“Am I married this time?” she teased, draped across the motel’s dingy couch that was barely wide enough to cushion her long, gangly legs.

She tossed a yellow stress ball into the air in an endless loop. From his desk a few paces away from the couch, he watched as the ball arced up and came back down, up and down, up and down, up —

“Kieran.”

“Hmm?” he mumbled, barely realizing she’d addressed him earlier. The static buzz of the TV was a constant droning in the background. Jules said the sound made her skin itch, but Kieran was insistent on leaving it on the vacant channel. The white noise soothed the murmur of activity in the hollow at the back of his mind.

“The cover story for the upcoming case. Am I married this time?”

The words finally registered. He flushed from ear to ear, dropping his face into his hands and groaning. “How many times are you going to make me apologize for that, Jules?”

“Until you stop getting so flustered about it,” she said, eyes shining emerald green with unshed mirthful tears. She had always been embarrassed about her tendency to cry when she laughed, but Kieran found it terribly endearing. He found most things about her terribly endearing.

He shook the thought from his head. “Yeah, well,” he scoffed, crumpling up one of the thousands of discarded papers on his desk and tossing it across the room. She had the audacity to level an offended lift of her eyebrows at him when the wad of paper cuffed the side of her head. “I didn’t see you jumping to say anything last night when that ambassador asked how we knew each other.”

“Not my fault you got lazy with memorizing our cover stories,” she replied with a sly wink that assured him she wasn’t genuinely upset; she just liked to press his buttons like no one else could. “Can’t believe you made yourself my ball and chain. You don’t know the restraint it took for me to not flirt with anyone for the rest of the event. That’s the kind of willpower it takes not to steal those decorative soaps from high-scale venue restrooms. Which I also totally didn’t do last night.”

“I’m sure,” he said, although he was no such thing.

It had been a moment of weakness. He and Jules had spent that whole morning before the event picking out designer clothes from boutiques that were normally way above their paygrade, and it was a blast. She had pretended to fan her face in mock attraction each time he came out of the dressing room in a new tux, and he had given her an exaggeratedly sultry once-over each time she strutted out in a new dress. The entire experience had been rife with laughter and the familiar dips and curves of a friendship that had been etched out over a decade.

It had nearly been ruined by a comment made by the retail worker helping them choose their outfits. “You two make such a good couple,” she had said as she took a dress from Jules’ hands. “I remember my parents were like that when I was growing up.”

Kieran had frozen, ice running cold in his blood. It was an unwritten rule between him and Jules that they weren’t allowed to address the massive crush he had on her (crush, he called it, because he knew labeling his feelings for Jules to their true extent would drive him insane) after the first time Jules had kindly but firmly shut him down.

He had opened his mouth to correct the worker, but Jules had beat him to the punch, saying with a smile, “Thank you, sweetheart. Could I have the next dress, please?”

It was stupid. It was so stupid. But love— crushes, crushes! he corrected his thought with a rush of panic that nearly unseated him. His eyes darted over to Jules on the couch as if to check she hadn’t heard the hiccup in his internal monologue. Judging by the uninterrupted up and down, up and down of the yellow stress ball, she hadn’t; he breathed a stealthy sigh of relief and settled back down.

It was stupid, but crushes were stupid. Kieran knew it was impossible that Jules’ feelings for him (or lack thereof) had changed, but the fact that she hadn’t corrected the retail worker had given him reckless, baseless hope. They had continued their trying on of various different outfits, but now with the charade of a couple instead of two best friends. It had made him hopelessly giddy.

But that was the one of the dangerous parts about their line of work. You couldn’t let yourself get lost in the fantasy; you had to learn how to slip selves on and off, on and off, on and off like gloves.

It had been a moment of weakness. The gloves wouldn’t come off; they had shrunken to fit his hands perfectly.

“Kieran Doherty, your fame precedes you,” the ambassador had said, mustache twitching as he spoke of Kieran’s entirely falsified resumé and last name. ‘Fame,’ Jules had mouthed to him, eyes shining with amusement. He rolled his eyes at her and thanked the ambassador, who then asked, “And who is this lovely young lady with you?”

“My wife, Julia,” he had said automatically, naturally as anything. Her eyes had widened almost imperceptibly; that wasn’t the story they had planned out together. Glass shattered in Kieran’s head. “I, um — that is to say —”

“Yes, we’ve been married for — oh, five years now? I lose track,” Jules had said, sweeping in before the ambassador could become suspicious. Her smile was slightly tight, eyes not quite right. The shattered glass cut at something deep within him, the wound deepening as he spread his mouth into an equally as forced smile.

