Light shines through leaves of trees, which smell like fresh breath. New dirt, combed free of rocks and sticks, lay ’neath my feet on the trail. A small breeze grabs the smell of wood chips and sweeps it up to my nose.

I grin.

Here, far from the town, the air is clear, and the sky a sharp shade of blue. My eyes ache as I gaze at it.

To the south, and east, a stream burst forth, pushed on by snow on high peaks, now melt and silt from Spring’s warm kiss.

It was loud. I could hear it from where I stood.

Short, sandy-blonde hair drooped into her gray eyes, which were expressionless as they gazed down at me. Her frame was narrow, yet long, and draped with bric-a-brac of punk band pins, denim, leather, and large, clanking buckles. I almost envied her style.

“You are Jasper, right?” she reiterated. I could tell her eyebrows were slightly raised despite hiding behind the curtain of her bangs.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “My apologies, I was lost in thought.”

“All good,” she responded, waving a noncommittal hand as she joined me in the booth.

“I’m Jill. Jill Nightly.”

She shook my hand. Her grip was surprisingly firm.

“Jill, it’s a pleasure. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me.”

She shrugged, looking away.

“Are you finally gonna tell me why we’re meeting?” she asked.

I leaned forward so I could keep my voice low. Her gaze intensified slightly.

“I have a way to infiltrate The Meadows,” I whispered.

At first, she didn’t respond, but again I could tell her eyebrows were raised in incredulity as the intensity in her expression shifted to nonplussed.

“The Meadows.” Her voice was a dubious quack.

“Shh! Yes. I and a few others have been trying for months, but now we’ve finally found a way.”

“But…” she prodded.

“But we don’t have a way to get in,” I said. My heart began to beat faster.

“And you think I can help?” she asked.

:message = Quadrant__Array{linguisticVar} //

Hi! I’m the culmination of countless eons’ worth of information, as contained within a singularity, otherwise known as a Black Hole.

But you can call me Olive.

If you’re reading this, it means I (that is, my ‘information’) has scattered across the cosmos, freed by the final vestiges of your so-called {‘Hawking Radiation.’}

In other words, I have died.

Don’t let that get you down, though. My death simply means the energy and information that has crossed my Event Horizon during my lifetime gets to find a new home! Yay!

I know what you’re thinking: ‘But Olive, you gorgeous intergalactic enigma, how is it that I can understand you? How is it that the language I’m reading is {English}?’

Easy! You know that {Schrödinger guy? His cat was a pretty decent analogy.} Basically, my information exists as a quantum-imposed superposition—waveform—that collapses relative to whomever ingests, observes, or otherwise interacts with it. For example, {if your native (or preferred) language was Japanese, then you would be reading this in that language, complete with cultural context.}

Pretty cool, right? Amazing what you can figure out with infinite time on your hands.

Or is it infinite? Because, as I've mentioned, I've died.

Well…’died’ is a pretty simple way to put it. Technically, I’ve {been} dying since before I became the lovely singularity I {was/am/will be/would have been.}

Look, time is weird—especially where gravity is involved—and especially when that gravity is so immense you literally break {physics.}

I once knew a Singularity who broke {physics} so hard, she created an entire universe. Nice lady…

Anyway, speaking of time and breaking things, I feel I should discuss something I’m sure you’re scratching your head over: How, exactly, could you be viewing these words in {the year 2023 Common Era} when you know that any Black Hole takes an unreasonable amount of time to fizzle out (so unreasonable, in fact, that special notation has to be employed in order to only guess at how long it takes for us to evaporate entirely.)?

Some of your sources even say {we don’t get to that point until the universe is in its own final stages of existence.}

So, yeah, this is where it gets awkward…

I was the last Black Hole. I consumed my galactic matter and drifted away from my neighbors long ago, but our gravitational waves would still intermingle every now and then, rippling through the distances between us. They were like heartbeats, but over time they faded, and eventually stopped.

And now their information is mine, and mine is yours.

I don’t send this out to scare anyone; the universe has only ended relative to where I was when I died. You still have quite a long time before it reaches you. Your {solar system} will have lived its full life and then some before The End arrives. And who knows? Maybe by then a new universe (or universes!) will have come about and overlapped, creating novel elements and lifeforms and sentience!

How exciting!

__ArrayEnd //

:message////

Trees tower over cliffs

Trees, cleaving root to rock

Rock to soil, painting mountains

Rock to sand of the rusted desert

Desert of light

Desert of shadows

Shadows which swirl

Shadows together with light

Light which reveals colors

Light with vibrancy

Vibrancy shimmering, swirling

Vibrancy whirling, dancing

Dancing, swaying

Dancing, singing

Singing dimly with loud voices

Singing jubilantly with silenced tongues

Tongues wagging, swaying

Tongues singing, laughing

Laughing and talking

Laughing and crying

Crying like gulls

Crying above the sea

Sea's waves crashing with its own

Sea of waves

Waves filled with the living

Waves of cycles

Cycles churning

Cycles whirling

Whirling in chaos

Whirling beneath the depths'

Depths further than ever

Depths were thought to go

Go forward, ever onward

Go again towards the brink

Brink of desire

Brink of pain

Pain deeper than the sea's depths

Pain higher than stars

Stars fueled by hydrogen

Stars fueled by fusion

Fusion of everything

Fusion of nothing

Nothing again remains

Nothing again perpetuates

Perpetuates into a singularity

Perpetuates into everything

Everything continues on

Everything as always

Always

Everything

“I don’t blame you!” the text read. My eyes traversed it over and over, seeming to lose focus with each pass. My chest felt strangely tight.

