HOME | DD

Description
In a time long after time ceased to be relevant in my universe, I Eli of Danadre am not only the last man alive, but the last organism and perhaps last collection of matter left.  I have lived in this state perhaps as long as eons or no more than a few minutes or even less; it has become impossible for me to tell.  As the last consciousness of which I am aware in this reality, I have taken the burden of remembering upon myself.  I am fortunate that in the time of time I exposed myself to an enormous amount of historical and scientific knowledge and literature.

I have devoted to my memory everything that I learned, but in my lifetime there was so much that I simply hadn't time to learn.  Fortunately, in the absence of time, something else has arisen.  I have no way to describe it except that it is to its predecessor what glass was to air.  I can see various events from the Age of Time, as I have begun to call it.  I have also had the privilege to hear much of the music from that period's musicians and experience virtually all aspects of that time's cultures.

I have seen so many things though these windows: the horror of wars fought between amazingly large groups of men, the beauty of a field full of flowers, the pain of losing parents and friends.  What keeps me sane most of all though, is the one window which I have seen more than once.  In fact, I have seen this same window more than 200 times by my estimation.

Every time this small window opens, there are two children visible; specifically one boy and one girl.  They are both children, the girl with her curly red hair towering several inches over the younger boy.  They are dressed in what was formal attire at the time, if I am not mistaken and furthermore they are counting, as if to an audience.  The pair count not only in one language, but in at least six different ones simultaneously.  I've yet to bother pondering how such a feat was possible for the pair.

As often as I've seen the frame of time, I've yet to understand why they're counting or even what the names of the children are.  Who ever they are, and why ever they count, the moment always ends when they reach seventeen.

Regardless, I must admit I hope I someday understand what the frame means.  Of course, this seems as likely as finding another of my kind alive and able to communicate with me.  Of course, I see millions of my kind, but seeing things through Time's Successor is far different than being with the event itself.  You can't commune with the visages, you can only observe.

Part of me wonders if I really even exist at all.  Why should it be that I can experience but not be experienced if I really did exist?  But that's a thought that I don't want to run to its end.

For now, I'll sit and watch.  They're counting again.