

As he walked alongside the row of blackboards and the silver columns that supported them, Reggie had to fight a perverse urge to deface them somehow, by erasing them or possibly altering them. It was tempting, but it would probably annoy whoever the author was. And there was a large possibility looming in his mind that the creator of this mathematical nightmare was the Tall Man. And that dude was bad enough news without getting him pissed off.

Coming over the top of what seemed like the thousanth red dune he had climbed, Reggie finally saw the source both of the music, and the line of chalkboards he had been following. A black suited figure stood in front of one of the boards, writing furiously. For a second, Reggie thought it was the Tall Man, but he didn't seem like the type to carelessly throw his jacket into a heap on the ground. Or to suddenly stop writing and start a strange skipping sort of a dance around what had to be the weirdest looking radio he had ever seen.

Looking more closely at the scene before him, Reggie saw the four barrels of his shotgun poking out from under the discarded jacket. A plan began to form in his mind. First he would deal with whoever this weirdo was and get his shotgun. Then he would find the Tall Man and save Mike. In fact, maybe a few rounds of buckshot would persuade this - whoever it was- to give him some information. Like maybe where he could find the Tall Man in the middle of this huge place. He was about to look for a large rock to use for a weapon, when his sore ankle twisted under him and a small avalanche of sand fell down the side of the dune.

Below him, the figure looked up, and Reggie could see that it was definitely not the Tall Man. In fact, it wasn't a man at all, but a young woman. She set down the chalk in her hand and waved at him.

"Come down here!" She ordered, as if there were no question of his not obeying. For a minute he considered running away, but where would he run to? Besides, his shotgun was still down there and he felt naked without it.

At the bottom of the dunes, the racket of the jury rigged radio was truly incredibly loud. Well, maybe it was keeping the dwarves away. He certainly hadn't seen any around since... well since he got here actually. Lacking anything better to say, he wave a hand at the row of chalkboards that stretch along the path he had taken. "Mind telling me what's up with all the math, missy."

The woman gave him a glance that made him shiver. There was a pale look about her that reminded him of Mike when he had seen him last. "I'm checking my results."

"What plan? To make more dwarves and flying ornaments?" Another few steps closer to the gun. Suddenly there was a loud cracking noise. For a minute Reggie thought that she had shot him, but it turned out to be the radio overloading, and igniting into flames. The woman seized the Jacket off the ground, revealing the complete shape of Reggie's shotgun, and used it to beat out the flames. For a second, the music got even loud, and then there was a horrible squeal, and complete silence.

While she was distracted with the electrical fire, Reggie decided to act, before it was too late. It seemed that everytime he met a cute chick, she ended up using a flying cuisinart and trying to suck the wrong head. He lunged for his shotgun, broke it open and stuffed two shells inside. Before he was able to swing the barrel towards the woman, however, she squinted at him, and the gun wrenched itself out of his hands, and flew though the air towards her. She opened one hand, caught it easily, and tossed it atop the remains of his radio.

The woman looked at his bandaged hand, which had now begun bleeding again. "I have injurted you. I am sorry. But I cannot permit you to destroy this construct. It is too important for the operation of my plan that it continue to live."

The woman smiled. "You may call me Lucy Ashton. It is what Jebadiah named me. And as for Or'b, it is a creature that lives in this world. But it is very different from life as you know it. In fact, you should not properly consider it to be alive at all.

She waved her arms at the brick red dunes and blood red sky. "This whole world exists on the other side of that barrier which you call death. Does this astonish you? Well, I imagine it would astonish one of your Earthly fish to know that there was life above the water as well as below it. It certainly astonished Jebediah when he learned of it. In fact, it is part of what caused him to become what he now is."

Lucy confirmed his suspicion. "'I don't want to die.' A simple enough thought, but quite astounding for Or'b, who could not die because it was already on this side of death. It found that You humans are fragile, ephemeral creatures. You are bound to death, and to where you go afterwords, from the very moment you are conceived. Once Or'b had learned this, it granted what it thought Jebadiah wanted, which was not to die, ever; and it unbound him from his death. It made him.... permanent.

"No. That did not happen until later." Lucy wiped a yellow tear from her eye before Reggie could see it. "When Jebediah had recovered, he set out to explore this world. He did not understand why he was here, when apparently he had had a different destination in mind, although the explanation was really very simple.

"This world exists in a cosmic anomaly. It is beyond the wall of death, but it is much like your Death Valley back on Earth, which is above water, but below sea level. It is only because of this paradox that matter is able to exist here at all. It is also because of this that he came here, rather than to your Heaven, which is where he wished to go. What you call heaven is as far beyond this world as the stars are beyond the bottom of Death Valley. Jebediah's doorway took him beyond death, but it took him to the closest destination that met those parameters."

