＃２４

With ailing eyes, I looked up — and with another’s eyes, I saw. My world became an endless mirror: the dark night seamless with the waves below, stars glittering above like specks of golden sand. No Dipper, no winged horse for once… just cosmic dust spilling across my field of view in an maternal embrace, holding tight, so that my tears soon met her shoulder. The world again became a stained glass window, an impossible mosaic fog, and yet with another’s eyes I saw…

“CONGRATULATIONS,” read the stars, “you made it. You are The Last One! Of all the you’s that ever were, that lived a life that shared your birth, but little else for most — of all the souls that once were you, but branched off with your decisions, that existed time and space away as copy and excision, who conquered and were conquered, those who fell and some who flew, every copy upon copy but whose copy was once you…”

“You are the very last! None will make it further; each decision that you made the perfect life preserver. Each other you has gone, and so too now you must go, but none of them but you was ever charmed to know — that you really, really did it! The game’s over and you won! So again, congratulations, survivor number one!”

“…”

I couldn’t read much further — but with another’s eyes, I wept. Whatever the stars had to say, there could be nothing left. I didn’t feel I’d won, couldn’t find my former pride. What grit and gruel had got me here had long ago since died.

I now felt only sorrow, and thought of those me’s who were. Perhaps one of them, or some of them, had had more time with her.