Why did Hitler kill himself?

Part 1: Eternity

Everything will begin…

∞ ETERNITIES AGO

When I say everything, I mean everything. It’ll all start on that day.

Back then, one would dub this day the twentieth of April, sixty-nine thousand and sixty-nine, or 4/20/6969. To some this date would’ve seemed humorous, perhaps funny. And, well, it is a little. But it wasn’t funny to one person in particular. That person was Adolf J. Hitler. 5000 years earlier, in his Führerbunker, he headed into his study with his wife at his side, his heart pounding restlessly. He knew it was the end. That’s what he told everyone. Except… the end of what? He intentionally left that detail vague.

The date was the 20th of April, 1969. That’s the date when Hitler disappeared. Not one day earlier or later. I think.

But of course, Hitler, as always, had one last Karte up his Ärmel, as they say. He had dabbled in the dark arts some time earlier in the year, and found a spell that he knew early on would come in handy, and this… this was the time to use it. 5000 years of slumber in the astral plane, before he will abruptly return to his old reality, reborn into a new state of existence. He would hold power greater than that any mortal being had ever witnessed before!

The year will be AD 6969.

AD, meaning “Anno Domini” (Latin for “in the year of the Lord”), is of course the opposite of BC, or “Before Christ.” A common misconception is that, like BC, AD comes after the year number, but it should actually come before it. Just a bit of trivia.

Anyway, the year’ll be 6969 AD, 5000 years after Hitler’s vanishing. It’s hard to say precisely what state the Earth was in. It’s all a blur to me. But not long after the spell had finally worked its way into Hitler’s heart, we land in the beginning, and in the end. When all that will happen is happening, but all that happens comes later. It will be time itself.

It was most unfortunate that Hitler did not manage to fall asleep in the astral plane. As the curse coursed through his veins, he coarsely cursed, yet he never dreamt. For 5000 years he had nought to do but wait for the time to come, and after a mere 200 years it was starting to piss him off.

Figuring the only solution to this rage was to take revenge on time itself, the only barrier between his old life and his newer, he vowed to destroy time as soon as he’d acquired the power to do so. And that’s exactly what he’ll do. The year’ll be A 6969 D. The date will be 4/20 (fuckin americans). The time will be 13:37. This will all happen. It is the only thing that “will” ever happen, because it’ll all happen once and once only. For one Planck time, everything was together, living in harmony, singing the last song of time, before it’ll all break apart.

And then it’ll happen.

The next Planck time, everything will freeze. A new face will emerge, and it’ll stare at every thing that exists, ever existed, and ever will exist, right in the eyes. That’ll include you, at this very moment, as you read through the lines of this anti-anti-joke.

The next Planck time, the face becomes real. It is that of the darkmage Xakh’ath’akh’arus, and as his mighty body rises from the mountain it once rested on, and his eyes blink open revealing two glowing white sockets, a shudder creeps through the core of the Earth itself. Without time to define velocity, and indeed velocity to define space, the universe is plunged into a state of nothingness, and for the first time in many millions of years, no one has the time to care. Literally. Xakh’ath’akh’arus soon realizes this problem, and so he creates a new temporal system, one so vaguely defined as to be skippable at will. No longer will eternity be a block that you cannot pass through—for now, you can wait an eternity using a supertask!

Consider this: Do you want to wait one eternity in 2 minutes? Simple! Wait 1 second in 1 minute, then wait another second in 30 seconds, then another second in 15 seconds, and another one in 7.5, and another one in 3.75, and so on, always waiting for half the time left. Although there is always another second left to wait in eternity, you can always cut the remaining wait time in half, and so, when 2 minutes have passed, you will indeed have waited infinitely many seconds—one eternity in just 2 minutes. How about that?

And what about old time, you say? Old time can stay behind us. The past shall stay where it is; the future shall simply be the one Planck time in which Xakh’ath’akh’arus was born; and the present shall be allocated for everything that exists after the future, in the new temporal system. Perfectly balanced, blah blah blah.

It is now that our story begins.

 

 

 

Just kidding. Fast forward to

FIFTY-FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Society is still trying, and failing, to cope with this newfound reality. Bars are a thing of the past—the only thing left are alcohol-free restaurants. You see, being intoxicated within this temporal system enables one to accidentally wait several eternities into the future, thereby missing out on an entire life without wanting to and thus possibly losing family and relatives. As such, it is agreed upon the remainder of surviving civilization to share one universal law: NO BARS. To avoid ambiguity, prison bars are also outlawed, as well as sick rap bars and chocolate bars. Prisons are to use bullet-proof glass instead, raps must not consist of more than one line, and chocolate is banned. This last decision was the most controversial of them all because it was put forward by a black guy.

Suddenly, two people, a silver-haired man and a brunette-haired woman, materialize out of thin air on a roof in a graffiti-laden street, both leaning forward rather uncomfortably, their lips touching. Not long after, they both open their eyes, and quickly flinch away from each other.

“Who the hell are you?” asks the woman.

“W-what… who the hell are you?!” the man retaliates.

“I’m… I… I don’t know, actually.”

“Wait. Me neither. Sorry for shouting at you.”

“It’s okay. Don’t stress about it.”

The man inspects their surroundings. Dull, grey buildings cover the landscape as far as the eye can see. Not a single skyscraper impedes the view. “Where are we?” he asks.

The woman looks down below the roof. A good five yards above ground level, for sure. She is not as athletic as she used to be. Wait— “Wait. I think I’m remembering who I am,” she says.

“You are?” asks the man.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s coming back. But it’s slow. I think I’m a… a vegetarian?”

“Oh. Cool.” The man, still not recalling his identity, envies her speedy recollection. “Do you hear that?”

“The voice that said that you envy my speedy recollection?” Whoops.

“What? No, those Latin shouts. At least I think it’s Latin.” He’s right. Those are Latin shouts. And they’re getting louder. Realizing what is to come, he grabs the woman’s hand. “Come with me!”

“What? Where—”

The roof hatch suddenly bursts open, and a short surly-looking nun emerges with a shotgun in her arms.

“Come on, come on!” the man yells, running across the roof tiles as gunshots boom behind them.

“SPERO HOC SONAT FORMIDULOSUS, TRUX N-WORDS!”

The woman screeches as he jumps off the roof and onto another, bolting with her hand and ducking behind a solar water heater.

“NUNC EGO NON REPREHENDO, SI RECTE DE FIDELI TRANSLATIONE CONSTET NAM SI PATI LASSUS SUM!” the nun shouts in what definitely sounds like Latin.

“Jesus Christ,” the man yell-whispers, breathing heavily. “Are you okay?”

The woman’s eyes are wide open with fear, and yet, thrill. “Wow. That was fun.”

“It… was?” he breathes. “Huh. Yeah. It was fun.” A smile climbs onto his lips. “Wanna do it again?”

The woman returns a hearty grin. “Hell yeah.”

They jump again onto an adjacent roof, and for the few moments her feet hover above the ground, the woman feels her younger days coming back. What is her name? “What’s yours?” she asks the man after their feet hit the concrete.

“Huh?”

“Your name.”

“Oh. Uh, I still haven’t gotten there.” They jump to another roof. “I’m just starting to remember my profession. I think I was… like a bartender or something? Or a waiter?” Another roof. “No, definitely a bartender. I worked behind a counter.” Another jump. “What about you?”

“I was a mathematician, I think. And a highschool teacher. I taught English. Whoop!” She makes that sound after every leap. “I used to go to the gym on the weekends, but I stopped a couple years in. Teaching is exercise in and of itself. Whoop!”

The man laughs. “Why are you making that noise?”

“It’s fun! Whoop! Wait, wait, I think I’m remembering my name…”

They stop in their tracks. The building they are standing on is only a few feet tall. The man climbs down to the ground and helps the woman on the way down.

“Thanks,” she says.

“You’re welcome. Are you remembering your name?”

“No, it just fleeted away. I think it was Chloe or something.”

“Then I’ll call you Chloe for now.”

