Would That It Were

A Story Set in Wm. H. Hodgson’s world of The Night Land. Image credits: "Upon His Return" (c) Duncan Long.

Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl… and his kingdom became full of darkness.
Rev. 16:10

I should inform the reader first of the circumstances that led to my tardy return to Earth, before setting down this tale, by way of apology, though I am not certain to whom, for it is with certitude, I fear, that at this point I have determined myself to be the last man alive.

I recall that a number of years ago, as a young man, I was placed by my fellow creatures into a device that resembles the sarcophagi of millennia of Earth tradition, but capable of supporting and sustaining life for a long journey; I am hopeful that you, dear reader, will find among your records the knowledge of a science similar to that which I describe in the attached notes.

We, that is perhaps a number of us equal to the population of a small settlement or a very large extended family, took leave of our home planet, having sufficient means to do so and to construct a vehicle for our departure, at a time when its population exceeded forty million million individuals. Our civilization had attained a level of advancement sufficient to determine the location and distance of several habitable worlds, and it was our dear and fervent hope that, traveling at great speed toward the nearest of them, we might move in succession from one to the next until such time as we found a new home, or were forced to return. It was to be a long journey, and it was anticipated that many children would be born en route; in fact, it was hoped that the journey itself would not render our women infertile from exposure to the harshness of interstellar travel; even so, we were limited in what resources we could take with us and thus forced to use the sarcophagi, whose science, in may be summed briefly, extended our physical existence, so that a few of us, it was hoped, might live to see our new home.

Only Fate, or Chance, or God, or Pneuma, or whatever name the reader gives to the metaphysical ordering of the universe, may explain by what causative chain I arrived at this time and place; the little I know is that seventeen generations had been born and died when I was placed, at the appointed age, into one of the Life-Pods, as we called them, and that the Masters of the Voyage had failed to find a suitable place to set down. I am forced to conclude that after three hundred years, our supplies were running low and we were of necessity returning.

Perhaps, in a roundabout way, this explains the reduction of our numbers. I have often speculated as to the general absence of People when I Awakened, and I have been tempted to credit my survival to fortunate location during a period of what appears to have been general starvation. Early on, as I roamed the ship, I observed the smell of decay, and noted that The Life-Pods of many of the Others of my generation bore signs of forced intrusion. Perhaps some of the Awake had resorted to cannibalism.

I should tell the reader that it was thus my exceeding good fortune to Awaken at a time when the ship was again approaching Earth, for food was scarce. Moreover, I bless my Ancestors for their forethought in designing a craft capable of landing itself and resuscitating its sole occupant.

Before landing, I attempted to surmise the interval that had passed since the ship’s departure. I repeated a simple formula involving the speed of the ship and the number of years that had transpired, the sole object of my scientific teaching as a child, by which those who landed or returned might determine the time that had passed on Earth. The Ship, I was told, drew on an energy of the ambient void that allowed it to span the vast, abyssal stretch to the nearest stars within a few generations’ time. We were supposed to have reached the first of them in a single generation. Though I have found written records difficult to obtain, and I do not know how to operate the ship’s libraries, all indications, and my verbal teaching, confirm that our first objective was achieved. Thereupon, the matter fell to the speed of the ship.

Using the formula, by my calculation, I determined that we had reached our first destination in seven multiples of the time required of a beam of light, meaning our ship was traveling at ninety-two percent of that velocity. That meant that after seventeen generations, two or three thousand years should have transpired. I did not expect to find myself able to communicate with the planet’s current residents, but I hoped against hope that someone would recognize my craft from old records. The ship, I had been taught, was trained to recognize and respond to an attempt at communication, and I could not rule out the possibility that it already had. However, it seemed strangely silent.

After some time, it occurred to me that in my calculations, I had not allowed for time in the Life-Pod, failing to take note that a human generation might easily span three or even four hundred years. I multiplied my answers by a factor of twenty, arriving at a date sixty thousand years from my departure.

I cannot explain to the reader the severity of desolation that overcame me at this point, for even though the ship had not yet made land, I was certain that human technological civilization had not survived in any recognizable form.

I resolved upon landing to search for remnants, such as they might be.

As the ship made its descent, I felt my body float, then return to weightfulness, and hurried to secure a place near a Great Side Window, behind the Bussard Intake, in whose shadow lay the bulk of the ship, in order to observe the approach. Shortly thereafter, the Intake separated in a graceful dance and was gone from view.