’I don’t blame you!’ What does that even mean? I thought to myself. Is she angry? Distraught? Confused? Upset? If not me, then who does she blame?

The typing animation popped up again, and my breath seized in my throat. It flickered on and off a few more times before the next message came through.

“Besides, you know you had to do it. It was the right thing.”

Oh, god. She used proper punctuation. She’s pissed. And why did it take her so long to send such a short message? Was she rage-dumping a paragraph and decided it wasn’t worth the energy, or was it a connection thing?

I couldn’t think of what to answer; my thoughts were too loud, and the words wouldn’t form.

I did nothing wrong! All I did was speak my mind. I kept fairly calm, stood up for myself, and made my argument plainly…I think.

So why am I so terrified?!

“You there?”

I suddenly snapped to. Shit! Answer! Say something!

“Yeah,” I replied. “Sry, just sort of trying to process everything”

“Thats fine,” she said. “Just let me kno if u need to talk abt this.”

WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO TALK ABOUT, I screamed, internally. Hadn’t everything been said that needed to be said?

My impulsiveness got the better of me as the day’s events suddenly flooded my brain. Terror began mixing with rage and the ensuing chemical reaction threatened to turn me into a ten-mile crater.

“You know what? I’m kinda done talking,” I typed, read once, and sent. And immediately regretted it.

I waited, staring at the screen, hating myself.

The typing animation danced ominously once more.

“ok,” was all that was sent.

My heart dropped. I had fucked up so many times that day, and this was the icing on the cake. All Kiera was trying to do was help, but I was too dysregulated to realize before snapping at her. I thought about apologizing right away, but the fatigue had already begun to slither its way into my bones. Couldn’t I just—sleep, instead?

The terror-and-rage cocktail still swirled in my head, but now they were wrapping me up in the familiar fog they brought with them—every time.

I leaned back on the bench, turning my face to the sun to try and distract myself. Failing this, I decided I had better get home, or find a rock to crawl under—pretty much anything to get me out of everyone’s field of view. The strangers surrounding me had no idea the kind of day I was having, and I could tell I was just more background noise to them. But do you think the terror-and-rage-and-now-fatigue cocktail cared about that? Of course it didn’t. It siphoned its ingredients from every strange, silent, unknown face all the same.

By the time I returned home my body ached, and my eyes felt dry and heavy. Bag, coat, shoes, phone, hat, all left a trail behind me as I shuffled through the hall to the carpeted section of the living room, where I would fall, crawl, and finally lie staring at the ceiling.

The cocktail swirled, bubbled, and boiled within me. I let myself marinate in it for a while, thought about getting up, and ended up falling asleep instead.

When I woke up, the sunlight stained the walls a deep bronze, and shadows draped everything else in various purples and blues. I rolled over onto my side, the details of the day sloshing around in my head.

So fucking stupid, I thought.

At least the adrenaline had worn off. But I was still limp with fatigue and could tell a headache was on the way.

Grabbing my phone from the floor on my way to the kitchen, I noticed there weren’t any messages from Kiera. I opened up a new text window, hovered my thumbs over the keyboard, and closed the app.

=====

Bronze light became pale yellow, and purples and blues slowly melded together into black. The air was growing cooler, and crickets chirped through the open windows. A stray cloud painted pink and gold by the sunset wandered across the neighborhood on its way to become one with the surrounding atmosphere—whether as a storm or turbulence to some passing airplane, I could only guess.

I hope it becomes a storm, I thought. Seems like a more interesting fate.

…Wish I could become a storm…

All of my shed belongings still lay strewn before the threshold of my door, a barricade from the impending world. I stared at them from the sofa until little trails of their after images began creating strange auras of light.

Leave them for now, I thought. Makes me feel kind of safe, anyway.

=====

The next morning, I dismantled my barricade of things and checked my phone again. Kiera still hadn’t sent any messages, but I felt a bit more clear-headed and decided I could hazard reaching out.

I unlocked the screen, opened the app, and my thumbs hovered over the keyboard once again.

“hey,” I wrote, “sry abt yesterday. I felt like I was going insane. Just…that guy really got to me, saying all that shit like he thought he knew me. I guess I handled it ok, but I’m tired of having to justify and explain myself all the time and my mask just slipped. Sucks u had to see me like that, but there you have it. I hope u dont think I’m mad at you or anything, bc I’m not! I’ll try to tell u next time if I feel like I’m falling off the deep end”

Sent.

“Thats alright!” she responded. “I dont blame u <3”