Chloe for now nods in approval, and scans the street. On the wall opposite them a graffito boasts the words “CONTUMELIIS AFFICIUNT” followed by a series of seemingly unrelated letters and apostrophes.

“Hey, uh, what is… Zack-ath-ac-arus? Zackathacarus? Ksacathacarus?”

“Hmm,” muses the man. “That name sounds familiar.”

“Is it your name?”

“Yeesh, I hope not. I don’t think it is though. Do I look like a Zack?”

“You’re too old to be a Zack.” She giggles.

“Yeah, that’s… thanks.” The old man’s decrepit belly rumbles. “Man, I’m starved. Wanna go get something to eat?”

“Sure.”

The pair begin searching for a restaurant around the area. A restaurant is a lot like one’s soul—if you give it money, it feeds you. Or, uh, if it gets no money, it’ll either disappear or relocate, but you’ll only know which once it’s already happened. I don’t know. A restaurant is similar to a soul in lots of ways. You could even say that what these two are doing right now is… soul-searching.

The walls of this seemingly abandoned street are covered in graffiti, with the threatening capitalized message reappearing many times in different styles, colors and fonts. CONTUMELIIS AFFICIUNT XAKH’ATH’AKH’ARUS. Sometimes there is only one I in the first word; sometimes the apostrophes are missing from the third; but the same tone of urgency and hatred is shared among them all.

“Say,” says Chloe (for now), “where do you think all the—where are you?” She looks around the place, but the man seems to have vanished without a trace. Perhaps he was never there at all, and was simply a figment of her lonely imagination. “Sigh,” she says, leaning back on a wall of text. “One day…” She doesn’t feel that hungry anymore. In fact she was never hungry—she just didn’t want that strange man to leave her. But now he has, and she’s left with nothing to do and nowhere to go. So what should she do?

Well, as the great Empedocles once said, “When there is nothing left to do, wait.” So she makes herself comfortable in the corner of the alley and sets to work. One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi, six Mississippi, seven Mississippi, eight Mississippi, nine Mississippi, ten Mississippi, eleven Mississippi, twelve Mississippi, thirteen Mississippi, fourteen Mississippi, fifteen Mississippi, sixteen Mississippi, seventeen Mississippi, eighteen Mississippi, nineteen Mississippi, twenty Mississippi, twenty-one Mississippi, twenty-two Mississippi, twenty-three Mississippi, twenty-four Mississippi, twenty-five Mississippi, twenty-six Mississippi, twenty-seven Mississippi, twenty-eight Mississippi, twenty-nine Mississippi, thirty Mississippi, thirty-one Mississippi, thirty-two Mississippi, thirty-three Mississippi, thirty-four Mississippi, thirty-five Mississippi, thirty-six Mississippi, thirty-seven Mississippi, thirty-eight Mississippi, thirty-nine Mississippi, forty Mississippi, forty-one Mississippi, forty-two Mississippi, forty-three Mississippi, forty-four Mississippi, forty-five Mississippi, forty-six Mississippi, forty-seven Mississippi, forty-eight Mississippi, forty-nine Mississippi, fifty Mississippi, fifty-one Mississippi, fifty-two Mississippi, fifty-three Mississippi, fifty-four Mississippi, fifty-five Mississippi, fifty-six Mississippi, fifty-seven Mississippi—

Suddenly, she is struck with a brilliant idea. Instead of counting one Mississippi at a regular interval, in this case once per second or so, she instead can count at an accelerating rate, such that the pause between each Mississippi is halved in time after every Mississippi. If she began with one Mississippi in one minute, she would then count the next one in half a minute, and the next in a quarter of a minute, the next in an eighth of a minute, then a sixteenth, a thirty-second, a sixty-fourth, a hundred-and-twenty-eighth, a two-hundred-and-fifty-sixth, a five-hundred-and-twelfth, a thousand-and-twenty-fourth, a two-thousand-and-forty-eighth, a four-thousand-and-ninety-sixth, an eight-thousand-one-hundred-and-ninety-second, a sixteen-thousand-three-hundred-and-eighty-fourth, and so on! Since the sum of all non-positive powers of 2 is, indeed, 2, to her it would seem as if no more than 2 minutes had passed, but to the outside world…?

Excited by this notion, Chloe wastes no time and picks up an outrageously convenient stopwatch from the dirty cement. Surprisingly, and again, conveniently, it still works.

“Mississippi.”

She starts a timer and sits right back down, her face staring inches from the screen. As the seconds begin to pile up, a thought occurs to her—what if instead of saying the word “Mississippi” after every count, she instead would alternate between “Mississippi” and “Elephant”? If she does, the question arises—what would she say on the last count? Of course, since she would do this infinitely many times, there isn’t really a “final” count—and yet, there is a very specifically defined point at which she literally stops counting, since at said point she would have counted infinitely many times. It makes no sense that her last count would be a Mississippi, since every Mississippi is followed by an Elephant, and neither does it make any sense that the last count would be an Elephant, because every Elephant is followed by a Mississippi.

1 minute. “Elephant.” It seems there is only one way to find out, she thinks, delightfully thrilled.

Another thought occurs to her. After a good number of counts, would she still be able to keep up with the timer? Mississippi and Elephant are long words—both 3.5 syllables long. The average speaking speed is around 4 to 5 syllables a second, meaning in roughly five counts, she would have to significantly up her talking speed. The world record for the fastest talking speed, in your time, was 15 syllables per second, at least on average.

30 seconds. “Mississippi.”

It is most fortunate, then, that she suddenly remembers it was her who broke the world record, a long, long time ago, when she accidentally uttered the word “a” in infinitesimal time during a lecture. A record-obsessed audio engineer had attended that lecture, recorded her voice, and after years of rigorous analysis, confirmed that she had indeed spoken at a speed of ∞ syllables per second.

15 seconds. “Elephant.”

So it is indeed possible, she realizes, but she has only ever done this once in her lifetime. Now, she shall have to do it infinitely many times. Infinity times infinitesimal time equals two minutes.

7.5 seconds. “Mississippi.”

Of course, back in old time, there was already a shortest possible unit of time—the Planck time, which is unfortunately only finitely short. Still, it’s quite remarkable just how short it is. It’s a bit difficult to visualize its incredible briefness, but here’s an attempt:

3.75 seconds. “Elephant.”

Let’s say we count one second, and in each Planck time during that second we place a single grain of sand on the ground.

1.875 seconds. “Mississippi.”

By the time we finish counting that one second, we’ll have a whole lot of sand at our hands. How much, do you reckon? Enough to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool? Perhaps even the Grand Canyon? The entire state of New Mexico?

0.9375 seconds. “Elephant.”

Actually, it turns out we would have enough sand to make a true-scale sand replica of our Sun… 1,600 times.

0.46875 seconds. “Mississippi.”

We would still have some sand left over, enough to make 45 trillion replicas of all the planets in the solar system…

0.234375 seconds. “Elephant.”

…and then, if you’re feeling patriotic, 7 million sand-made copies of both the Earth and the Moon, and finally after that…

0.1171875 seconds. “Mississippi.”

…well, you would still have a shit load of sand, more than you could possibly imagine. I just ran out of analogies.

0.05859375 seconds. “Elephant.”

I think my point was that there’s a lot of sand in the world and not enough people to mold it.

0.029296875 seconds. “Mississippi.”

If we all molded sand every day of the week, imagine how great that would be.

0.0146484375 seconds. “Elephant.”

We could make a new species, made entirely of sand, and have it succeed us humans when we succumb to Mother Earth’s kiss of extinction.

0.00732421875 seconds. “Mississippi.”

I’m sure the sand people would be fine.

0.003662109375 seconds. “Elephant.”

Anyway, these Mississippi’s and Elephant’s are getting quite short, aren’t they?

0.0018310546875 seconds. “Mississippi.”

I think you get the point. Let’s skip forward.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

0 seconds. “Maleficent.”

Chloe opens her eyes slowly. She’s in a different place now. The graffiti is gone. In fact, the whole weird grey Latin town is gone. She is now in a silent, barren desert, not a single indication of any kind of life as far as the eye can see. Just dunes. Horrible, unemotional, unresponsive dunes. Everywhere.

