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Once upon a very long time ago and far nearby, someone was on the beach. 

The air was still.  The sky was clear.  The sand hurt their feet.  The heat soaked through the skin and bone and straight into the soul. 

And they closed their eyes and said “that feels nice,” and that’s exactly where all the trouble began. 

***

As a result of this, Steve shouldn’t have been surprised when he was arrested. 

His neighbour was the snitch, they told him.  It didn’t need to be said but Steve wouldn’t be able to ruin her good name or anything where he was going, so why the hell shouldn’t he know about it. 

“Your neighbour was the snitch,” they told him. 

“Well, I won’t be able to ruin her good name or anything where I’m going,” he concluded. 

“Yes.”
So they took Steve out to the Everbeach, where the shore shone brighter and clearer than any of the others that blanketed the city, and they strapped him into the many beautiful and sparkling-clear mirrors, and they left him there at midnight, where he would have many hours yet to contemplate his impious lack of skin lesions and tumours before the holy orb cleared the lip of the horizon to sear away his sins.

It was a better fate than a suntan-lotion-smuggler deserved.

***

It was a big job to do, but it had to be done. 

The brightsiders had come up with it, from their holy jets that chased the golden glow, never letting the sun set on their brilliant brains. 

Impiety, it was clear, came from the shady.  Why, therefore, to suffer shade?

Yes yes yes it was a lot of labour and toil,  yes yes yes it was a project on a scale no human brain could admit, yes yes yes it had already claimed seven yillion lives and escalating. 

But wasn’t anything worth doing difficult?  The most sparkling achievements glittered in the sweat of the accomplished. 

This was a great comfort to Beatrice Hogg, as she lay entombed underneath the seventeen killion tons of concrete she’d helped use to fill up Mammoth Cave entirely.  At least her skeleton would clog the hole it was left in, so as to prevent an unsightly pocket of darkness. 

It was a pity she’d never have a chance to sip the sacred margarita again before she passed, mind you. 

***

The earth was undimmed; the people well-burned.  A brighter time had never existed. 

But did that mean it could not be imagined?
“NO!” shouted Her Sunniness, Brenda III.  “There can always be better, always warmer!  Shade has been driven out from underfoot, every crevice closed and yet it lurks among us even now!  Mountains!  Hills!  Riverbanks!  Everywhere the landscape bucks and rolls its shoulders, shadows form and mock our efforts.  The world must be made beachly, and no beach worth its salt possesses an unevenness – only the purity of flatness can save us now!  ROUND THE EARTH!”
The following heresy of the Sand Duners led to a great crusader, counter-crusader, counter-counter crusader, and ten thousand years of internecine strife before it ended in victory for the flatteners.  Then came the simple task of removing all shade from the earth’s surface. 

***

The last cloud died easily. 

The vapourpoon lodged in its flank, its thin and mild mildew of a body drained away readily, the venting-nozzle smoothly siphoned it up into the rarest of atmospheres where it could be trusted to escape into space and trouble the ground no more with its noxious looming over the very holy and very high-albedo and very sparkling world. 

The crew who killed it  – all veteran self-mummies, every one – were immediately given the glory of ascending to the sun on the True Beach, where many satellites diligent reflected light so that their ashes might never languish in that blackest crime: the night. 

No statues were ever commissioned.  Statues cast shade. 

But there were plans for the night.

***

It took a long time to find all the relics of the Old Wars and take them apart and put them back together and copy them and fail to set them off and succeed to set them off and make ninety dillion of them and ship them and aim them and do all the fiddly math and do it again and again and again to be sure and execute the project manager before she could sabotage it and get the word out. 

But it was all worth it for that glorious sixty seconds, where the missiles launched and soared and swooped around the planet into that eternal foe and vanquished it for, as far as the population of the earth was concerned, all time. 

They stood there on their beaches, sun behind them, sun in front of them.  The air was still.  The sky was clear.  The sand hurt their feet.  The heat soaked through the skin and bone and straight into the soul and out the other side and back again. 

And they closed their eyes and said “that feels nice,” and that’s exactly where all the trouble ended. 

It was not the finest city.  That was the Windmerre, where you could see through the translucent ice under your feet to the city’s twin underneath, a perfect mirror hanging underneath in the freezing sea and every bit as beautiful. 

It was not the grandest city. That was Arktar Tiir, atop the pole, thick-spired and aglow at all hours of dark and light. 

It was not the oldest city.  That was Riir, nestled in the heart of the big bay and shielded by craggy hills, like it was afraid to leave the grasp of the land too far behind. 