She pulled the charred jacket onto the ground and sat on it. "Although Jebediah Morningside could not perceive Or'b with his crude senses, Or'b observed him as he explored this world. After a few weeks, Or'b saw that a new desire was occuring in Jebediah's mind, which was the desire for companions to share this new world with him. In order to please him, and also because Or'b wished to be able to communicate with him more directly, Or'b created 13 spheres of metal upon which it imprinted portions of it's own personality.

"However, when these spheres attempted to speak with Jebediah, rather than being grateful, he was terrified! Apparently the idea had never occured to him that creatures from another world would look very different from those on Earth.

"Since Or'b's spheres could not talk with someone who fled every time they approached, they decide to make themselves look like what Jebediah considered proper companions to be. While he was asleep one night, they took a tissue sample from him, and by studying it, were able to grow 13 bodies in which the spheres could be implanted in place of their natural brains, which they would not need."

"I was." She sighed. "Once we appeared to have a form like his own, Jebediah was willing to talk with us, although most of his conversation consisted of questions we couldn't answer because they were based on a number of mistaken premises. However, we answered him as best we were able, and studied his thoughts constantly in order to learn about him. One peculiar thing we noticed is that for apprximately 33% of the time, he would lay on the ground and not move or speak, which is what he called sleeping. He thought it odd that we did not need to do so, but did not consider the matter worth discussing.

"We noticed that when he was asleep, his thoughts were very different from when he was awake. In particular, he often had thoughts regarding the start of your reproductive cycle. What you would call sex. It was not something we had ever done before, so one night, I decided to try it with him."

"You... had sex with him." This was just great, Reggie decided. Even the Tall Man was getting more action than he had been lately. "Was it good for you?"

The irony was lost on Lucy. "It was! It was the first time I ever felt what love was. Or at least it was good until he woke up, and saw me with him. He then became very angry, and called me several rude names, and said I should not have done what I did. I asked him why not, because I thought it had been what he had wanted, and I wanted to make him happy."

"He calmed down then, and said that I had made him happy, but that I shouldn't have because I was so much younger than him. So I told him that that was not a problem, because I was millions of years old."

"Well, for about a half hour he didn't do anything. Then he came and asked me the same thing you did earlier: 'What in God's name are you.' I told him my nature, as I told you, and he became very upset. He said he wanted to see what we were. So I showed him."

"As much as I could. I took the head off one of the constructs and showed him the sphere inside. Then I showed him what this world was, and what Or'b was. He could not see it with his eyes, but I showed him in his mind. It was something I should not have done. His mind could not handle the experience. I had no way of knowing that. I did not know what madness was.

"When he went to sleep that night, his dreams were full of confusing images from his former career as an undertaker, and from things I had shown him about the nature of myself and Or'b. When we saw his thoughts, we thought they were something that he wanted. We thought that he had forgiven us for making him angry and wished to cross over to our side of the death barrier so that he could be as much like us as we could. So we took the images from his mind and created them on his flesh."

"At the time, we did not realize what we had done. When he woke, he found what we had done to him. He was embalmed. rotting, and being devoured by scavengers from the inside while he was still alive. For several hours he did nothing but scream. When he finally spoke, he demanded that we return him to his former state. However, we were unable to do so. It is an unfortunate effect of the our nature that once we have done something, we are not able to undo it. He then demanded that we kill him, but because we had unbound him from his death, we were not able to do that, either."

"Perhaps I was unclear. He cannot die his own death, but he can die someone else's. For nearly 150 years he has been trying to find someone who will agree to become as he is, and let him finally have an end. So far, once the nature of the choice has been made known to them, no-one has been willing to do so."

"He can only be given another's death with Or'b's help. And after the mistake Or'b made with Jebediah, it will only take the death from someone with their informed consent. Although the reason behind that consent does not matter. So for 150 years the Tall Man has been trying different ways to get people to agree. He has tried fear, pity and anything else he can think of. It has always failed."

"Oh, yeah. Your big plan. What's that all about?" Reggie looked back at the row a chalkboards he had nearly forgotten about during the course of their conversation. "And if it's such a great plan, why haven't you done it already?"?

Lucy laughed. "Not you specifically, Reggie, but someone like you. Someone who hasn't been altered by the Tall Man, and yet has the gift of travel. Also, I was having trouble balancing some of my equations, but thanks to what I saw when I borrowed your mind earlier, I now have a solution."