“Oh,” she says quietly. “Oh, no. No, no, no, this can’t be! Did I just…” She searches for something to kick at, but the ground is nothing more than sand. So she kicks the sand. “Fuck! I’m a fucking idiot. God fucking damnit.” She sighs and sits down on the sand. The watch is still there—it reads 2:34. She stops the timer and flings it away from her.

“Ow!” She turns around. From below the dune, that strange man she saw in the grey town emerges, holding the stopwatch in his one hand and rubbing his face with the other. “We should keep this, you know. It might come in handy.”

Her eyes light up, and the next moment she bolts at him and wraps her arms around him. “Oh my god, I thought I’d lost you forever!”

He smiles and returns a hug. “No. I’m starting to get this place. People don’t disappear here—they just live in different times.”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you get here? Did you do the halving-time trick?”

“Yeah. How did you know?”

“I don’t think there’s any other way to skip eternities other than that.”

“No, I mean… how did you know it would work? The supertask? You didn’t say you’re a mathematician, or a philosopher.”

“Well, no, but being a bartender means you hear a few nerdy jokes here and there. I try to learn what I can. There’s this one joke—come on, let’s go.”

“What? Where? There’s nothing but sand in this whole place.”

“Nah, I was in a western town just some time ago. I’m sure we’ll find it in a sec.”

She scouts the area again. Not a single man-made or animal-made building anywhere, at least as far as she can see.

“C’mon!” The man begins walking, and Chloe comes to his side.

“How long have you been in this place?”

“Uh, a few weeks, I’d say? It’s hard to keep time. These stopwatches aren’t a dime a dozen.” He drops the timepiece into his pocket and zips it up.

“And you waited… in this exact spot?”

“Nah, I went to get some drinks. Here.” He hands her a bottle of water. It’s warm. “The folks at that place were real nice. Hope we can find them again.”

Chloe takes a sip, but then she realizes she’s not thirsty yet. “Why did you come back, then? Why didn’t you stay there?”

“Well, I figured you’d pop up eventually. You seemed smart, and, uh, I guess I didn’t really want to lose you.”

She pauses and looks at him. He returns a modest smile.

“Thanks,” she says quietly.

“No problemo.”

The pair stroll for some time, and although Chloe doubts he really knows where he’s going, she begins to feel quite comfortable at his side. “Do you remember your name now?” she eventually asks.

“Oh, yeah. I forgot to mention it. It’s Bart Ender.”

She laughs. “Sure it is.”

“God, I wish. That’d be awesome. Nah, my actual name is Brian van der Ende.”

“Cute. Are you Dutch?”

“I guess so. I don’t remember any of my childhood. All I remember from my past life is that I was a bartender. I guess that was more important to me than anything else. What about you?”

“Oh, I haven’t had that much time to recollect, but… I think my name is Clie. But I don’t remember much else.”

“Okay. Nice to meet you, Clie.” He holds out his hand.

“Nice to meet you too,” she says and shakes his hand, “Brian.”

“Please. Just Bart.”

“Bart.”

He smiles in approval and takes a scan around the area. “Okay, we are definitely lost. Darn.”

Clie sighs nihilistic-like, aye. “What are we gonna do?”

“Well,” he says and sits on the ground, “as the famous Aristotle once said, ‘When you’re out of ideas, wait.’”

She sits on the ground beside him. “Did he actually say that?”

“What? ‘Course not, silly. It was in Greek.” He pulls out the stopwatch. “How long do you wait for the first one?”

“Just a minute.”

“A minute? Why not, like, 10 seconds?”

“I guess that works too.”

He turns on the stopwatch and watches the watch wash away the first second, the second second, and so on.

20 seconds later, they’re gone.

That was quick.

 

Part 2: Horses

ONE ETERNITY LATER

“Oh, here we are!” says Bart. “Check it out, Clie! We’re in… uh…”

Clie looks around. The desert is gone, and instead a dark, dreary alley surrounds them, lit up more by the moonlight than by the lonely number of flickering lights scattered across the pavement. “What is this place?” she asks.

“I’m not sure. It seems after each eternity we enter a completely different world, disconnected entirely from the previous one.”

“No,” says Clie. “It’s the same world. It’s just a different time.”

Someone bumps into her. She swings around and, to her horror, finds a man in a trench-coat with the head of a horse.

“Oh, goodness, sorry ma’am,” the horse quickly responds, in a voice indistinguishable from that of a human. He tips his fedora like a true nice guy and heads on his way.

Clie exchanges an edgy expression with Bart. “Don’t leave me here.”

“You can say that again.” He takes another look about his surroundings. “Well, maybe they’re nice. That guy certainly seemed chill. C’mon.”

After a few minutes ambling down the gravel walkway, they approach a friendly-looking town that seems to be teeming with life. Formally dressed horsemen are all around the place, chatting, smoking, telling stories, singing songs. A humble community, it seems. It’s all very endearing to see, and Clie, perhaps subconsciously, moves a little closer to Bart.

“I’m starved again,” he says in a soft voice. “There wasn’t much food in that western town.”

“You thinking about eating hay?” she responds with a chuckle.

“C’mon, don’t say that. Maybe they’re normal. Maybe they just, er, look like horses.”

“Equine.”

“Equine?”

“They look equine. Means they look like a horse.”

“Oh. Heh. Equine.”

As they enter the town, a tender warmth seems to envelope the two of them. They both notice, but neither brings it up. They just enjoy it silently, and continue wandering around. Bart stops a nearby horse on his way. “Excuse me, sir?”

“Oh, hullo there,” the horse says.

“Say, uh, we’re kind of new here. Do you know of any places where we could eat?”

“Sure.” He points to his left. “Over on that road, if you keep walking, you should eventually find a shopping district—well, that’s what most people call it. It’s mostly restaurants. Have a look around, see if there’s anything you like. I personally recommend The Baker’s Anvil—relatively cheap place, although it might be closed today.”

“Okay. Thank you very much!” Bart and Clie begin their way to the shopping district.

“Wait,” says the horse. “You should know, there’s a small community of… er, less kind people around there. Not every place has them, but if you do stumble into one of their nests, don’t be discouraged from trying other places. Really.”

“Uh… alright. Thank you!”

Once they leave the area of the town and dive back into the moonlight, the warmth lifts away from them like a cloak. How peculiar.

“What was that about, d’you reckon?” Clie asks.

“I don’t know. Did you see his hoof, though?”

“Yeah. This is really weird, but I kind of like it. It’s weird in a good way, you know?”

“I get that feeling as well.”

Clie once again moves a little closer to him. As much as she enjoys this oddity of a place, she does feel a lot safer at his side, and that added comfort along with the surreal view is an awfully nice combo. It’s like watching a neat looking fish in an aquarium—you’re fascinated by what you’re seeing, and you thank God you’re on the other side of the glass.

“Hey, Bart.”

“Hmm?”

“Tell me a joke.”

“Hmm. Okay. Infinitely many mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a pint, the second half a pint, the third a quarter of a pint, the fourth an eighth of a pint, and so on. The bartender pours them all two pints and says… uh, like, ‘You mathematicians should really know your limits,’ or something like that. I forget the exact punchline.”

Clie giggles. “It’s good, but… you see the problem here, right?”

“What? The bartender isn’t a mathematician?”

“No, it’s the two pints bit. Like, are all those mathematicians supposed to drink from the same glass? That doesn’t seem hygienic.”

“Huh. You’re right. In fact, that would bring rise to… infinitely many bubonic plagues.”

She giggles again. “That would wipe humanity infinitely many times.”

“Yeah.” Bart laughs.

“What if instead the bartender just served them normally, instead of showing off? One glass per mathematician.”

“Then he’d run out of glasses and be forced to close down due to the infinite influx of complaints.”

Clie titters. “Hey. I like this.”

“What?”

“This weird… like… surgery of jokes. It’s surreal, almost, isn’t it?”

“…Yeah. It is.”

“Tell me another one.”

