126 — The End That Never Happened

It was our New Beginnings Mortuary Special-of-the-Week:

Your DNA in an amino acid broth, seeding a future place with life. Your substrate stabilized on wafers and--from low Earth orbit--dispersed 360º with sun-activated atomization recursively reinforcing momentum to 92% light speed.

Thermoplast-coated wafers allow re-entry of countless "seeds" of you--YOU!--landing in areas that do the rest. You--arising--as the dominant species!

"Yes?" I addressed the tall, pale man. I noticed his heterochromia--one eye green, the other blue.

"I've come from afar, and from the future, to warn you."

"I'm listening," I encouraged.

"A man's DNA, sent by you next Thursday, reached a suitable planet in 4,000 years, finding purchase."

"Next Thursday? In 4,000 years?"

"Paradoxical? It evolved; here I am."

"From DNA? Evolved...for...?"

"750,000 years."

"The future's not the past."

"Future?" he chuckled, "think tesseractly."

"Wanna see a mahogany casket? A brick template for your family wonderwall? Our SpaceX deal--lying-in-state in perennial geosynchronous orbit?"

"Some quantum entanglement with What and Who, some quantum detanglement with When, and I stand, off-sprung from your Thursday client, from a world where all flora and fauna derived from his genetic code. Us from him--then, you from us."

"Us? You've proof?"

"Just me. And Butch Blando, coming Thursday. And you--we seeded Earth after that. Swab my DNA; Thursday, swab his. They won't match exactly--I'm millennia further, but unique keys'll ID us as both--source and destination.""

I consulted my non-quantum schedule: Thursday, Butch Blando. Indeed, he arrived Thursday, shouting, "Let's do this! My DNA, seeding the galaxy--Wow!"

"Your heterochromia," I said. "You're one-in-a-thousand."

"Yesirree."

My Tuesday visitor reappeared, standing face-to-face with Blando--heterochromia-to-heterochromia.

"Whoa! You're 1-in-a-thousand, too."

"Not where I'm from," he said. "Some privacy, please?"

"Sure," Blando agreed, leaving us.

"Heed me. His DNA mustn't be sent. The race he begets won't just be on Gliese, but here, later, hundreds of thousands' years ago. Time's weird at 92% light-speed. Your future's frightening. So's your present. Even your past isn't great. In quantum time, you don't know whether you're coming or going."

"Your point?"

"If you had the chance to avoid a whole world's horror and pain simply by not having been, would you?"

He disappeared. I returned Blando's deposit.

Not THE END.

Just OBLIVION.

__________

For Saturday, May 5, Day 126 of the Story-a-Day Challenge.

366 WORDS (without A/N)

All pictures are AI-generated, but the anachronisms are not!

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