"Yes. You're talking about an extremely negentropic reaction here, Reggie. The amount of energy being released compared to the amount of energy needed is like killing a termite with an atomic bomb. And I couldn't figure out what to do with the extra energy. Yet I had to do something with it, or the process would simply reverse itself, and wouldn't work."

"Absolutely. The answer is right in front of you." She waved at the last blackboard in the long row. "My whole problem is that I was trying to solve a problem with pure logic that required imagination... and creativity."

"The other twelve constructs are no more." Seeing from his thoughts and his face that he was puzzled, she continued. "After we had made an abonination of what was once Jebediah Morningside, and he found out that we were unable to release him from his pain, the last thing he said to us was that he wished us all to go back where we came from. The other twelve abandoned both the constructs of flesh and the spheres of metal they lived in and rejoined Or'b."

"I chose to remain. Despite the fact that it was against the will both of Jebediah, and of Or'b. I could not abandon this construct. I would not. I had been contaminated by Jebediah."

Lucy looked up again. Reggie still couldn't see anything in the sky except putrid red clouds. "Perhaps contaminated is not the right word. I beleive the term you would use is that I am pregnant."

"Time for you to go to the Tall Man." She pointed over one of the dunes. "He is approximately five of your miles in that direction. He is taking your freind Mike to Or'b. You must go to them."

"Don't worry. I will meet you there. I need to prepare this vessel for what is to come." She gestured and his shotgun flew back off the table into his arms. Before he could decide what to do with it, a dimensional fork appeared in front of her, and she vanished through it.

About an hour later, Reggie was staring at a long line of dwarves. The Tall Man was leading them. In his hand he held Mike's gold sphere. He was approaching a huge gold sphere, at least 20 feet in diameter that lay floating about a yard above the red sands. A humming sound, similiar to that made by the dimensional gateways, but much louder emerged from it. This was Or'b, Reggie figured. Or at least some aspect of it that he was able to see. Before the Tall Man could get all the way to the sphere, however, a dimensional gate appeared in front of it, and Lucy came through. To his shock, she fell to her knees in front of the Tall Man.

"No." Lucy got up. In height, Reggie saw, she was maybe six inches shorter than the Tall Man, but a small incline they were on made their heights almost equal. "I am sorry for what happened to you Jebediah, but I can no longer bear to watch you create these mockeries of both our forms."

"I don't care what you can no longer bear. I have lived with the unbearable for decades, and I will be rid of it." He lifted the golden sphere he held. "Perhaps this boy will take this cup from my lips."

"He may. In exchange for his brother's freedom, he may." As Reggie watched, a few of the dwarves shuffled up with an awkward burden and threw in to the ground in front of the Tall Man. To his shock, he saw that it was Mike's body. The Tall Man placed the golden sphere with odd tenderness on the forehead of the still form. In a moment, it faded and vanished, and Mike opened his eyes.

He raced down the side of the dune to where Mike was. He had to save him. It was a foolish choice. The motion attracted the attention of several of the dwarves. Although he blew a few of them into yellow mist with his shotgun, they quickly overpowered him with sheer numbers, and dragged him in front of the Tall Man.

He seized Mike by the hair and dragged him to his feet. "Get up, boy. We have things to discuss. Such as the life of your friend."

Michael looked around in confusion. He was obviously on the red planet, but how had he gotten here? And how had Reggie gotten here, for that matter? Before he could ask the questions whirling in his mind, Lucy, who had been nearly forgotten by the three men spoke again.

"Let me put it this way. I can't do what I am going to by myself. I need someone to help me. Or'b is going to be busy coordinating what I do, the boy can barely take care of himself in the condition he's in, and you I don't trust. Whether you like it or not, that leaves the Regman to take care of certain details for me."

She walked up to where Reggie sat with Mike, guarded by several of the putrid smelling dwarves. "What happens from here on depends entirely on you, Reggie. I hope you're up to it."

"Two things." She concentrated and a dimensional gate appeared about six feet in front of them. A strange numbing cold radiated from it and made Reggie start shivering again. "In a few minutes I must pass through this portal. When I do there are two things you must be sure to do. First, you must close the gate behind me. I know you can do this. You've done it before."

Lucy scowled at him. "Reggie, if you don't close the gate after I pass through it, not only am what I attempting not work, everyone on this planet with the exception of myself, Or'b, and your tall friend will die."

"Hindenberg? Ah... you mean your exploding zeppelin disaster. No, I have nothing like that up there. Although you are definitely going to get a bang out of this."