Dirredew was none of those cities.  It was barely a city at all. 

But it was the only city they had left. 

***

Several hundred years ago, someone had found a lovely wide crevasse in the ice.  Then they’d told their friends, who’d told their friends, who’d told their friends, and so on. 

Now instead of a lovely wide crevasse in the ice there was Dirredew, which was a lovely wide crevasse in the ice that was filled with pockets holding families, storage-halls, freezing-galleries, carverooms, meltchambers, and so on and so forth. 

It also held all that was left of them after the funny little warm people had come with their machines.  Machinery was not a common thing, since it needed walking on the land and ripping of the dirt and the stone.  But the funny little warm people had loved the land, and so had all kinds of ingenious machines like the little tubular ones that they would stick into you and warm you from the inside out until you collapsed into dead grey slush, or the huge war-radiators that would shred a city’s walls in a few days, or the cunning sorter-sluices that would sift through the melt and rubble for whatever it was they were killing everybody for. 

Maybe it was people’s hearts.  The funny little warm people did like shiny things, or seemed to, as long as they weren’t made of ice.  Ice they didn’t like at all.

So now there they were, all of them that were left, waiting down in Dirredew’s depths.  Barricades over the causeways; camouflage over the barricades, quiet down in the arcades.  Everyone shushing each other, nobody breathing too loudly, not even one chisel ringing down in the carvehalls where otherwise new lives would be made every day. 

But there were hot shots from funny little warm people up above anyways, and then the low great grinding sounds of the machines being pulled up.  So everyone could relax and start talking again, because their doom had come. 

***

Their doom took some time to start up.  The funny little warm people’s machines didn’t like the cold much – maybe that was why they were so effective at ruining it – and they always took a good few hours of grumbling, rumbling, crumbling, and mumbling before they would really begin to steam and hiss and growl. 

So there was time to say goodbye and so on.  Final wishes, final kisses, final tears, final plans, all the things people did with each other. 

One of the final plans was a bit of a surprise, even to the person who had it.  But it was a big surprise, so other people noticed, and it surprised them too,, and so on and so forth until at last everyone had heard it and seized it and taken it up as something to do, which is always the best and most comforting thing you can have at times of incredible and inevitable doom. 

A plan to-do is a weight of eternal suffering, but a plan enacted is friendly and cheerful and one to treasure.  And since there was no more time left for to-do, all that was left was the happy ending. 

***

The little warm people broke through the last of the barricades some time later, melt-tubes in hand, violence ready.  Dirredew’s many winding ramps were well-built; ridged for a proper grip that let even the biggest of their war-radiators roll downhill without a single slip, and their travel through the city was headlong and ferocious, each street taken at textbook speed. 

The family-pockets were empty, and that made sense because the people liked to spend their final moments in as much company as possible.  The funny little warm people ignored them save for a few cursory scouts.

The storage-halls were empty, and that was a little odd because they were some of the biggest places for public assembly, if you liked that sort of thing.  Many of the funny little warm people stayed here to plunder the vaults for valuables anyways.  They did so love things that shone. 

The freezing-galleries were empty, and that was very very puzzling because they were large and spacious AND they were the last places that would boil and fry under the weight of even the mightiest war-radiators, so carefully sculpted for chill and cold they were.  The funny little warm people set up some of them to begin the process and shuddered at the chill and pressed onwards. 

The carverooms were empty.  Half-carved people sitting there, not yet alive, abandoned by their parents.  The funny little warm people stopped for a moment to torch some of the more complete ones, but none of them were finished enough to be alive and so it wasn’t satisfying at all. 

The meltchambers were last, and here the funny little warm people were at the apex of their confusion because everywhere the people could be hiding was empty.  Was the city abandoned? 

So since they were so confused they fell back on the textbook thing to do, which was open up the meltchambers so their warmth would help their machines melt the rest of the city, and that was when all the people came pouring out at once in a great flood. 

***

The little warm people made meltwater.  It was what they did.  It was what their machines did.  Nothing made a little warm person smile like seeing blue liquid lap where ice mountains had stood. 

But they didn’t swim in it.  They especially didn’t swim in it when they were weighted down with the little grey tubes and the armoured coats and the heavy boots that they wore to go out and melt the people. 

Then the flood of the people reached the war-radiators and turned red-hot, and it also became clear that the funny little warm people, for all their use and abuse of heat, didn’t like too much of that either.  The flood steamed and hissed and roared and some of the funny little warm people tried to run but the heat outran them, raced upwards, ate the ramps and the floors of Dirredew out front underneath their feet and left them with nothing to save them but empty damp air. 

