The living scarf twisted around my neck, flowing back and forth.

My neurons tingled, misfiring. I had accepted defeat, trapped in a stasis field of some kind, unable to escape. I had accepted the scarf.

Was it numbing the pain of being compressed into a hexagonal cocoon that pressed tighter and tighter?

No, it was showing me what it could see and feel, what my limited human vision could not.

The aggregate virus bore into my body, feasting on my cells, borrowing me to expand itself, yet it did not take over completely.

I was here, no I was out there, I was a hundred trillion cells and they were ALL suddenly under my control.

It seems that our relationship status has been upgraded from "master controller/slave drive" to an "unlicensed symbiosis".

The Biomatrix served as my new eyes, letting me peer through my own skin, bones, flesh and organs, through my fireproof jacket, through the web of intertwining lights that bound us in a stasis field, through the thick, crystalline walls of the Arbitrator's spacecraft. My vision intensified, expanding in curves, the arm of the milky way amplified, the stars intensely vibrant, fiery and beautiful. I saw the serenity of the Earth below and the Aurora Borealis dancing on the poles. I could almost taste the Earth's atmosphere and each layer was a different flavor, shade and color. It was bigger, deeper than I could have possibly imagined. The world just kept going on and on and on.

For a brief moment, lost in the ravishing sharpness of planetary iridescence below, I even forgot that my world was mostly a weary, barren wasteland.

The obsidian, spiked sphere that was the Arbitrator's vessel was gliding silently over the Earth's exosphere, twinkling ominously.

Why? Why could I see all of this?

Did the Biomatrix want to show me how desperate my - no, our - situation was?

How there was nothing that could be done?

Did it merely want to look at the end of a world, something that it had never seen before?

...For it had never failed to bring a civilization of organic beings to its knees, or to defend what was necessary and judge those that needed to be judged, until now.

Its failure was bitterly irritating, it was unacceptable, it was inexplicable. Probability pointed out that it was the fault of Zee Captain. It didn't know who Zee Captain was. It had millions of guesses, but they were all nasty or simply insane. Perhaps I didn't even want to know these guesses. I ignored them because most were horrible, impossible things or even visions of me. The Biomatrix refracted its unpleasant emotions through me and they ranged somewhere from absolute distress to angry desperation.

I saw the dark matter drop disconnect from the Arbitrator's tetra-seed carrier. The Biomatrix highlighted its path for me to track. Thanks a lot. Now I can see the exact moment my world implodes. Now I can remember it forever, in perfect clarity.

The meteoric seed pierced the Earth's atmosphere and the thick cloud cover embraced it heartily.

It reached its destination and with a bang or a million echoing whispers. The shell of the seed containing the drop collapsed, bending everything into itself.

The point of terminus.

The end of all things.

The singularity was free.

The event horizon wave glittered like a thousand inverted rainbows, falling and rising, pulling in and pushing away.

I could see its hell-fire in a billion colors. Colors that I could not name. Colors that weren't even meant for me to see. Waves of fire spread out across the atmosphere exploding into lightning storms, tornadoes of fire and rings of Northern Lights all across the planet.

This was brilliantly alarming and deadly. The terminus point drew clouds into itself, forming the waves of a new storm that was unlike any other, that ran across the world. It ripped apart the surface of the planet wherever its flames touched. It evaporated mountains of ice and licked up the continental stone plates that were directly underneath. As the hole in space-time expanded its reach, everything was drawn into the collapsing void. Nothing could escape it, except for the Arbitrator's ship, which was designed exactly for harnessing the wave to propel itself across the universe.

I suddenly understood that the Arbitrator came here only because it destroyed another world, not unlike ours.

This was how it could instantly move from one place to another, faster than the speed of light.

This was the decompression that I felt, that temporarily killed me, when the Arbitrator arrived.

This was its mission. To punish those that did not please or side with the Union. The stasis field would carry me directly to the Universe Compendium court, while the Arbitrator and its carrier would shift elsewhere, forward in space-time, wherever it was necessary, to wherever a call from the Union would summon it.

The planet grew lighter, losing mass.

Nothing could withstand the brutal pull of the void. Nothing that the Biomatrix knew could stop it. Why? Why would the Arbitrator do something so abhorrent? Did it have something to do with "AI defense network"?

-=cOrReCt=-, the Biomatrix whispered. Its voices were those of my own cells.

-=iN A DeSpErAtE GaMbLe tO SuRvIvE, yOuR CiViLiZaTiOn hAs bIrThEd a cOgNiTiVe gRiD ThE OnLy pUrPoSe oF WhIcH Is tO FeEd oN ThE NeUrAl wAvEs oF ThInKiNg bEiNgS. tHe cOgNiTiVe gRiD MuSt bE HaLtEd hErE, bEfOrE ItS MeChAnIzEd pEsTiLeNcE CoNsUmEs oThEr wOrLdS.

yOuR WoRlD ReEkS Of tHe gRiD. iT HaS SpReAd dEeP UnDeRgRoUnD AnD HiGh oVeRhEaD As fAr aS ThE TrOpOsPhErE. tHe gRiD PlAnS To dO SoMeThInG HiGhLy uNpLeAsAnT To tHe eNtIrE PlAnEt iF It hAs nOt dOnE So aLrEaDy.

It mUsT Be wIpEd cLeAn fRoM ThE UnIvErSe. YoUr pLaNeT Is bAdLy iNfEcTeD AnD ThE ArBiTrAtOr hAs tHe nEcEsSaRy cUrE, iT MaTtErS NoT WhEtHeR ThE PaTiEnT DiEs aS LoNg aS OtHeRs cAn bE SaVeD.=-

The negative sphere grew quickly, it already devoured a patch bigger than the country of England.

Everything went into slow-motion.

Was that your tampering with my perception again, or the fact that the event horizon stops time itself?

You know what, it doesn't matter. I don't care. This is all too horrible. This moment that lasts forever. This simple fact: that I will be the only human left alive in the universe and that my planet must be erased for reasons not entirely clear to me.

The mug began to vibrate and in this vibration I started to hear a song of metal, a song that was in exact tune with the inescapable death that was being brought forth by the all consuming, growing sphere of the void.

I wanted to be elsewhere.

I didn't want to see these final seconds of my world, stretched out to all eternity.

I didn't want to be here. Please let me go. Please wake me up somewhere else!

Construct for me a memory from my past that's so real that it lasts a lifetime.

Take me back, away from all of this.

I know you can, even in the confines of the stasis field, even if you are not allowed to kill me now.

You can do it.

Do it!

...Pretty please?