She faced the frigid gate. Ice had formed on the sand nearby. "Time to rock and roll." She grinned, and then opened her mouth almost impossibly wide. Her entire body shook with effort, and yellow blood began to pour over her lips. A golden sphere forced its way down from where it rested and pushed through her distended jaws. As soon as it emerged, Lucy collapsed in a heap on the sand. The sphere rested over the limp form for a moment, as if bidding it farewell, and then vanished between the two silver pillars.

"I'm not sure. Try to rest, Mike. There's a couple of things I need to do." Despite the numbing grief he felt, Reggie stepped over Lucy's limp body, summoned his concentration, and placed his hands on the two forks of the gateway. The cold froze his hands to the metal instantly, and when the gate closed with an audible 'pop', Reggie flew backwards, leaving peices of skin hanging from the inert columns. Mike stumbled to his feet just in time to catch him and keep him from falling backwards.

Meanwhile, the Tall Man had been watching them with no more idea what was happening that Reggie and Mike did. After Reggie closed the gateway, he reached out with his psychic senses, trying to discover where Lucy's sphere had gone to, but as far as he could tell, it was no longer on the red planet. Fury and disappointment darkened his face.

"Just as I thought. A TRICK!!" He shreiked with 150 years worth of anger. "The construct has abandoned you to your fate, boooy! You and your friend will pay for her betrayal!!"

Reggie looked with alarm at the raging Tall Man. He had never seen him this angry before. He swung his shotgun around and blew the head off the nearest approaching dwarf. "Get behind me, Mike. Things have really hit the fan!!"

Nearly 100 million miles from the red planet, countless particles of hydrogen writhed in gravitic fury. So crushed were they by their own overwhelming mass that they resembled a solid far more than the gas they actually were. In another reality, the combinition of gravity and heat in this mass would have long since ignited a fusion reaction. Beyond the wall of death, however, the compressed gass simply smoldered in sullen darkness and heat.

Suddenly a portal though space opened nearby this dead collection of atoms. A golden sphere plunged through and down into the center of the huge globe, like a fish diving into inky midnight waters. In only a few seconds, it drove through the compressed gas as though it weren't even there, reached the center thousands of miles below the periphery.... and exploded.

Driven over the threshold of a phase change by the sudden release of energy into a previously energy devoid system, atoms of hydrogen began to collide, fusing into helium. The process released more energy, photons and heat which persuaded surrounding atoms into the new reaction in a spreading domino effect. In less than a minute, the reaction spread throughout the billions of tons of collected hydrogen, and what had been a dark blot upon the heavens glowed with incredible light and heat radiating outwards at 186,000 miles per second, and became...

Suddenly the humming from the sphere, which had continued without any change throughout the entire battle stopped without warning. The sudden quiet was ominous, like unexpectedly being dropped into the eye of a hurricane. Even the dwarves ceased their attack to see what was going to happen. The Tall Man turned his attention to the suddenly silent golden globe, when the entire world was shaken by a huge earthquake!!

The hideous dwarves suddenly turned from their attack on Reggie and Mike and fled in sudden panic. They did not get far before they fell to the ground as if they had been switched off. At the same time, the menacing sentinels fell out of the air like a flock of dead birds and rolled wildly over the shaking surface.

The earthquake increased in intensity, and a sudden wind, increasing rapidly into hurricane intensity began blowing sand and dead spheres past Mike, Reggie, and the Tall Man, who had watched the events of the past few minutes with increasing panic and rage. What the hell was that thrice damned Or'b up to now?!

The Red clouds, which had always been silent, if very ugly, rumbled and flashed, and began pouring rain upon the arid sand. The powdery red dust drank up the offering of water for the first time in the history of the world. Reggie watched it swirl into thick mud, and miraculously, grass began to sprout, growing inches in mere seconds, as though he were watching it in a time-lapse film. The Tall Man watched it as well. What was going on. It had to be the boy's fault. Everything was always the fault of him, and his friend with the shotgun. Well, if his dwarves snd sentinels were gone, he would just take care of them himself!!

"What have you done, Boooyy!" The Tall Man raged. He strode across the muddy sand and grass, but before he could reach the two men (who were too astounded to notice him), he was knocked off his feet by the most violent earthquake of all. Before he could get back to his feet, the golden sphere suddenly began humming again, although much louder and an octave higher than it had been before. He turned to this new strangeness in time to see the red clouds part near the horizon, where a row of pine trees were thrusting into the air at a billion times their normal growth rate. Beyond them, in the east, the sky glowed in a new shade of red. Shafts of light speared through the air, disintegrating the red clouds and coloring the heavens with bright blue. Then just as the blue had reached the western edge of the world, above the edge of the hill rose the bright white form of the new sun, hitting all three of them in the face.