If any of the people had still been there, they would have been greatly surprised to see the funny little warm people scream for cold, for cold, for cold.  A wish for ice of all things. 

But they wouldn’t have been surprised for long, for then the machine-scalded water bored through the bottom of Dirredew’s crevasse and the little warm people found something bigger and colder than they could’ve ever imagined, but they didn’t have to worry about that for very long. 

***

Time passed.  The other armies of the funny little warm people completed their missions and returned home.  Throngs welcomed them, children worshipped them, leaders adorned them with shiny things that they loved so very much. 

No more cold, no more cold, no more cold.

And at the ends of the world where there was no more cold or ice the ocean turned and turned upon itself and the currents changed, inch by inch. 

Snow fell in odd places the next year, which puzzled the funny little warm people. 

They would be very puzzled for a very long time. 

The machine was one of the very few things older than the lighthouse-keeper, formed of certain elemental substances that were designed less for durability and more for solidity, for an essential ignorance of the power of time.

It went ‘plip.’

That was interesting and new.  It had been a long time since anything had been interesting and new for the lighthouse-keeper.  They weren’t quite sure how to feel about that.

So they checked the other machines, the ones that would never go ‘plip,’ and they found a little spec with a little light drifting very nearby in the surrounding hundred million cubic miles, practically next-door. 

Well now!

Well.  Now. 

Now it was obvious what to do. 

***

It was a shockingly crude little thing, all hasty riveting and curdling metals on top of a fuming, spitting fusion drive.  The flare that had drawn the gaze of the lighthouse-keeper’s machine had been caused by a one-in-a-billion chance particle bouncing through its flimsy sides and setting off a near-cataclysmic chain failure of its internal systems. 

There was one occupant, who was dead.  Luckily this was a very new problem for them and the lighthouse-keeper possessed a very old solution, which they bolted onto the occupant’s chest with some care and no fumbling.  They’d never used this device, and certainly never on one so tiny, but there’d been time for practice to drive away any conceivable doubts. 

It took a little while.  The lighthouse-keeper prepared some hydration, then prepared some nourishment, then simply sat and stared at something they hadn’t stared at before.  It was very refreshing. 

The occupant’s wheezy breathing took on a harsh edge as muscles took over from machinery.  Their heart beat on its own.  Their eyelids flickered and flittered.  And finally they opened them. 

“Hello,” said the lighthouse-keeper.  “How are you?”
“Awful.  Am I dead?”
“Not anymore.  What’s your name?”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the lighthouse-keeper.  What’s your name?”

“Where am I?”
“The lighthouse.  What’s your name?”
“What’s the lighthouse?”
The lighthouse-keeper tried not saying anything, and that did the trick.  “Motte.  Major Motte.”
“Nice to meet you.  The lighthouse is an observation post.”
“For what?”
“You, I think.”
“You think?”
“It’s been a very long time.  I’ve forgotten details.”
Major Motte’s body language was somewhat stiff due to their death, but the movement of their facial features was wonderfully expressive.  The lighthouse-keeper was sure that if they were more familiar with their species, there would be no end of detail they could glean from it.

“What happened to me?”
“Your vehicle was struck by a small particle.  A very low chance of happening, but it wasn’t fit to withstand the force and lost functionality.  I retrieved it and repaired you.  Why were you in such a garbage heap?”
“A WHAT?”
“You made me ask my last question three times; this time please give me courtesy.  Why?  It’s not a very good vehicle.  It’s dangerous, and slipshod, and fragile, and you were all that was aboard.”
“I was a volunteer,” said Major Motte. 

Now it was the lighthouse-keeper’s turn to be surprised.  “Why?”
“I was the first.  The first out of our solar system, the first human traveller to visit – was going to visit – another star.  The first actual intelligence to transmit information home.”
“Why would you want to do that?” asked the lighthouse-keeper incredulously.  “There’s nothing out there.”
Major Motte’s face did the most interesting things yet.  “Nothing?  Nothing!?  What do you call this?  What do you call yourself?  I haven’t even made it to my destination yet and I was contacted by the first proof of extra-terrestrial life we’ve ever documented!  This is not NOTHING!  YOU are not nothing!”

“I seem to have upset you.  My apologies.  But I do mean this sincerely: there’s nothing out there.  That’s why this lighthouse was built.”
“Your turn to answer my question then,” shot back Major Motte, “what is the lighthouse?”