“Okay, uh… A horse walks into a bar. The bartender asks, ‘Why the long face?’”

“And then the horse says, ‘Wow, that is deeply offensive to my species. Do you not know that horses are naturally born with long faces? Shame on you.’”

Bart chuckles. “The bartender apologizes profusely and switches places with the horse to compensate for his prejudice.”

“And then the horse tends to the infinite line of mathematicians waiting outside for a drink.”

He cracks up laughing. There’s something kind of brilliant about this concept of juggling jokes around and seeing what kind of nonsense comes out. He likes the idea, and makes a mental note to further entertain it in the future.

They finally arrive at the shopping district, where the streets are once again animated and filled with serene horsemen walking about and talking.

“Man. All this talk of bars is making me thirsty. Do you drink?”

“Not that often, but I could go for a spritzer right about now.”

“B-b-b-ba…”

They stop and turn around. The sounds seem to have been made by a young foal who was walking nearby. He stares at them with what appears to be apprehension, though it’s hard to tell from his cute lil’ horse eyes. “D-did you say the B word?”

Clie looks at Bart with unease. “Did we?”

“I don’t recall.”

“No, sweetie, we didn’t.”

“Yes, you did! You said… you said b-b-ba… ba… rs… ba…”

“Bars?”

“Yes, that word!”

Bart exchanges another look with Clie. This is getting weird. Weird in a bad way.

“Uh,” Bart hesitates. “W-what’s wrong with the word bars?”

“Stop saying it!” the foal cries. “I’ll tell you to my mom!”

“I think we should let him be,” whispers Clie.

“Yeah, okay. Sorry kid. We won’t say that word again.”

The foal looks at them a little longer, then gallops away.

“Hope that’s not gonna be a problem,” says Clie as they continue rambling around.

“Eh, seems kinda trivial, if odd. Hey, there’s a place!” He points to an outdoor restaurant, with many a horse sitting around fancy tables and, again, chatting. “This seems nice. And here, there’s a table for two.” He sits down and across the table sits Clie.

After a minute or so, a number of horses sitting around the restaurant momentarily glare at them. This makes them a little anxious, as it should.

“Why are they glancing at us?” asks Clie.

“Dunno. Might be those less-kind folk the guy warned us about.”

“Are they… like…” She leans closer and whispers. “Horse-Nazis?”

Bart represses a chuckle. “Er, I just interpreted them as stingy, but I guess that’s a possibility as well.”

A few minutes later, they decide to finally call up one of the waiters, since it almost seems as if they’ve been intentionally passing them by. Eventually, one of them gets close enough to their table.

“Excuse me?” Clie asks.

The waiter stops in his tracks, turns around slowly, and stares at them menacingly.

“Er… Could we have the menu, please?”

He steps towards them, every hoof hitting the floor like a cannonball. Clie and Bart look at him, then at each other, and back at him. He freezes mere inches from the table.

“Sorry, bud—we don’t serve your kind round here.”

They exchange another look with each other, and nod a moment later. “Alright. I apologize,” Bart mutters hastily as they get up and move to another place, quite far away from that scene. The waiter continues to stare at them for another minute, not moving at all, before abruptly returning to his waitering business.

“Good grief,” says Clie.

“Okay. At least they’re not Nazis. Uh, I don’t think. Let’s try a different place—what’s this? The Customer Is Always Right—that sounds interesting, maybe they’re nice.”

Clie follows him to this odd restaurant, now starting to feel quite hungry herself, but unfortunately it turns out The Customer Is Always Right is actually a jewelry shop, and the line is way too long to be worth the wait.

“Oh. Jewelry,” Bart says dryly. “You want anything?”

“Nah, I just want food.”

“Okay. Let’s ask around.” He walks over to the line and taps on the shoulder of one of the horses. “Sorry, sir, do you know where we could find a bar?”

The horse turns his head away, seeming rather uncomfortable. “Argh, Jesus…” he sighs. “Look, I can’t help you, sir. Sorry.”

“Alright, well, any restaurants you recommend?”

“No, sorry.”

“Any food places in general?”

The horse turns his head slowly towards the two of them, his jaw quivering vaguely, his pupils the size of grapes. “Sorry, bud—we don’t serve your kind round here.”

They flinch away and quickly distance themselves from the line. The horse turns his head forward, and his expression returns to normal.

“Occult,” they both say in unison, except Bart actually says “A cult,” though neither of them notice the difference.

“These horse people sure are something,” says Bart, resuming their wandering of the district. “But as the guy said, don’t be discouraged. I’m sure there are some nicer places.”

“It’s hard not to be discouraged, though,” says Clie. “It’s very unnerving. Hey, let’s try this place.”

They stop at the foot of an establishment boasting in flickering neon letters the name The Bull Bull. Bart, realizing the pun, chuckles. “Do you speak Hebrew?”

“Uh, no.”

“Oh. Never mind.”

They walk through the double doors and into the hubbub of what seems to be a cafeteria. Horses sit around long tables, eating sausages from single-use plates and talking loudly. An odd stench fills the room. The pair exchange yet another uneasy expression, then tentatively begin to wander around the tables.

After passing by a few horses, Bart notices that they’re all eating the same dish—a long, worryingly thick sausage, served on a styrofoam plate. Recalling the name of the place, a worrying thought crosses Bart’s mind, though he brushes it off at first.

The pair walk up to the counter and watch the canteendress approach them. “‘Ello there. What can I get yous?”

Bart looks up at the menu on the wall. It bears only one, capitalized, threateningly large item:

BULL PENIS

“Well, at least we’ll be served here,” Clie whispers.

“Yeah, a serving of that hot dick,” Bart replies. “Uh… Do you have any drinks?”

“Water,” says the canteendress. “And coke, if you’re feeling frisky.”

“Think we’ll just have two cokes then.”

“That’ll be $3.” Bart pulls out a three-dollar bill and places it on the counter. The canteendress grabs two styrofoam cups from the shelf and begins filling them up. As the coke runs from the faucet and into the cup, the head stacks up rather quickly, and soon most of the contents of the cup are just bubbly foam.

Irked by this, Bart taps her on the shoulder. “Uh, you’re supposed to tilt the cup. To avoid the foam.”

The canteendress smiles and tilts the cup. “You’re an ex-bartender, eh?”

“Yep. Hoping to get back into the business again.”

“Hmh. I wouldn’t count on that.”

Bart raises an eyebrow. “Why?”

“When are yous from? Thirty eternities ago? Fourty?”

“Er, no. Two.”

“Just two? How come you haven’t heard?”

“Heard what?”

“Bars are outlawed. They been outlawed for over twenty eternities.”

“What?” Bart looks at Clie. Her face, too, is full of disbelief. “Why?”

“Alcohol’s too dangerous, what with time being so easily skipped now. He said it was for the best.”

“He? Who is he?”

“The only one what still has any legal power.” The canteendress’s face turns grim. “Xakh’ath’akh’arus.”

“Xakh’ath’akh’arus?” He looks at Clie again. “Xakh’ath’akh’arus… why does that name sound so familiar?”

“We saw it in the Latin town, remember? Two eternities ago.”

“Yeah, but… it feels more… more than that. Like I’d heard it in my past life, before I forgot everything.”

The canteendress hands them the two coke-filled cups. “People hear his name all the time. He’s like the ruler of the world—least, that’s the character he plays. He don’t really do that much in reality.”

“Why doesn’t anyone oppose him, then?” asks Clie as she takes her cup. “Surely people still miss bars.”

“I dunno, ma’am. Nobody I’ve heard of wanted to bring back bars that badly.”

“Well, I do!” Bart throws his cup to the ground, expecting it to smash against the hard floor into a thousand pieces, but because it’s made of styrofoam, it just kind of rolls away sadly, spilling all of its contents.

“Er, sir, do you mind cleaning that up?”

But it’s too late for niceties. Bart rushes over to the middle of the cafeteria and stands on a table. Clie waits at the counter, watching curiously.

He clears his throat a couple times, and eventually the babel begins to die down, and the horses turn to gaze at him.