The descent took some time, perhaps three days, and I was grateful for the opportunity to survey the land to which I would soon be returning. During this time, it appeared that the ship was searching for a beacon or landing spot, and not finding one, finally abandoned the search and settled on a general descent into the darkness on the anti-sunward side of the planet.

Having nothing else to do, I took copious notes, which I leave now in the hope that some day, someone will happen upon them and know that our race, or what became of it, did not perish in feral ignominy. Hereupon begins my story.

The Earth I returned to had changed greatly, and in retrospect I did not realize realize how much. As I review my notes, I see that during the three-day-descent, whose passage I note only by my sleep patterns, the same face of the planet presented itself constantly to the sun. This I judged by identifying several landmarks, you will understand, and observing the lack of change in their position over time.

Once or twice, I thought I observed a blinking or twinkling just beyond the thin line separating darkness from the light, which I now realize was inordinately dim; I now suspect vulcanism as the source.

The second thing I noticed was the abundance of continent-spanning glaciers. In fact, it would be false to say this was the second thing I noticed, for as I attempted to identify the continents, I noticed both that the water level had dropped severely, presumably because much of the water was now taken up into the great bodies of ice, but also that the few recognizable features such as mountain ranges did not lie where they belonged. I tried to account for their new locations by considering axial tilt, which presumably had changed at least three times since my departure, but that would have explained only a change in orientation.

These continents, I noticed, had changed position.

Across the surface of the daylight side now spanned great masses of gray clouds whose position seemed relatively constant; I surmised that they had been built up over time by the rise of cool air masses circulating from the night side, though I could not account for their sheer bulk given the relative rarity of surface water. I remembered something about thunderstorms, which I had never seen before, and guessed that these great gray giants must be some entirely self-contained variety that circulated their moisture in huge vertical cyclones.

One the one day that a portion of the storms cleared, it was evident that no human settlement lay beneath.

When the ship landed, I took some time provisioning myself before setting out, not knowing what to expect. For reasons unknown, the ship had selected a location on the dark side, perhaps two thousand miles behind the terminator, so I packed for a cold, harsh world of eternal night, taking the most whole and fitting of the bodysuits that hung on a rack near the exit, stocking my pockets with as many long-lasting light sources as I could find. After additional thought, and desperately hungry, I searched for and eventually found several devices I might use variously as weapons or tools. One of my first jobs, unfortunately, was to find, slay and eat a decent meal; after this, I reasoned, I could set my eye to exploring and looking for others.

The ship had landed in the middle of a vast sloping plain whose extent was barely discernable in the lambent orange sootiness of the distant moon, a light so weak that it was entirely washed out by the glow from the occasional volcano. I ventured to determine direction but found it impossible given the general lack of landmarks and the complete absence of a stable magnetism.

I let my eyes adjust, and looked around. Downward, the slope continued as far as I could see, eventually ending in a range of low mountains and volcanoes, the tallest of which was bathed in a dim glow near the bottom. This I decided indicated nothing about the presence of life or civilization. Behind me, up the slope at a great distance, was a line of black hills, over whose top peered a bright, silvery structure that ascended into the night. It looked different from the mountains around, perhaps the result of terraforming. I decided to find out what it was.

I had no choice but to make my way on foot, so I set out directly after assuring myself of the security of the ship, and of my ability to return and re-enter it. At the outset, I took great care to trace my path, to attempt to fix my location against some landmark, but after a short while I grew fearful that repeated attempts at summoning light to the task might not only drain the limited power of my lights, but also attract unwelcome attention to my progress.

The land ahead was a harsh, wind-blown vista unlike any other I have seen; indeed, it was difficult to recognize any of it as my native Earth. I had seen pictures of my home planet as a child, and the landscapes were various and sundry, ranging from verdant fields of vegetation, bedecked with broad swaths of color that swayed and undulated beneath gentle breezes; to jagged spires of olivine basalt thrown up through the bedrock of olden seas into the icy dominion of snow-covered mountains. In every one of a thousand images, though, I had seen a splendid beauty and light that bespoke the natural rhythm of a place alive. The scene that I now laid eyes on was dark, sour, and gray, and over it everywhere hung the look not just of death or destruction, but of obliteration. As I cast my eyes ahead to the range of black hills, illumined by a sourceless pallor, I could make out not a single green thing, nor any evidence that there had ever been such a color. It was as if even the memory of life had been forgotten.