“I believe it’s actually been six, my dear,” he had replied softly. The ambassador congratulated them on their union before he disappeared into a crowd of other high-ranking officials. Once Kieran was certain he’d gone, he turned to Jules to apologize — but she’d already slipped away without a word.

Back in the present, he sighed. He tracked his hands through his hair, disturbing the strands and causing them to spring up like weeds. He was supposed to be planning out the cover stories for their upcoming case, but instead here he was. Pondering impossibilities. What a fool he’d made of his own heart.

“Hey,” Jules said, voice soft. He looked up from the document in front of him. She held the yellow ball in her hands and smiled at him. “You and me, yeah? S’all we need.”

He looked away, lump forming in his throat. Those words, they were both everything he ever wanted to hear, and not enough. Never enough. She would never mean those words the way he wanted her to mean them.

But he’d rather have her as a friend, a partner-in-crime, than as nothing at all.

He cleared his throat. The static from the TV invaded the hollow at the back of his mind.

“Of course,” he replied, mirroring her soft tone. “Of course, always.”

In the beginning, they had given him a name and a shadow of hope.

His creations numbered as many as the stars twinkling the sky, and yet humanity had been the first iteration to give him a name. They know him as Sisyphus.

Well. Not him, exactly. But someone like him.

They know a man who is doomed to push a boulder to the top of a steep hill until it reaches the top; and each time the summit of the hill is just within reach, Zeus bewitches the boulder to thunder back down the steep slope and cause the entire attempt to be in vain.

It was the closest any of his creations had ever come to knowing him, and it gave him hope in much the same way that matches will flare up into tiny sparks when they haven’t been properly extinguished.

In this iteration, he tried to leave as few fingerprints upon the canvas of creation as he could. From his own blood, he extracted wisps of energy and wove them together like a patchwork quilt. The seeping away of his own energy left him as cold and empty as the darkness around him; with a shudder, he nevertheless tossed the quilt across the framework of the universe, and with a brilliant flash of light everything was born.

After that, he did nothing. He watched and waited. Even as volcanoes erupted, hurricanes ravaged the land and the sea, and meteors rained from the sky, he sat on his hands. He could not intervene. He always failed when he intervened.

He watched as the first organisms wriggled around blindly in the ocean; he watched impassively as they crawled from the waters onto the land.

Long ago, in past iterations, he wondered what would happen if he turned away and let life develop without the curse of his watchful eyes.

In one iteration, he had screwed his eyes shut for millennia; the self-inflicted darkness nearly drove him insane. And when he opened his eyes and rushed back to his creation, hands reaching out to caress it like one does a wayward lover, he felt more alone than ever. That iteration was one of his quickest to fail.

Other times, when the sickly wound of a new failure had let grief and desolation claw a festering chasm in his chest, he wondered if it was best to create nothing at all. To sit alone, blinking owlishly against the darkness, breaths slow and heart beating like a steady death knell.

Those times were worse than all the rest. After the first time he vowed never to do it again. It was better to create than to claw desperately at the corners of his mind, running them red and ragged with blood that held no warmth, no energy.

It was better to suffer through this failure endlessly than to be nothing at all.

So instead, he created. Time after time. Try after try.

And this time, he only watched.

He watched as the fish took to the depths of the ocean, as the birds took to the skies, as the worms took to the earth, the lizards to the desert, the elephants to the savannas.

And he watched as the monkeys took to the trees, and he watched as they left their fingerprints on the earth that he had created for them.

He watched as they learned to stand on two legs, as they learned to use tools, as they learned to speak, to sing, to dance. He watched as they buried their dead, as they told stories, as they pressed their feet into every inch of the dirt and every inch of his bloodstream.

Humanity was patchwork. They were a chorus of voices that should not have fit together but did. They built roads and wires and bridges to connect themselves to one another like energy being woven together at the beginning of the universe. He was already half in love with them despite himself.

And then they gave him a name. They called him Sisyphus. He could not remember the last time he had been called anything.

He could not help it. He intervened. In the spaces between seconds, he brushed his fingertips against the face of a babe — and it giggled.

Love is uncontrollable. Love is not a choice. Love flooded into the corners of his heart in the same way that water rushes to fill the empty space when a dam breaks.

