Sunday, December 9, 2012

The Last Day of Glitch: Part Three

 (Note: This is the third installment of the End of Glitch story. I will miss this place so much.)
The thing about the world ending is that you really aren't prepared for it. You have  no idea how to react, what to do. You have no one to ask for advice, because no one else has been through it either.
 I found my world in a state of madness. People wandered aimlessly, abandoning their possessions. Streets were littered with discarded items, toys, valuables.
 Some people took to forming cults. Some would pick one Giant or the other to worship, trying their best to perform miracles and acts that defied reality. Others would cry out that the Rooks had won and declare all the Giants impotent.  People were angry, scared, hurting.

 
As for me, like any good Lemmite, I began to travel to the far reaches of Ur, trying to find a way to save my world. I felt this was the best thing I could do. I thought it was what Lem would want me to do. Travel. Learn. Explore. 
I traveled to the Underworld to seek the wisdom of the Frowning Stone Face. He wasn't any help though. He just chided me for being there and told me to go smash grapes with all the other clumsy idiots.
I went to the Scion of Purple. Normally nothing he said made any sense at all, but today, well . . . today his words just filled me with despair. Maybe what he was saying was true, but it wasn't what I wanted to hear. He couldn't help me save the world.
From most creatures, I just got looks of vague annoyance. I guess maybe they didn't want to think about the world ending. After all, they had lived here all of their existence. If the world ended, so would they.
I'd just about given up hope when the happy Cheese Moon rose beside me as I stopped to rest.

"Whatcha doing?" asked the Cheese Moon.

"I'm trying to save the world. It's ending, you know."

"Yeah, I know," the Moon replied. "It's ending. Got a question for you though, if it's ending and you know it is, why are you wasting your time trying to stop it? You only have a few hours left, little Glitchen. Go look at your world one last time and love it."

The Cheese Moon was right.
I abandoned my quest to save the world and decided, instead, to celebrate it. The first thing I did was jump through the cloud rings that dotted part of the sky.
 Then I walked along the beaches of all the beautiful coves.
I went to the tallest tree in Ur and climbed it until I hit the top . . . which just turned out to be the bottom of some other reality.
I traveled to Noddis and stood in the Heart Curve. Magically, as always, it began to glow and fill me full of love and warmth.
Finally, I traveled to Mullangi Meda, my favorite place in all of Ur, and stood beside the shrine of Lem. I thanked him for blessing me with my powers of travel. I thanked him for inspiring me, a once solitary and isolated Glitchen,  to explore the beautiful world around me. I stayed by the shrine and talked with Lem, watching butterflies fly and chickens jump, as we waited out the end of the world.
In the end, at that very last End, there really isn't much of anything. Darkness, some stars, and a small tiny corner of space where you stand for the very last seconds of everything. Those seconds mean everything though. You feel humbled. You feel holy. You feel like you understand everything but hurt because you don't. And in the very, very, absolute teeny tiny last second, you remember you can do one last thing.
 Jump into the light . . . .

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