The incline was so gradual that I did not at first notice my progress; however, after what seemed like several hours, I ventured to shine my light on the way I had passed. My ship, dark except for a small beacon-light atop its vast bulk, lay against a background so black and featureless as to render it invisible; I could tell its location only by the manner in which it obstructed the faint, nacreous glow of some distant fire-pit. Even so, by the practice of heaving small rocks and counting the bounces, I reasoned that in places it rose higher than others. I had lately been ascending such a rise and now felt it in my legs.

No particular spot on the featureless slope afforded comfort, so after an indeterminate interval I chose a boulder of moderate size and flatness and sat down to rest.

Its surface was oddly smooth, in places covered with flakes of a dry, pockmarked substance that might equally have been paint or lichen. I picked at a patch of it until I had removed a piece large enough to hold up between my fingers and examine further. The rear or underside portion had a smooth, featureless texture that when wet might be called gummy, had it not become so brittle over the eons. With one hand I laid the piece flat on my palm, tilting it slightly to shelter it from the brisk, icy wind in whose grasp small clouds of dust were periodically swept up into eddies. The pattern of chips on the massive rock reminded me of sea-coral, but it lacked the frail grace of the animal’s perforated skeleton. The patchy encrustation on the rock had a dark brown, rusty, mineral look, and if I looked hard I could imagine that I saw a faint sheen of exudite trailing from a few of them. I desperately wished for a paleontologist, a biologist, for anyone; but as the reader will surmise, none were to be found. I carefully pocketed a few small flakes and arose to continue my journey.

It is difficult to say what I was looking for, for my perceived mission had changed several times since my Awakening. Upon the return to Earth, I had intended to establish communications with whatever civilization I might find, and failing that, I had decided to look for remnants of such in the ruins and monuments, or at worst in the wild outposts of its receding edge. Surely the most stalwart of races had survived in recognizable form, for it had been only forty-two thousand years from the discovery of the first counting-notches among Neolithic cultures to the mounting of manned space expeditions. A quick sum had told me that twice that had expired, but I had hoped for a blossoming of the flower of Man, not its demise.

Now, it seemed, I was at a loss.

I held little hope that the blasted landscape around me had proven hospitable to the waning dew of enlightenment that had so briefly sparkled on the planet’s surface. Indeed, I wagered myself lucky to find any remnant at all; yet, for no other reason save that it seemed to be my nature, I searched. I did not have to search for long, but I was not prepared for what I found. It was to my best recollection six days later that I ascended a low rise and saw the Pyramid.

The top of the Herculean structure, of which a part was visible, had been what I saw across the summit of the Black Hills before I crossed. I had at first deduced the thing to be a snow-covered mountain, and perhaps it was. The Thing I saw could be none other than a building, however, for its edges were pure and razor-sharp. By what means it ascended the miles into heaven is any man’s guess. I will perhaps never know, for my attention was drawn to the scene surrounding it. Surrounding the Great Pyramid at an unknown distance was a great low circular wall, on which I thought I could make out regularly spaced markings that might be doors or passages, for from them emanated hundreds of faint trails or roads. If these were to scale, the wall was anywhere from forty to one hundred times my height, though estimating was made even more difficult by the fact that the ragged top leaned in toward the Great Pyramid itself. My heart sank as I noticed a torn-away section of the wall and realized that the larger building’s defenses had been breached. From this area also ran an abundance of trails or roads, which led toward what I must assume was the main entry. Around that place, at the end of the many roads, were collected a number of darker hillocks that appeared to be separate from the underlying stone. A lone light shone down from somewhere high at the top of the Pyramid, illuminating the scene.

My surroundings were deathly still and quiet, and I chanced lighting one of the electro-chemical devices I had been saving for the purpose of navigation, in order to hurry down the craggy incline toward the lowland in which the Pyramid sat. Its yellow glare blazed in stark contrast to the bleak vista, and as I moved it bounced in and out of deep crevices to one side, down which massive rockslides seemed to have reached millennia-long equilibria. My progress was eerily silent, but I could not help feeling that I was making noise with the light alone. When I reached the bottom of a long, steep descent, I rested and turned off the light again.

My legs, especially my toes, ached from the hurried climb, and at one point I found it necessary to expose myself to the environment. The air was crisp, thin and numbing, and I made quick work of soothing my injuries and attending to my toilet. It felt odd, after so many years in the sarcophagus, to answer the needs of a working body, but I was grateful for everything that made me feel alive and human. I quickly donned the removed parts of my outfit, except for those unmentionables of which I needed to dispose, and was glad to feel heat and pressure returning. As I assayed my surroundings, I determined that there was no present risk, but for the first time since my arrival, I felt the need to defend myself. I checked about my waist to assure myself of the status of my weapons, then pressed forward toward the Pyramid.