The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “A post to keep an eye on something.  It’s so scarce, you see.  Any trace of something should be looked at.  Some of the somethings helped us do this after we looked at them long enough.  It was a bit of a numbers game.”
“Then…then I’m trying to do the same thing!  You’re just me, but ahead of the curve!”
“Agreed,” said the lighthouse-keeper.

“Then why discourage us?  Discourage me?”
“There’s nothing out there.”
“If there was nothing but nothing, you wouldn’t be talking to me.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “Functionally, I might as well have not done so.  Would you like some hydration and nutrition?”

“Please.”

***

They ate.  It was simpler than it seemed; apparently life on Major Motte’s planet was still basically carbon and some other bits.

“I would like to talk to your leadership,” Major Motte said at last, once they were finished ingesting their frankly absurd amount of hydration. 

“That is not possible.”
“Communication delays?  Or something else?”
“Both.  I haven’t heard from anyone else in seventeen million years.”
“You’re seventeen million years old?”
“Twenty.”
“Twenty million years?”

“No, twenty years.  A copy of my consciousness is recorded in the lighthouse and placed into a new body at the end of my natural lifespan.”
“That’s horrible.”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “It would seem so.”
“What happened to your people?”
“Who knows?  It could have been anything.  War between each other, a big rock in the wrong place at the wrong time, biosphere collapse, resource starvation, unilateral suicide.  Nobody sends everyone all the news all the time.  One little lapse at a wrong moment and everyone was quiet and I don’t know why.”

“There’s nobody left?”
“There might be other lighthouse-keepers.”
“There were many of you?  You found multiple other worlds bearing life?”
“Four.”
“How long did your people look for them?”
“One billion years.”

 Major Motte’s face didn’t do anything at all this time.

“I told you,” said the lighthouse-keeper.  “There is nothing out there.”

“What did the other four lighthouse-keepers find?”
“I’m not sure.  It’s been a while.  I think three of them suffered stellar collapse.  One of them produce ten sapient species.  One of those made contact with us.  I think they went extinct a hundred million years ago.”
“How?  Why?”
The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted.  “I’m not sure.  History is like everything else, you know.  There’s nothing out there.  There is so much nothing out there and the something is so small that in the end – there is no end – nothing wraps around it entirely, no matter what.”

A little bit of Major Motte’s face moved, and once again the lighthouse-keeper felt a little regret that they had no idea what that meant, and likely never would. 

“I’ve got to leave,” said Major Motte.

“Where to?”
“Wherever your orders used to come from.  I was flying blind before, but now I might as well follow my leads.”
“There’s nothing there.”
“Nonetheless.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“Nonetheless.”
“You are extremely pointless,” said the lighthouse-keeper, “but I will help you with this, since you want it.”
“Thank you.”

The lighthouse-keeper expanded laterally and contracted. 

“What is that?” asked Major Motte.
“What is what?”
“That thing you do where you expand laterally and contract.”
“I am filled with overwhelming sorrow.”
“Oh.  I thought maybe you were shrugging in ambivalence.”
“No.”

***

Major Motte’s vehicle departed not long thereafter, aimed for a different star. 

The lighthouse-keeper watched their trail go cold, and waited.

The machine did not go plip. 

But there was still time.  Plenty of time.  And plenty of nothing to fill it. 

The giant walked slowly, fingers half-clenched at his sides, arms swaying, and head always, always, always, always pointed at the ground. 

There was a lot down there, and it confused him.  And being confused made him nervous.  And being nervous made him frightened.  And being frightened was the worst thing in the universe. 

So he kept an eye on it, just in case.

Woosh and up came his foot, seven leagues in one long clumsy swing, woosh and THUMP and down again, carefully placed. 

Not sure what that thing to the left was, best avoid it.  Not sure what that thing to the right could be, better steer clear here.  What’s up ahead?  Might want to take this step short. 

Gullies.  Quarries.  Creeks.  Peaks.  So many things, so many little things that could creep up and stab a sole or twist an ankle. 

Eyes on the ground.  Always, always, always on the ground. 

But they were very very big eyes and the ground was so very very little, so now and then something would happen and go crunch and the giant would have to stop for a while until his nerves forgave him and his toes stopped hurting. 

***

Now and then was today. 

It hadn’t gone crunch though.  More of a squish. 

The giant lifted up his foot, fearing to see the red sticky smear that usually meant a very bad day indeed, but found only damp earth and mangled furniture. 