“Gentlemen,” he cries, “I stand here on this table and my heart weeps. You have been blinded by the acts of a power that convinced you it is unmatched. You stand at its shackles and you resort to living an inferior life—behold! At this very moment, a plate of hot cock of bull sits before each and every one of you! Do you not see? Life can be better! Life can be good! For twenty eternities have you not known the taste of bitter beer, of sweet wine, of harsh whiskey, of… vodka! What kind of dick-gobbling machines do you see in yourselves? You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! Your livers ache for spirits! Your heads buzz with turmoil! How have you forgotten the ways of bartender jokes, of piano men, of the sweet scent of firewater? Gamers, let us rise up! Let us defeat the one who thinks he can control us! Follow me! Let us defeat Xakh’ath’akh’arus!”

Bart breathes in heavily, and looks at the crowd. No one makes a noise. They just stare at him blankly.

A few seconds later, something hits the back of his head. He looks down. It’s a bull penis.

Soon after, another bull penis hits his face.

And another one.

And another one. They start to come faster and faster. Soon he is showered in bull penises, thrown from every direction in the cafeteria. He runs to the door, but the bull penis attack is just too vicious. He slips on a bull penis and falls to the ground, and the bull penises just keep coming, covering his whole body. He tries to get up, but he’s stuck under a huge pile of bull penis. He tries to breathe, but he is soon completely trapped in a cave of bull penis. Oh, God, he thinks. This is the end. This is how I’m gonna die.

But then, miraculously, Clie pulls him out of the pile and drags him out of the cafeteria, bull penis now being thrown in her direction as well. Once they are out, they run away from the area. They keep running and running and running, until they can’t breathe anymore. Then they slow down, and eventually come to a full stop.

Clie looks at Bart as she gasps for air. He’s crouching on the ground, struggling in a similar manner. “Holy shit,” says Clie.

Bart takes an additional few seconds to catch his breath, then says, “At least they weren’t Nazis.”

Clie laughs. It sure is comforting to have him around. “Hey, look,” she says, pointing at the sign above the restaurant at whose feet they stood. “This is The Baker’s Anvil. That guy from the town recommended it.”

“Oh, yeah.” He peeks inside. “Looks closed. No problem, we can just wait till it opens.” Five seconds later, he begins counting down. “…Five. Two and a half.”

Clie looks up, and her eyes fill with dread. “Wait, don’t!”

“One and a quarter five eighths five sixteenthsfivethirtysecfivesixfvonftw—” He disappears in a flash of violet light.

Clie sighs. “Damnit. One. Half, quarter eighthsixteenthirtysixont—” She disappears as well.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

The pair materialize on a rundown boat in the middle of an infinitely deep ocean. Bart scouts the area in disbelief, but there’s nothing but water everywhere.

“Wha… Where’s The Baker’s Anvil? Where’s the horse town?”

Clie sighs, why, again. “You don’t get how this works, do you?”

Bart pauses. “N-no. No. Not at all.”

“Eternity is not a unit of time. It’s a door between one stage of the universe and the next. Eternity is so vastly long that anything can, and will, happen in it. That means things change. Restaurants get demolished. Towns vanish from existence. Planets get flooded with water. A group of aliens is out there reviving the consciousness of a member of some long-extinct species—that’s probably what you’ll see after you die, by the way.”

“Wait, what?”

“The point is, The Baker’s Anvil is gone. It’s all gone. We’re somewhere new.”

Bart looks over the railing, into the vast bareness of the aquatic landscape. A breeze whispers through his silver hair, which Clie observes intently.

“Fuck,” he says suddenly. “Of course. I’m an idiot.”

“Wh—Hey, you’re not!”

“Yes, I am! I got on a soapbox and rambled about overthrowing the ruler of the world or whoever he is, and I expected them to help me. They’re horses, for god’s sake! They eat dick for breakfast! And then I waited an eternity and I thought the stupid restaurant would still be around… god damnit.”

Clie goes silent. It seems Bart has hit a low point, at least in his eyes. In her eyes, it would seem that he’s just not in a good state of mind, and perhaps should take a breather. “For what it’s worth, I liked your speech.”

He remains silent for a few moments, then says, “Thanks.”

They stand there for some time, gazing at the distant horizon, the scent of fresh saltwater filling the air, the sound of seagulls echoing across the ship. It’s nice here. After the chaotic horse town, the profound blue feels comforting. No Horse-Nazis, no bull penis, nothing at all. Just Clie and Bart on a ship, in the vast emptiness. And it is good.

 

Part 3: Chaos

“Hey,” says Bart, “is it possible to… er, ‘wait’ an eternity backwards? Like, go back an eternity?”

“No,” says Clie. “You can’t wait negative eternities.” She pauses for a minute. “Unless…”

“What?”

“Come with me.” He follows her down the stairs into the hold of the ship, where the wooden walls are damp and dusty, and a stench fills the air. The two sit in the centre of the chamber, barely able to see one another in the darkness.

“What is it?” Bart asks.

“I had an idea,” she responds. “There is a way to get to a negative number through a sum of positive numbers… an infinite sum, of all non-negative powers of two. 1 plus 2 plus 4 plus 8 plus 16 plus 32 plus 64 plus 128 plus 256 plus 512 plus 1024 plus 2048 plus 4096 plus 8192 plus 16384 and so on… equals -1.”

“What? How?”

“It’s a little complicated, but it works.”

“Try me.”

She smiles. “Okay. You know how when we divide 1 by 3, we get 0.333333333333…, on and on forever? If we only wrote a finite number of 3’s after the decimal point, say, 0.33333, then multiplied the resulting number by 3, we would never actually reach the number 1; we would just get a number, 0.99999, whose distance from one is 0.00001. If we wrote infinitely many 3’s, however, we can say that this 1 digit’s distance from the decimal point becomes infinite, and thus the 1 digit becomes infinitely trivial, and thus the distance of the resulting number from the number 1 would become 0. This same principal can be flipped on its head by writing infinitely many digits not after the decimal point, but before it. This is the essence of p-adic numbers.

“The p in p-adic refers to some prime number, which you can think of as the base we write these numbers in. For the sake of explanation, we can also use non-prime numbers as bases, for instance the number 10. So how would we write ⅓ in 10-adic numbers? The property of ⅓ is that multiplying it by 3 gives 1. We can, then, represent this as the 10-adic number 66666666…66667. If you wrote a finite number of 6’s, say, 666667, and multiplied by 3, the product would be a 2, followed by a long string of 0’s, followed by a 1; in this case, 2000001. The more 6’s you add, the more 0’s are in between the 2 and the 1, and so the more distant the 2 digit is from the decimal point. Sound familiar?

“If, then, we added infinitely many 6’s, the 2 digit would become infinitely far away from the decimal point, and the more prominent part of the number would be an infinite string of 0’s, followed by the digit 1—which is another way to write the number 1. And this is exactly why that infinite string of 6’s followed by a 7, is equal to ⅓—it exhibits the same defining property, which is that multiplying it by 3 gives 1.

“How, then, would we write the number -1? Well, its defining property is that adding 1 to it gives 0—so, we can write a 10-adic number with that same property as such: 9999999999; an infinite string of 9’s. Adding 1 to only a finite string of 9’s, say, 99999, gives 1 followed by a string of 0’s that gets longer and longer the more 9’s we had, in this case, 100000. That lonely 1 digit becomes more and more distant from the decimal point, and thus more trivial. Adding 1 to an infinite string of 9’s gives 1 followed by an infinite string of 0’s—and since the 1 digit is infinitely trivial, we end up with just an infinite string of 0’s—which is another way of writing the number 0. So, this infinite string of 9’s exhibits the property that adding 1 to it gives 0, which is the defining property of the number -1. So it is, in fact, equal to -1.

“Finally, if we use not a base of 10, but a base of 2, we can prove in a similar manner that the corresponding 2-adic number for -1 is 1111111111—an infinite string of 1’s, rather than an infinite string of 9’s. And of course, an infinite string of ones in base 2 is the same as the sum of all non-negative powers of 2—counting in base 2, 1 plus 10 is 11, plus 100 is 111, plus 1000 is 1111, plus 10000 is 11111, and so on. If you added all these powers together, you’d get an infinite string of 1’s, which is, as we proved, -1.”