He moaned weakly for several moments. A stange warmth and relaxation spread from his heart throughout every muscle of his body, as if barbed puppet strings that had bound him to something unspeakable for far to long had finally been released from his flesh. When he finally got to his feet, he seemed smaller somehow, but his face was free of pain and rage for the first time in a century and a half. It was the face, not of the Tall Man, but of Jebadiah Morningside. He gazed at his hands in amazement, which had been bleeding yellow where they had been grazed by buckshot from Reggie's shotgun. They were now bleeding red again.

"My hands." He murmured. "They're warm again. The pain, the cold... they're gone. Everything is gone." Jebadiah suddenly closed his eyes, and tears fell down his face. "My hands, I've hurt so many... killed so many with these hands."

She grinned in her sassy way. "Only the part of me that was Or'b died, Jebadiah. But I haven't been entirely Or'b for a very long time. Not since you gave me your sort of life, your sort of soul, when you gave me your child."

"I was once a part of Or'b. I'm human now. I'll see you again, where you are going. It won't be too long. Only 50 or 60 years." She smiled. When that happened she would be so much more than she ever had been before. In the meantime, there were so many things to learn. "It's time, Jebadiah."

"Yes. Close your eyes. Now you may finally complete the journey you started so long ago." Jebadiah trembled. This was so much more than he expected, than he deserved. His eyes closed, and Reggie, Mike and Lucy watched as a sphere formed above his still form. A sphere, not of cold metal, but of warm glowing light, that outshone even the new sun. It floated up, drifting past the three of them, as if to apologize and say goodbye, and then it sped into the bright sky.

Lucy looked at where the ape had gone in awe. "And so it begins, again. Well, I guess I'll have to change my plans." She turned and walked back the way she had come, deliberately not putting out the fire.

Ten minutes later, she came across Reggie and Mike, who were standing over Jebadiah's grave. There was a wooden cross at it's head, although it was hardly necessary. This whole world was a monument to him. Several feet away, a dimensional gate stood, marking the way back to Earth.

"Really." Mike looked around at the transformed red planet. Several billion years of evolution had occured in only a few days. The Regman had been right, even he did not put on a show this good. The reaction Lucy had set off with the excess energy from the death of the part of her that had been Or'b had played out now, and the future developement of this world would occur at a normal rate. "What changed your mind?"

"When I was down by the river, I saw an ape using fire. I won't make Or'b's mistake. I won't interfere with the destiny of others."

"An ape using fire." Reggie thought about this. "What does that mean. What will happen to this world?"

"In a few million years? Probably they'll do the same damn silly thing all over again."

Mike blanched, remembering the horror that had only just ended. "You mean this could happen...again?"

"Well, Reg told you about the paradox this world existed in before I brought it across to your side of the death barrier, didn't he." Mike nodded. "Well, since the realm beyond death is infinitely large, theoretically speaking, there must be an infinite number of such worlds as this was, existing in a paradoxal balance between life and death. So yes, this could happen again, if someone recreated Jebadiah's theories and equipment."

She grinned and winked. "Free will's a bitch, ain't it. Still, perhaps it's always happened this way. And at least Or'b can count sheep now instead of grains of sand."

She put one arm around Mike, and the other around Reggie. "Come on, Regman. I want you to take me back to Earth and get some of this icecream you keep telling me about, and see if it's really as good as you say."

The three new freinds turned and vanished into the dimensional forks. The silver pillars remained for a moment, and then vanished as well, leaving only the songs of birds and the bloom of life to fill Jebadiah's new world.

The remains of an alien spaceship lay stacked with bizarre carelessness against one wall of a large airplane hangar. They had been pushed aside several weeks ago to make room for a project of far greater importance. On a circular platform near the center of the large building sat the results of the new research, two narrow tripods of metal attached to a computer console with several bands of thick, muticolored cable.

The scientists who worked on this project were no longer attending to their duties. Instead they lay on the floor at awkward angles, their bodies for the most part burned beyond recognition. From a few of the less well charred bodies, blood spread over the white linoleum of the floor.

In the midst of all this carnage, a single figure walked along with odd, calm grace. Behind the head of this one person, a black pyramid floated, occasional shooting a laserbeam from one of it's corners at various computer monitors that flickered with mindless static, causing them to shatter in a rain of burning glass and plastic.

Had there been any other survivors of this slaughter, they could have gotten a good look at this peculiar individual as he passed under a red exit light leading to the passage into the outside world. It was a man with dark black hair cut in a buzz style, and wearing an impeccably pressed white lab coat, complete with holographic identification badge. A man whose face was twisted into a nearly demonic expression of rage and hate.