It took me nearly another week to walk the distance separating me from the vast circular Wall that surrounded the pyramid, beyond which a considerable expanse remained. I made for the nearest wall, deciding that it would afford me at least minimal cover, then followed its contour toward the Breach.

It is worth noting here the appearance of the Wall. From my vantage at its base, it seemed nothing but a massive building, extending infinitely ahead and behind, and disappearing into nothingness above. Along its lower edge, from the ground to perhaps four or five times my height, the wall was utterly featureless and black, except for a thin covering of dust, and a lone rod, or sort of banister, that ran its length as far as the eye could see. The rod was held out from the wall, on thick, metallic or stone struts, and the body of the rod appeared to be of some sort of silver metal, perhaps as thick as my body. There was a peculiar absence of dust within one or two body-lengths of the rod above and below it. On a lark, I got out a simple mechanical compass, an ancient device that required no power, but which was capable of detecting electromagnetism. I was not surprised at what I discovered: when I held the compass flat, it pointed along the circumference of the rod, in a nearly straight line parallel to the wall. When I held the compass on its side, the device pointed straight up.

So this Wall was truly a defense, perhaps Humanity’s last. Through this massive, thirty-mile ring had coursed a magnificent Magnetic Current, one strong enough to permanently magnetize the rod. And it had been broken, sundered in an area perhaps one twentieth its length, through which predators had doubtlessly passed.

I shouldered the most powerful of the weapons, a medium-range Graser whose original design had been for rock mining. It was heavy, but I did not care to take chances under the circumstances.

The walk to the Breach from where I had met the Wall took me right at a day. At that point my hunger had mutated to a ravening will to hunt. It had come to my attention that such a transformation must overcome every man to whom Starvation presents its ugly face. I wondered off-handedly how it had been for the residents of the Pyramid.

For it had to be a residence. There would be no sense in constructing such an elaborate defense for a burial ground, or a dump, or a weapons store. Something in the back of my mind told me that in this Pyramid was all that survived of Mankind.

As my step quickened toward the near edge of the Breach, another thought occurred to me. What if there had been others? It wasn’t too much to imagine that over the course of sixty thousand years another civilization had arisen from an offshoot clan of outsiders, perhaps religious zealots or survivalists who found life in the Pyramid too restricting. What if not one, but several? What would have become of them by now? Would they still be eking out a living in the highlands somewhere, or perhaps huddling in a cave mouth along the banks of a dark river?

The dark mounds gathered near the opening of the Pyramid now took on a more sinister look, that of an intentionally formed group. I shuddered. Certainly in this vast and desolate place any number of congregations of stone formations might take on such an appearance, given adequate time. And yet, I could not escape the mental comparison to the concept that the Door, if indeed that is what it was, had been surrounded.

As I rounded the breach, I saw what I shall describe as The Clock. It was not so much a clock as a building upon which sat a collection of stones and weights and primitive gears, but it was unmistakably the creation of intelligence. My heart leapt at the discovery of something that finally connected me with Earth, with Life, with Intelligence… even if it no longer remained.

The structure was tall, though not by comparison with the Pyramid or Wall, and perhaps as wide as the thickest portion of the Wall. It might have been easily overlooked had I not ventured in where I did. Upon further reflection, it seemed that I was looking at a great stone building, formed of a rough-hewn rock rather than the white, shiny substance of the Pyramid, and unlike the Ring it did not appear to have ever housed technology. I walked around it twice, surveying the place, which resembled a giant wedge laid on its side. From the lower end, the roof of the building was visible, and it was apparent that beyond the massive stone-and-metal assemblage the center of the structure lay open to the air. At the other end of the building was a doorway, through which, after a time, I entered. Inside were the remains of a courtyard and pool of sorts, through which at one point, light must have streamed. From my stores, I produced one of the Electrochemical Lights and turned it on.

As far as I could tell, the gallery surrounding the courtyard had been intended as some sort of museum. Careful to observe my point of entry, I pressed onward, into the interior, tracing a generally clockwise path past numerous alcoves set back into the stone behind polished cylindrical columns. As I walked, I shone the light on each of the alcoves in succession. Most were empty.