“Hello,” said his big toe. 

“Hello, toe,” said the giant to his big toe.  “Why are you talking to me now?”
“Up here,” said his big toe. 

The giant looked up there.  There was someone on his big toe.  That explained things completely.  “Hello, not my toe,” said the giant.  “What are you doing there?”
“A toe came through my house,” explained the someone on his big toe.  “I ended up on top of it, so no harm done.”
“Oh thank goodness,” said the giant.  “I was worried I stepped on someone again.”
“Does that happen a lot?”
“Twice.  But it’d happen more if I didn’t look out for it.”
“You keep an eye out, huh?”
“All the time.  There’s so much down there, and it’s all so small, and confusing, which makes me nervous, which makes me frightened, which is the worst thing in the universe.  So I have to watch my feet.”
“All the time?”
“All the time.”

“Watching my feet would get awfully tiresome after a few days,” mused the someone on the giant’s big toe.  “Don’t you get sick of it?”
“If I did, the worst thing in the universe would happen,” said the giant.  “So I can’t.”
“Huh.  Bit of a pity, that is.  I bet you have a great view from up there.”

“No, I have to squint a lot.”

“Not a great view of the ground.  A great view of the horizon.”
The giant scratched his head and dandruff fell like rain.  “The horizon?”
“Over there.  And there.  And there.  And there.  And there.”
“That’s a lot of horizon,” said the giant uneasily.  “How come I’ve never heard of it?”
“You’ve never looked for it.  It’s all around you.  Go on, take a peek.”
The giant pursed his lips.  “Promise to tell me if something gets under my feet?”
“Sure.  Go on, try it.”
So the giant raised his head for the first time in as long as he could remember and tried it. 

***

It made him dizzy. 

“Woah,” said the giant.  And even that sounded weird, with his neck all straightened out and his throat unclenched.  “Woah.  Woah woah woah.”

“ ,” said the someone on the giant’s big toe. 

The giant leaned back down again. 

“How was it?” they repeated. 

“Big,” said the giant.  “Really, really big.  I think it might be bigger than me.”
“Was it okay?”
The giant thought about it.  “It was alright.  Nice to see something new.  But I’m a little nervous I could step on something while I’m looking at it.  Or something might creep underneath my feet and get squashed.  Or-”

“Tell you what,” said the someone on the giant’s big toe, “why don’t you come back here later and take a look at the horizon again, and I can keep an eye out to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
This seemed fair and reasonable to the giant, so he agreed to it and walked off.  And his feet seemed a little less clumsy, and the ground seemed a little less confusing. 

***

“I saw things,” he told the someone on his big toe.  “Big fluffy things.  White and grey and blue and black.”

“Those are clouds,” they told him.

“I like them, I think,” he said.  And he walked off and took surer, straighter steps that weren’t quite as cut short.

***

“I saw things,” he told the someone on his right foot.  “Little flittery things that went up and down and up and down and up and down and honked.”
“Those are geese,” they told him.

“I think they’re funny, I think,” he said.  And he walked off and his back was a little straighter. 

***

“I saw something else,” he told the someone leaning against his right leg. “It was so blue it turned black with shine in it and the sun was white.”
“That was the night,” they told him. 

“I think I like it.  But how come I’ve never seen it before?”

“It’s over the horizon,” they said.  “You have to lean just right and look just so and then go farther.”

“Farther than what?” asked the giant. 

“Farther than you know.”
The giant itched his arm and thought about it.  “That confuses me,” he said.  “And what confuses me makes me nervous.  And what makes me nervous makes me frightened.  And being frightened is the worst thing in the universe.”

“But?” asked the someone leaning against his right leg.
“But I want to see it anyways,” said the giant.  And straightened up and looked.  And then looked farther.

And farther. 

And farther.

And farther.

And farther.

And farther up until there was nothing but everything there was. 

***

“Oh,” said the giant.  “Oh.”
“What did you see?” asked the someone standing beside them. 

“Everything,” said the giant, shaking his head.  “Absolutely everything.”
“There’s a lot of it,” they said. 

“Yes,” said the giant.  Creeks and peaks seemed very ordinary just now.  Very small, but close enough to touch.  “A lot of it everywhere.  I thi.  I thin.  I think.”
“Yes?” asked the someone standing beside them.

“I like it,” said the giant.  “I like it.  I’m going to go for a walk now.”
“Mind your step?”
“I don’t need to anymore,” said the giant.

And he went on his way, on his walk, with the world all around him.