Key to Forever

I used to measure my time here by the beating of my own heart.

Now, I only count it by the people who came to see me.

The one that approached was special.

He would be the last.

Upon staggering into my sphere of protection and seeing something other than the black dust swirling across the atmosphere, the man stopped, wiped the residue off the glass helmet on his suit, and squinted at me. Seeing me must have been a surprise. After all, everything else on the planet had long since crumbled. It had taken millennia, but buildings collapsed into the ground and even the bones of the people had turned into the dust that swirled around us. The hostile atmosphere had taken a toll on his suit. The glass helmet had a myriad of chips and cracks and there were singed tears in his thick clothing. Unless he’d parked nearby, he wouldn’t be able to make it off the planet with his life.

His curious expression changed to one of terror when I shifted my weight and the stone dais beneath me cracked and groaned. It used to hold a statue of our people’s false god, a winged being holding a shining lantern aloft, but it had failed along with its people. Now, it was only me.

“You’re… You’re alive.” His whisper couldn’t carry through the howling wind around us, but I saw the question in his eyes. “How are you alive?”

I didn’t want to talk to him. I wanted my last fleeting moments to be as quiet and peaceful as the broken world around me would allow. The effort of maintaining the protective barrier around me sucked the last of the heat from my body and my only source of comfort was the locket pulsating against my chest, but I still had a purpose to pretend to fulfill, so I spoke. It took several moments for my bones to crack free of the way they’d locked together from lack of use, and every twitch brought agony to my fading being. Still, I managed to speak above the wind.

“I refused to die. When the world fell I wanted something to live on to warn others away from our mistakes.”

The man looked around and his mouth twisted into a wry smile. My eyesight had dimmed and blurred eons earlier, but his expression made it obvious how marred his face was. His lips were burned off and one eye was a blackened orb sniveling in the back of its socket. “How’d that go for you?”

I looked down at my feet, where a few shards of still intact, burnt bones littered the ground. They were the ones I couldn’t allow to return home with what they’d learned from me. “No one who came would listen. They sought the technology to cure themselves or someone close to them from some terminal disease, or worse, they’d heard of our weapons and wanted to know how they could turn their enemies to dust. They didn’t care enough to learn of the impending doom that faced their world or how to stop it.”

“Of course they wouldn’t.” He kicked a nearby bone and it bounced away, out of the shield, where the wind whipped it into the air and the tiny razor blades of dust tore it to shreds. “They wouldn’t. Not until the seas rose over their cities and the sun burned a hole in their atmosphere and the air grew too toxic for their children to breathe. Then they’d be afraid, but by then, it’d be too late to send anyone for help.”

I tried to close my eyes briefly, but it took several long minutes for me to open them again. His words brought back ancient memories I’d spent centuries burying. “The other planets still remember what happened to our world? I would have thought they would have forgotten by now.”

“Oh, they did. I didn’t even know this place existed until my ship pointed out you were in the habitable zone for this solar system. I’m talking about what happened to my world.”

Before I could answer I felt something break inside of me. The strength that had been holding up the barrier around me gave out. The top cracked and shards of dust drizzled over me, along with a cloud of acrid air that burned my eyes and lungs. I didn’t mind the assault, but the man did. His breaths turned to hacking wheezes that made little clouds of dust spray out of the damaged areas of his helmet.

What remained of my heart hurt for him. He’d survived one apocalypse only to fall victim to my failures in another. I wished I could not care, but even now, at the very end, I couldn’t bring myself to ignore his plight. My joints creaked and ached as I stepped forward, dragging the failing barrier with me. “You need to leave this place.” I said.

He didn’t. Instead, he looked up and glared at me with a vehemence I hadn’t seen in a long time. “You know how to prevent what happened to our worlds?”

“Yes.” The dust dug into my eyes and burned, but I had stopped being able to form tears long ago.

“Then why are you here instead of out there warning people?” He demanded.

I couldn’t see him any longer, but I could imagine his expression, the one of rage people gave me when I told them I wouldn’t help them. Their eyes burned with the fierceness of justified anger, knowing they were right, but their jaws trembled with withheld fear. They couldn’t fail…

They didn’t realize they already had.

“I can’t leave here.” I said. “This is my people’s home. This is my world. This is where I belong. Without it, I am nothing.”

He had the audacity to grab me. Once, I would have turned him to ash for his boldness, but I didn’t have the strength left for that, so I just cringed away from the rough material of his gloves.

“Lady, look around you. Everything is dead. There is nothing here to live for. You could be out there, saving lives, but instead you’re moldering here.” He tried to turn me around, presumably to gesture at the ruined world around me, but instead my legs gave out. I flared my tattered, broken wings in an attempt to stop my descent, but they were no good any longer and I crumpled into the dust.

“They trusted me,” I choked, “and I failed them. They died in agony while I selfishly lived on. I deserve to share their fate.”

The barrier shattered. Wind held back for millennia howled forward and began to tear at my wings and clothes, and the searing heat of the unforgiving sun showered down and caused the remaining feathers on my wings to catch fire and melt. The man cursed and hit the ground, ash rising up and whipping at him until it had buried his hands and turned his helmet into a web of broken glass. I reached out to aid him knowing I didn’t have any strength left to do so.

Strangely, though I felt nothing left inside me with which to fight, a soothing warmth started in my chest. It began to radiate out before my eyes, encasing my fragile skin in a soft, shimmering light that beat back the torrential hail of biting dust and deflected the rays of scorching heat assaulting me. The power continued outward, wrapping around him as well and staving off certain death.

“What is that?” The man yelled, letting go of my hand and taking several steps back.

I forced my eyes open and looked down at my chest, where the locket hung. A blue crystal, cut in the shape of a heart with intricate gold filigree encasing it, glowed with a power I’d long forgotten. I reached up and clasped the precious jewel with all my strength and grimaced at the warmth as it burned my fingers.

“The last of the survivors gave it to me. When I told them what I was going to do, they took the locket and poured everything into it. Their knowledge, their experiences, their very life force, so something of theirs could save others.”

I hadn’t thought such knowledge would extend into the physical ability to protect me and others. Not that it mattered. There wasn’t enough left of me to be worth keeping alive.

The man looked at the locket in awe for several moments. “This… This is amazing. Do you know how many worlds this could save?”

I shrugged and began to remove it from around my neck. “It couldn’t save mine, but it can save you now. Take it and go.”

He stood up and dragged me to my feet, stopping me from throwing my last bit of life away. “Do you think your people gave up everything to make that so you could save them? They made it save you. They wanted you to live on. Do you think they really wanted you to die here?”

I didn’t respond. Instead, a tear escaped my eye and slid down my cheek, into the whirling dust at my feet. “I didn’t deserve it.” I whispered.

“I didn’t deserve to survive either.” The man admitted. “But I bet out there, somewhere, is someone who does. And you can save them.”

I looked at the ground; at the dusted remains of my people: the people I’d led into a utopian empire that turned and crumbled and died before my eyes. The people I’d lived and laughed and loved among until the very end. The people who’d given their lives to see me survive.

And then I looked up, beyond the toxic clouds ruling the sky, up to the stars.

It had been a long time since I could count the beating of my own heart—much less the subtle breathing of someone else—but I marveled at it as my new-found companion deftly guided his ship through the stars in search of other worlds in need of help. Watching the blackened remains of my home planet disappear behind us hurt as much as its razor-sharp winds, but there was a new life glowing in me all the same.

Ten thousand years ago, I chose not to die.

Today is the first day I chose to live.