Love woke him up in the same way that the sun gently presses into the soft curves of the eyelids just after dawn breaks. Love woke him up not with a blinding flash akin to the one at the inception of the universe, but instead with a soft warm glow that starts in the chest and spreads outwards like roots sticking stubbornly in the soil.

In the spaces between seconds, he fell in love with humanity.

In the spaces between seconds, he doomed them all.

Love woke him up, and it woke Them up, too.

There was a knock at the door, and he wept.

“Your creation, Humanity, has Seven days left,” They groaned. They formed a chorus of voices that was a cruel mockery of humanity’s; Their voices held no musicality, no joy, no love. If humanity was patchwork, then They were a steel knot. Their voices grated against one another, trapped, inseparable, forced into one. They made no sound after that, but They remained at the door. They always remained at the door.

He blinked back tears, chest already splitting in two. It was even worse this time because he had hope. They had named him and all for what? He failed. He couldn’t save them.

He cast his eyes upward where a trillion tiny stars pinpricked the sky in a haphazard mosaic.

He could never save them.

Another knock at the door.

“Your creation, Humanity, has Six days left.”

His heart raced, blood rushing through his veins in a perversion of the love that had just rushed through him moments before. There had to be a way to stop this, there just had to be — if he could only just —

“Your creation, Humanity, has Five —”

“Please!” he shrieked, throat tearing open and vocal cords shuddering as he spoke for the first time in a million iterations. “Please, you don’t understand — I was so close this time, they knew me, they named me, that has to mean something, that —”

“Your creation, Humanity,” They shrieked back, voices rising like vicious tidal waves poised to strike, “has Four days —”

“Why won’t you just make it stop!” he sobbed, tears streaming down his face. The droplets cleared tracks through the dust on his face that had gathered over the millennia that he had watched transfixed as humanity took its first and its final steps. He hiccupped. “I can’t do it — you ask for too much — how am I supposed to know how to create — how to create —”

“Your creation, Humanity, has —”

“I know what I did was wrong! But it has been forever, this is torture. Please, why won’t you just listen to —”

“YOUR CREATION, HUMANITY —”

“I’ll do anything, anything! Please, just let them live, they’ve done nothing wrong. Just take me, I — please, please…” he wailed, voice finally giving out as he descended into soundless sobs.

“YOU KNOW THE RULES. YOU KNOW YOU HAVE FAILED. THIS IS YOUR PUNISHMENT. YOU MUST TRY AGAIN.”

For just a moment, Existence stood still as Sisyphus caught his breath on all fours. His chest heaved, eyes screwed shut. Nothing happened without him. Nothing was created until he shed his blood, and nothing was destroyed until his blood returned back to him in the form of the love he had poured into his creation.

He could stay in this state forever, retching and howling and pleading and eyes shut, because nothing could go on without him. Humanity could continue as long as he suffered for them forever.

But it was better to create than to claw endlessly at the corners of his mind, running them red and ragged with blood — and it was better to suffer through this failure again and again than to be nothing at all.

He took a deep, shuddering breath.

“I know,” he said, voice hollow. He felt like every last bit of matter had been carved out of him, leaving behind an empty shell. “I know. It’s the rules. But I came very close, this time. I almost did it. I almost —”

The boulder thundered down the hill.

The door flung open with a deafening BANG! and darkness began to consume the earth like an uncontrollable wildfire. Patchwork screams filled his ears, the full force of them urging him to his feet like a corrupted siren song. He took an agonizing step forward and fell again to his knees, watching transfixed as darkness devoured his work of over four billion years.

When the darkness had engulfed the last trace of the universe and of humanity, the cruel transubstantiation of darkness into light began, like a black hole being pulled inside out. The light of humanity shone so brightly, so horribly, that the now nameless man was forced to squint.

“As light it began,” They said, voice emanating from everywhere and nowhere. “And as light it shall end.”

The brilliant light rose upwards into the sky and joined its brethren of a trillion tiny stars pinpricking the sky like a terrible, desolate mosaic.

They turned back to him and said the words he could have repeated in his sleep.

“Your task is to create something perfect, to replace the perfection that your Hate once destroyed. You may begin at anytime, but know you cannot leave until We are satisfied.”

Once he was sure They were gone, he cradled his head in his hands and mourned.

For how long he knelt there, he was uncertain. But he was certain that last time, he had come so close. With humanity, he had come so close.

He had to try again.

He stood, gathered the wisps of energy from his blood, and began to roll the boulder back up the hill.