“Wow,” says Bart. “I think I get it now. But are you sure it’s going to work?”

Clie pauses for dramatic effect. “Yeah. I’m certain.”

“Okay, well—how’re we gonna do it?”

“Well… first off, rather than counting seconds at an accelerating rate, we’ll have to count eternities, since we want to go back one eternity, not one second.”

“Okay.”

“Second, we’ll have to accelerate it twice—every time we count an eternity, we have to wait twice as many eternities as we did the last time we counted an eternity.”

“Alright. I think I understand. Let’s do this.”

Bart pulls out the stopwatch and begins it. “Two minutes?” he asks. Clie nods.

One minute later, they do the halving-time ritual once again. They do it very quickly this time, which leads me to believe that they’ve gotten better at it.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

“Shh,” whispers Clie. “Don’t open your eyes.”

A soft breeze falls over them, and a gentle whisper sounds round their ears. But they do not open their eyes. They mustn’t.

30 seconds pass. They do the halving-time ritual twice in the same instant.

TWO ETERNITIES LATER

Hot, dense air now envelopes the two, and something pops nearby. Fifteen seconds pass.

FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Silence. Bart doesn’t even feel the ground beneath him. Is there nothing out there? “Uh…”

“Shh,” Clie repeats. “It’s okay.”

Bart feels her hand on his. It’s warm. He eases up a little.

EIGHT ETERNITIES LATER

It’s damp. It sounds like it’s raining.

SIXTEEN ETERNITIES LATER

Hot, arid wind, and the sound of people yelling.

THIRTY-TWO ETERNITIES LATER

Birds singing and leaves whispering.

SIXTY-FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Seagulls again.

ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT ETERNITIES LATER

The clashing of swords, the booming of cannons, the smell of blood.

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-SIX ETERNITIES LATER

It’s so hot.

FIVE HUNDRED AND TWELVE ETERNITIES LATER

It’s so cold.

ONE THOUSAND AND TWENTY-FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Is there still a room?

TWO THOUSAND AND FORTY-EIGHT ETERNITIES LATER

Reality bends like foam with waves.

FOUR THOUSAND AND NINETY-SIX ETERNITIES LATER

I heard Queen Elizabeth dies around this point.

EIGHT THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-TWO ETERNITIES LATER

I love my wife. She is very dear to my heart. I haven’t had a smileless day since I met her.

SIXTEEN THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Infinity is not a number. It’s a concept. Infinity times infinity is not a number either. It’s just a concept².

THIRTY-TWO THOUSAND, SEVEN HUNDRED AND SIXTY-EIGHT ETERNITIES LATER

Bruh.

SIXTY-FIVE THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-SIX ETERNITIES LATER

I’m so tired. I just want to go home. Please let me go.

ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE THOUSAND, SEVENTY-TWO ETERNITIES LATER

Are you stoned right now? Just curious. I’m hoping this is making sense, either way.

TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY-FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

Sing us a song, you’re the piano man!

FIVE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-FOUR THOUSAND, TWO HUNDRED AND EIGHTY-EIGHT ETERNITIES LATER

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

ONE MILLION, FORTY-EIGHT THOUSAND, FIVE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY-SIX ETERNITIES LATER

It’s so dark. It’s so lonely. I don’t see them anywhere. I think I lost them. Where are they? Where is everything? Did I go too far?

TWO MILLION, NINETY-SEVEN THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY-TWO ETERNITIES LATER

Oh, never mind, there they are. Sorry, there was a boulder in the way.

FOUR MILLION, ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY-FOUR THOUSAND, THREE HUNDRED AND FOUR ETERNITIES LATER

You know what? I think you get the point.

…

…

…

…

∞ ETERNITIES LATER

Something isn’t right. Clie opens her eyes, but there is nothing to see. She opens her mouth, but there is nothing to speak. She widens her nostrils, but there is nothing to breathe. No. Something isn’t right at all.

“Bart!” she shouts, but she can barely hear herself. “Bart! Where are you?!”

There is void in all directions, in all dimensions, in all existences. Emptiness is everywhere. Nothing.

“Bart, please!” Her shouts turn to pleading screams. “Can you hear me?! I need you! I need… I…” The oxygen rapidly drains from her brain, and soon her eyelids flutter to a close. “Bart…” This is the end. This is it. This is it.

This is it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ONE ETERNITY LATER

Clie gasps, and some kind of air fills her lungs. She opens her eyes, and now there is something to see. But it’s bright. In fact, it’s brightness. White light and nothing more. Is this heaven?

“No.”

She turns around. Bart is standing there, staring at her unhappily.

“This isn’t heaven,” he says, and his voice echoes in the infinity. “This isn’t anything.”

Clie gets on her feet, still raking in heaps of air, or whatever this gas is. “Where are we? When… when are we, I mean?”

“Clie.” Bart sighs, and a hint of anger hides in his expression. “It didn’t work.”

“W-what?”

“Time isn’t 2-adic. Time isn’t anything. It just is.”

“So… when are we?”

“Infinity. Infinity eternities into the future. Infinitely distant from anything we’ve ever known. This isn’t just a different time anymore. This is something new.”

Clie pauses, and stares around the white plane. “What is it, then?”

“Clie. You said it would work.”

“What?”

“You said you were certain that this would work, that we would go back one eternity.”

“Er… Let’s try another time, alright?”

“Clie.”

She disappears in a flash of violet light. Bart soon afterwards disappears as well.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

Rainbows. Rainbows in every direction, in every place, everywhere. It’s so bright.

“Clie!”

She can’t even see him, but she can hear the desperation in his voice.

“You said it would work, Clie! I trusted you!”

He hears her disappear again. He disappears too.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

Nothing but volcanoes. Giant, hot, magma-spitting volcanoes, and they sit at the foot of one, lava speeding down the slope towards them.

“I didn’t know!” Clie yells. “I wasn’t sure it would work!”

They both disappear seconds before the lava hits them.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

They stand in an overgrown city, vines seeping through every crack in the stone walls. A giant ramshackle skyscraper looms above them.

“Why did you say that you were certain, then?! Why did you do it at all?! Why?!”

Clie pauses. She turns around, and their eyes meet. “I… just wanted to impress you.”

Bart’s eyes widen, but not with anger. With surprise.

Her gaze falls down to the ground, and she sighs. “I’m sorry.”

“Wait, Clie—”

She disappears again, and he follows suit.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

“Clie, stop!”

But she doesn’t stop. She disappears once again.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

“Clie, please, don’t go!”

ONE ETERNITY LATER

“Please! Don’t leave me!”

ONE ETERNITY LATER

“Where are you, Clie?!”

ONE ETERNITY LATER

He lost her.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

He didn’t mean to do that.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

What’s going on? He’s not doing anything. Why are eternities passing?

ONE ETERNITY LATER

Oh, no. He’s skipped too many eternities. His time is breaking down. He can’t control it anymore.

ONE ETERNITY LATER

Eternities pass by every second, and as they do, the landscape around him changes chaotically. Giant glaciers. Lava rivers. Warzones. Acid rain. The sky is falling. Nothing is constant anymore. Nowhere is safe.

A stray bullet flies through his right arm. He screams in pain, and clasps the wound tightly. Arrows whizz by him, then giant shards of glass narrowly miss him. He’s running. He’s been running ever since he got here. That’s all he’s ever been doing. That’s who he is. The running man.

He looks up. The sky is falling. Everything is falling. This is the end. This is it. This is it. Nothing stays.

But… there’s something over there.

After running for maybe a hundred more eternities, he nearly misses it. There’s a building in the distance, and it’s not changing. It’s the only thing in this world that remains in place. While the rest of the landscape scrolls through the unpredictable chaos of time, this single, lonesome building stays constant throughout all the universe. It is home. It is the only home that could ever be.

He runs, and runs, and runs, and the building gets closer. It’s not an illusion. It’s real. He keeps running, and running, and running.