In one alcove I found what surely must have been a flying-ship, for it was large, oblong, and covered in gray metal, and bore the general design of my own much larger ship. However, the markings were of a language I did not recognize. I pressed further, stumbling eventually upon the dust-covered remnants of a transparent case, now nothing but brittle shards lying in a circle about the display. Beyond this, around a turn to my left was a long hallway that led toward the outer wall. In this hallway I found numerous small artifacts, each marked with symbols in the same strange language.

In the center of the hallway was flat table with an assortment of shallow depressions grouped into small collections. At one side of the display sat a pile of smooth, roughly circular stones. I picked up one of the stones and placed it into a depression.

As I expected, nothing happened. Then I noticed that around some of the hollows were traced grooves that separated each group from the other. Carved into the flat stone of the table near the same side of each group were symbols. Each group of similar number bore the same symbol, though the arrangement of the depressions was entirely different. I noticed after a while that there were additional, smaller symbols next to the uncircumscribed groups within the larger groups. Again, the smaller symbols always referred to the same number of depressions. Impulsively, I counted them out in my head and marked them in the slanting light by placing some of the small stones in each depression.

When I stepped back I realized that the table was a lesson in arithmetic! Two stones and another two stones, each pair marked with the same symbol, were circumscribed and marked with another symbol that obviously meant ‘four’. Other groupings had special symbols for ‘ten’, and in several places, instead of hollows, there were groupings of engraved symbols for ‘ten’, ‘twenty’, and so forth, on up to numbers quite large indeed. I got out my notes and transcribed each symbol and the number it meant, then went back to the last few displays I had passed. Now the markings made a sort of sense. As far as I could tell, each display was marked with a string of symbols that uniquely identified it. I ventured a guess that the race that erected the museum had knowledge of place-value, and wrote down a few of the inscriptions I had seen below a sampling of alcoves. After some time, though, I could make no further sense and moved on.

About ninety percent of the display alcoves were empty, or their contents had disintegrated, but the Museum was quite large, and, as I have said, I took copious notes as I went. What was left of the ancient reliquary was indeed revealing, for it seemed to house items of both great age and recency. I recognized one or two from my own time!

It was perhaps another two or three hours before I noticed a second pattern. It seemed that the shortest strings of what I now assumed were numbers were associated with artifacts that seemed to be of middling age. I recognized fossil remains of Permian reptiles, including one perfectly-preserved Dimetrodon, the aforementioned flying ship, an assortment of stone axes and tools apparently from the Neolithic Age, and two pieces of equipment, one we call a signitor, whose mates I might easily find on my own vehicle. It was on these last three that the numbers were shorter. On the Dimetrodon was the number three hundred ten followed by a symbol that looked like the eye of a great storm, but cut in half horizontally; on the axes the number fourteen followed by the same symbol, and on the signitor the number two. The Flying ship bore a larger number, and a different symbology that I thought might indicate a comparison.

I cannot say in retrospect, but it was this, I think, that drove me to return to the outside of the building and climb up on its low end, whose landward edge was no more than half my height. It seemed, in fact, that the building’s design were not mere art or architecture, but a functional design. As I lifted my bulk atop the low roof and scaled it, the design was even more apparent. A series of flat, broad steps carved into the surface ascended toward a large square open area that I now knew was the courtyard around which I had recently passed.

About a third of the way toward the courtyard, the thick end of a wide black stone wedge rose from the roof on which I walked, becoming narrower toward the high side of the building. On this thick side were engraved more numbers, and some symbols. I brushed at them with my hand to remove a thick layer of dirt and encrustation. Beneath the covering were more symbols, in what appeared to be a range of twenty or thirty languages. I thought I recognized one of them, though the written symbols were greatly mutated, primitive, and ideographic. Beside some of the words were symbols that I took to be images of the sun, moon, a bipedal figure, certain constellations and other rebuses with no identifiable context. With effort, I pieced together what I could.

(THIS DEVICE) MAN BUILDING TWO THOUSAND ONE HUNDRED

‘TWO CIRCLES’ MAN THIS-BUILDING WEAPON TWENTY-EIGHT

SWIRL

There were few interpretations that made any sense, and after several unfruitful attempts at translation, I moved on up the incline toward the mass or stone, metal and what appeared to be machinery, resolving to return to the inscriptions when it was possible to make more of them.