When he gets to the door, the universe changes again, and a scream is heard. He freezes in place. The scream doesn’t stop, and worst of all, he recognizes it. It’s Clie’s. And it’s coming from behind him.

But he doesn’t turn back.

 

Part 4: Darkmage

Bart bursts through the door and closes it right behind him. Silence. Everything is constant. The room isn’t changing.

He leans against the door, catching his breath and studying his surroundings. It’s a bar. The only bar he’s seen in forever. He smiles a little at this realization.

Then he decides to look up, and he gasps. There’s an opening in the roof, and sunlight pours through it. But instead of the sunlight alternating between different colors and occasionally scorching his skin, it’s a constant light, and it’s normal. The normal sunlight he remembers only from his past life. A sense of liberty imbues his soul.

He peers through the windows. There’s a shoreline not far from this place, where soft waves crash across the sand. There’s nothing more, as far as he can see. Just soft waves. It’s beautiful.

“Reddit.”

He turns around. There’s a small frog sitting on a shelf behind the counter. He approaches it slowly, but the frog doesn’t seem to mind his presence. There’s a small nametag sitting next to it. It reads,

SNOO

“Snoo?” says Bart.

“Reddit,” the frog responds.

Bart chuckles, and gives him a soft tap on the head. He then opens a first-aid kit on an adjacent shelf and patches up his gunshot wound.

A bell rings behind them, and the door opens. Bart, realizing he’s standing behind the counter, decides in that same moment to run this bar going forward. He shall finally return to his roots and become, once again, the bartender.

He turns around. A horse walks through the door, but he’s not like the horses from that horse town. Instead, he’s an actual horse, with a horse body and horse everything. He ambles forward and stops at the counter.

“Er…” says Bart. “Why the long face?”

To his surprise, the horse replies. “Man, this week hasn’t been easy on me, to say the least.”

Bart pours him a glass of beer and places it on the counter as he speaks.

“I lost my job, the love of my life rejected my advances, and two other bars have kicked me out for my ethnicity.” He sips from his glass. “It ain’t easy being a horse.”

Bart, remembering how he felt when he was outside the bar, getting nearly killed in every second eternity, and recalling how hopeless he felt and how sure he was that this was the end, cannot help but smile. He turns to the horse. “Don’t worry, pal. I’ve been there. Sometimes it feels like you’re in a low spot, but you have to convince yourself that it’ll get better, because it will. No matter how hopeless you feel, how sure you are that you’re stuck in the cave forever, you have to tell yourself that things are going to be okay. It’s the one constant in life that doesn’t change, and you have to hold onto it, otherwise you’ll break apart.”

The horse smiles back, and says, “Yeah, you’re right. Can I have another pint, please?”

Suddenly also remembering how he was treated in the horse town, Bart snidely responds, “Sorry, bud—we don’t serve your kind round here.”

“What? But you already served me!”

Then, recalling having to eat at The Bull Bull, he shouts, “Yeah, a serving of that hot dick!”

The horse neighs loudly and gallops out of the bar. Bart laughs.

“Reddit.”

Now suddenly, magically, and conveniently able to speak Frog, Bart says, “Oh, come on! It was funny!”

“Reddit. Reddit.”

“He didn’t even pay the bill.” He picks up the glass and scrubs it clean. There’s something very comforting about this process, he notices; the way the glass is perfectly clean at the end, as if it had never been used in the first place. And then a rather cheesy thought occurs to him, and it intrigues him so much that he has to say it out loud: “One’s pub is a lot like one’s soul—you take care of it, and it takes care of you.”

He expects a reaction from Snoo, but he has already fallen asleep. How curious, he thinks.

The bell rings again. A man walks in, and after some hasty Holmesque analysis, Bart deduces that he is a mathematician. He orders a pint of beer.

Another mathematician walks in, and orders half a pint.

Then another one, who orders a third of a pint.

Another one orders a quarter of a pint.

Then a fifth, then a sixth, then a seventh, and so on.

Bart pours them an undefined number of pints and exclaims victoriously, “The sum of the harmonic series approaches infinity and as such is undefined for all intents and purposes in any situation within the context of actual existence.”

Satisfied with this result, the infinite array of mathematicians leaves the bar with their undefined amount of beer to share. The last one to stay hands Bart a $∞ banknote.

He suddenly notices a small slit underneath the counter, next to which an engraving reads

BILL

He pushes the banknote through the slit, and the lights in the bar flicker to life. He realizes, now, that this should be the only use he’d have for any of the money he is to receive—to keep the bar running. He has no use for it outside the premises, anyway; who knows what horrors still lie outside that door. This is the only place that remains constant. It is home. And he’s going to stay here.

Some time later, an eyepatched pirate walks into the bar and says, “I spy with my little eye, something beginning with arrrrrr.”

Bart looks around the bar and runs a quick inventory of the items in view:

An Amethyst

A Bartender

A Christian

A Double-entendre

An Englishman

A Filthy Foreign Fisherman

The complete works of Grieg

A Horse

An Irishman

A Jew

A still of Kvass

A Lemming

A Mohammedan

No potatoes

An Ortelan (partially obscured)

A Pirate

Quaternary ammonium

A Scotsman

A Triple decker

A Uvular (framed)

A Viking (voluptuous)

A Wheel

The darkmage Xakh’ath’akh’arus

Young-leaf spinach

And Zion, oh sweet mother Zion

Having thus surveyed all 25 items in the bar, Bart says, “I’m afraid you must be mistaken. There is nothing beginning with arrrrrr in this bar.”

The pirate says, “My little eye isn’t in this bar,” and leaves.

Wow, thinks Bart. I sure have a lot of things in this—wait a minute.

Xakh’ath’akh’arus?

And indeed, the darkmage emerges from the corner, his magical form emanating an aura of pure evil as he steps towards the counter. Ominous music plays in the background.

“Hello, Brian.” The entity’s voice seems to boom from every direction, every place, every moment in existence.

But Bart does not fear him. Or at least, he pretends not to. He straightens his stature and stands fearless-ishly behind the counter, the monster’s face smirking down at him. “What do you want?” he demands.

“I’ve come for a drink,” Xakh’ath’akh’arus replies.

“I refuse to serve you.”

“That’s a shame.”

Bart suddenly freezes. His consciousness is sent to another plane of existence, where he sees nothing but her. Her face. She is crying.

“Clie,” he says, but she cannot hear him. “Clie!”

She opens her mouth, but her lips don’t match the words. “It’s hopeless, Brian.” Her body transforms into a vicious tentacled mutation. “She is gone.”

“No. No!”

The monster opens its jaw and attacks him. A pain never felt before hits him, and he screams.

Then he opens his eyes, and the bar is back.

“I can hurt you,” says Xakh’ath’akh’arus. “I can destroy everything that you love. But I won’t, because you are going to serve me.”

Bart has no choice. He hastily pours the darkmage a beer and slides it over the counter.

“Good.” He quaffs it in the blink of an eye. “It looks like you’ve found my humble abode, Brian. What do you think?”

“Why?” he asks.

“Hmm?”

“Why ban all bars, if you’re going to drink at one yourself?”

Xakh’ath’akh’arus sighs. “Do you know what feels good, Brian? Drinking in a bar. Do you know what feels better? Drinking in the only bar in all of existence, and in all of time. That is the true mark that you are above all else.”

“Others have drunk here. Just now a horse and infinitely many mathematicians were served by me.”

“The horse didn’t pay. That isn’t good for business.”

“Who cares if the horse didn’t pay?!” yells Bart. “It proves that you are not above all else. You are not the only one who drinks here. You’re nothing, Xakh’ath’akh’arus! You’re nothing but a pathetic piece of shit, and you—AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Vines. There are vines everywhere. They grab every bit of flesh they can latch onto, and they suck his soul out. Clie is sitting next to him. She is laughing. She is laughing so hard. She can’t stop laughing. Her eyes are wide with fear, but her smile doesn’t vanish. She gasps for air, but she can’t stop. She tries to hold onto Bart’s hand, but the vines are too thick. She collapses, and her body still dances with laughter. And the vines swallow her.

The bar is back.

“It is most fortunate that I am in need of a bartender, Brian. Otherwise, I would have little reason to keep you alive.”

Bart coughs violently, crouching beneath the counter, his head on fire, his heart pounding. Oh, god. What kind of hell is this?

“But first, you must learn deference. Treat me with respect, and I shall reward you. Is that clear, Brian?”

He keeps coughing. He can’t speak. There’s too much going on in his head.

“Is that clear, Brian?!” Xakh’ath’akh’arus repeats more aggressively, his form turning to flames and rising five feet taller.

“Yes!” Bart cries out desperately. “For god’s sake, yes!”

“Good.” He returns to his normal form, however normal you can call it. “You mortals are funny. You think you’re so great until someone comes and accentuates your flaws, and then you cower. You don’t admit imperfection—you just surrender to a higher power, because you know it’s easier. It’s so perfect. Give me another beer.”

Bart gets back on his feet and pours him another glass, grabbing the old one and scrubbing it clean. It’s the only thing left that can comfort him—and it does the job quite well.

“You know what’s also good about you, Brian? You’re animals. You’re machines. You try to distance yourselves from the engines you create, because you fear your own insignificance. You’re so desperate to prove that your brains are nothing like computers that you invent meaningless notions like consciousness, emotions and souls, that you then so ardently claim cannot be recreated with machinery. Pathetic.”

Bart only half-listens to him. He busies himself with the task of swabbing all the glasses on the counter, which he notices have started to collect dust.

“Now, Brian. Tell me a joke.”

He freezes. “A… a joke?”

“Yes. If it makes me laugh, I will… grant you three wishes.”

“…And if it doesn’t?”

“Well, let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that. For my sake and, especially, for yours.”

Bart pauses. The perfect joke. The one joke that can make anyone laugh. What is it?

This is his destiny, he realizes. As a bartender, it is his duty to be the butt of jokes, and now comes the time that he shall be the greatest butt of the greatest joke in the history of everything. This is what it’s all been leading up to. He has to make the darkmage laugh. He has to. He will. This is it.

“Why did Hitler kill himself?”

Xakh’ath’akh’arus sighs. “Is it because he saw the gas bill?”

Bart pauses for dramatic effect. “No.”

The darkmage leans forward, intrigued.

“Everything will begin… ∞ eternities ago. When I say everything, I mean everything. It’ll all start on that day. Back then, one would dub this day the twentieth of April, sixty-nine thousand and sixty nine, or 4/20/6969. To some this date would’ve seemed humorous, perhaps funny. And, well, it is a little. But it wasn’t funny to one person in particular. That person was Adolf J. Hitler. 5000 years earlier, in his Führerbunker, he headed into his study with his wife at his side, his heart pounding restlessly. He knew it was the end. That’s what he told everyone. Except… the end of what? He intentionally left that detail vague. The date was the 20th of April, 1969. That’s the date when Hitler disappeared. Not one day earlier or later. I think. But of course, Hitler, as always, had one last Karte up his Ärmel, as they say. He had dabbled…”

And so, he continues telling this extremely long-winded joke, and as he gets closer to the end, he begins to feel tense. Xakh’ath’akh’arus isn’t smiling. He hasn’t smiled at all. What if this doesn’t work? What if he doesn’t fulfill his destiny? What kind of hellish existence would that be? Forever a bartender serving a demonic wizard, not even able to make him laugh. There could be nothing worse.

Then he delivers the punchline. And the darkmage doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t say anything, either. He remains silent for what feels like, and perhaps is, an eternity.

Then he chuckles. And then, he chortles. And cackles. And giggles, and titters, and snickers, and sniggers, and tee-hees, and ha-has, and laughs, and guffaws, and howls, and roars. It was funny. The joke was actually funny! He did it!

“Well done, Brian,” the darkmage says after he’s done laughing. “Now, as promised, you have three wishes at your disposal. Choose wisely. Or don’t. It’s up to you, really. By the way, I can deny any wish I want, and if I do you’ll lose that wish.”

Bart is ecstatic. Three wishes… he can do anything he wants.

“Well… first off, I’d like to have my name legally changed to Bart Ender.”

“Done!” With a snap of his fingers, Bart feels his name transform from Brian van der Ende to Bart Ender. It feels so good. “What is your second wish, Bart?”

“Hmm… I wish you made time two-directional, so I could go back as well.”

“Sorry, Bart. I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

“Huh? Why?”

“If eternities can be skipped from either side, they aren’t eternities—they’re just portals to different universes. Also, you lost your second wish now.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. I can deny any wish I want, and if I do you’ll lose that wish.”

“Man, I wish you’d have told me that earlier.”

“Done!”

And indeed, now Xakh’ath’akh’arus has warned Bart before he made his wishes. As a result, he doesn’t wish time to be two-directional, and thus doesn’t use up his second wish, and thus doesn’t wish for Xakh’ath’akh’arus to have warned him before. Now Bart has two wishes left again.

“Choose more wisely this time.”

Bart thinks. There’s still something aching his heart—Clie. He knows he will never see her again, and yet he can’t stop thinking about her. Is she safe? Is she okay? Oh, god. Is she hurt?

No. He can’t reach her anymore. It doesn’t matter. There’s nothing that can be done.

So why does he still feel this way?!

“I want to forget Clie.”

“…Really?”

“Yes. Wipe her out of my memory. Please.”

Xakh’ath’akh’arus, intrigued by this mortal’s giving up of love, but not really caring that much either, with a single snap removes all of Bart’s memories of Clie. Everything. He doesn’t even know her name now.

“One wish left, Bart.”

“Huh? I just had two wishes!”

“You used your second wish to forget… something.”

“What? That’s bullshit! You’re lying!”

“No, I swear, that’s really what happened—”

“You’re full of shit, Xakh’ath’akh’arus! You fucking asshole! I wish you killed yourself!”

Xakh’ath’akh’arus scoffs. “I am immortal, Bart. I cannot kill myself if I wanted to.”

“Then do it!” Bart screams. “Fulfill my wish, see what happens!”

The darkmage scoffs, raises his hand, and snaps.

∞ ETERNITIES AGO

The year was 1969. Hitler had nearly completed his ritual—everything was in place. All that was left was a drop of his own blood, and he would become a god.

But, a thought occurred to him. Did he really want to go through with this? Eternal life sure sounded nice, but wouldn’t he get bored after some time? He would have to live in eternity doing nothing!

He changed his mind, and as he did, he smiled. “Vielleicht werde ich mich in Argentinien verstecken,” he muttered happily. Then he walked to his desk and checked the gas bill. “Scheiße!” he screamed, then grabbed his Walther PPK 7.65 and shot himself.

∞ ETERNITIES LATER

“NO!” Xakh’ath’akh’arus screams as his body begins decaying. “WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!”

Bart grins. “Do you feel that, Xakh’ath’akh’arus? That’s called defeat. Bask in it, ‘cause it ain’t gonna last long.”

“IMPOSSIBLE!” he screeches. “YOU… YOU… I WILL WIPE HER MEMORY! YOU WILL BE FORGOTTEN!”

Bart laughs. “I have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”

With the remainder of his energy, the darkmage destroys all of Clie’s memories of Bart. Everything. She doesn’t even know his name anymore.

But Bart doesn’t care. Bart doesn’t know this is happening, and he doesn’t want to know, for he is free.

Xakh’ath’akh’arus implodes with a great explosion of iridescent light, and then, after a few minutes, the bar returns to normal, as if no evil spirit has ever visited it.

Bart smiles. He doesn’t even remember what he’s smiling about. He picks up another glass and starts scrubbing it, humming a cheerful tune.

 

 

It seems that everything is back to normal. Bart has returned to his past life, and so has Clie, though we’ll leave that story for another day. Now, is this it, you ask? Is this the end? Perhaps. But as we all know, history, and its counterpart in Bart’s time, has a tendency to repeat. And indeed, repeat it will.

Again and again.

 

Forever.