Presently I came upon a vantage point from which I could observe an open space in the interior of the mechanical assembly. At the far end, through a cage-like metal structure that speared and connected several boulder-like objects as large as a man, was what appeared to be a door. In the dim light coming from high up on the Pyramid it was possible to make out the machine’s features, and owing to the narrowness of the space among the stones, I stored my Light and squeezed through to an open space at the very center, then onward through the door at the far side. On the far side was a little room, on whose near wall was displayed a miniature image of the machine. On each of five circles that I took to represent the man-sized stones outside was a symbol. Two of the symbols were worn to the point of unreadability, but I could make out those for moon and sun, and another that simply displayed a small circle moving around a larger circle. Curious, I went outside to compare what I had seen with the actual structure. Indeed, on the inner face of each stone was a symbol that matched the image in the small room. This time, I could see, a fourth image displayed what looked like a two-tailed fish or a storm, a circle with several curving lines emanating out in a spiral, but divided in half by a straight line.

I was in the center of the circle when the stone bearing the image of the Sun moved!

It is more accurate to say that the stone, which merely sat at the end of the longest of several metal arms, changed its position a hand’s breadth, but the mere movement stunned me. For an instant, I feared the structure would collapse on me, I being between it and the hollow chamber beneath. However, after what I can only describe to you as a Great Short While, for I had no means of measurement, nothing further happened. When the opportunity presented itself, I escaped the Circle of Moving Stones and exited again to the sloping roof. It was then that I noticed the additional inscriptions around the rim of the Great Black Wedge, near the top. The entire perimeter of the wedge was inscribed with vertical marks, at regular intervals, or nearly so, except for a brief interruption on one side that seemed to be a table for unit conversion. For instance, it appeared that fifty-two suns comprised a moon, seven moons a two-circle, one million two-circles a half-storm, and two-hundred fifty half-storms a storm. As to the remainder, above each mark was a number, and above some of the marks were the man-sized stones, one of which had just moved. In my estimation, the stones were intended to move in a circle, pointing at different times to different positions on the Wedge.

I took out my notes on the Museum collection and turned on the light. I read slowly: Dimetrodon, 310 Half-Storm (which I had noted somewhere was also recorded as storm, sixty half-storm); Stone Axe, fourteen half-storm; Signitor, two half-storm; Flying Ship, four hundred thousand two-circles. In my light-headed state, I ran excited at my discovery through other wings of the Museum, checking my theory against each display. The numbers were dates!

It took me considerable time to arrive at a straight system reckoning, but I had the artifacts as a baseline, including one from my own time, and after a short while I learned that one of the additional symbols I had skipped probably indicated ‘positive’, and another, or its absence, ‘negative’. I mounted the roof again, a spring in my step, energized by the knowledge that I might now have the means to record my observations against a meaningful context. As I have said before, I had determined the strange device atop the Museum to be a clock, and indeed it was. What remained was to make another assay, to observe the positions of the stones.

This, I quickly determined, after reasoning unverifiably that the direction of motion was most likely ‘positive’, was FORTY-ONE HALF-STORM, TWO HUNDRED TEN THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTEEN TWO-CIRCLE, FOUR MOON, FIVE SUN. A number, if my conversions were correct, equal to 41,210,715, followed by ‘four moon, five sun’. And so, most gracious reader, it is by this route that I lead you, whomever you may be, to judge for yourselves the conclusions I have drawn, before I set out on this my final journey, man-kind’s final journey, on Earth.

The realization struck the most base and vile of fears in my mortal soul. For it is well known that the species Dimetrodon walked the earth in the late Paleozoic, during a period once referred to as the Permian, almost exactly two hundred and ninety million years ago. That said, it is without a doubt that I may now conclude that I have arrived long past the year sixty thousand, long past the Age of the Great Arcologies so thoroughly noted in the precious leaflets discovered nearly a week ago, if there is any longer such a thing, in the bowels of the Great Museum. I have arrived long past even the age of Predation, ecological cataclysm, and the final destruction of Civilization, which the loner and fellow traveler ‘X’, whose notes have proved so useful, foretold in his waning years. Whether there are any Humped Men or Things That Peer I cannot say. Whether Laughter still comes from the hills to the Distant East I do not know. Indeed, what manner of things has transpired to this end will remain the job of some future archaeologist, should any happen upon the ghostly hulk of our Solar System. I know only that the dim hillocks I saw huddled against the Pyramid are the dead bodies of the Watchers, no longer a menace now that their food-source his disappeared.

Soon I will be among them, if I do not make it to the summit of the Pyramid to die in peace, where there is still light. I cannot bear returning to my ship. For I have survived the extinction of my species, alone, in the year forty-one million, two hundred ten thousand, seven hundred and fifteen, in a time when no living thing save myself crawls this Dark and Wretched Earth.