I had forgotten how fatigue felt, but was reminded by my sweat and heavy panting. As I stood in the empty corridor of the Forum Warehouse, exhausted after pushing the large trolley cart of tanks of cryogenics liquid with just one good arm, I had to stop before the reception desk to catch my breath.

Through their own videos, G had announced to me his engagement; Leah rambled on about her theories of my grandfather's prediction; and Matthews had thanked me for inspiring him, just a month before his death. Even my parents gave me their love. Now, in my left eye, Leila, the little girl I had known her for her whole life, just a few weeks after I've left, held out the gleaming trophy of her 2nd place victory in a song writing competition.

She said happily, “And when I got on stage, everyone clapped, and I didn't feel so scared anymore!” Grinning as giddily as she did when I got her a toy. Joan sat beside her, young and proud. “Look at how shiny this is!” She waved her prize again.

“Alright Lei, time to go,” Joan told her, smiling through the camera at me in farewell.

“Aww...but I want to talk to dad more,” Leila added, just before the camera turned off.

I meekly croaked, “Don't go.”

I realized I never got the chance to hear the song she wrote, of ask if she ever learnt to play an instrument. And the knowledge that I would never see them again finally seemed to have sunk in. I felt a roll of water moving down my cheeks. Surprised, I reached for it but could not find the droplet. Since I couldn't physically cry, I wondered if I had just imagined the experience, or perhaps a droplet had gotten on my face somehow.

Finally, I took a seat, back to the cart of tanks. I was no longer tired, but I could no longer find the strength to stand. I sighed, stretched out my feet and rested into the crate.

“What's the point,” I asked myself. “Everyone's gone.”

Initiating Video Playback

The words flashed across my eye and I sat straight up. The videos had been playing chronologically backwards. From Amelia and gang, to Leila, Parker, Joan, G, Matthews, my parents, and the last video of my wife and daughter together. There was no one else I expected to reach out to me after all of them.

I got to my feet and found renewed strength in curiosity and started to push the cart again. Even after I've reached the door, the video had only been half loaded, which was much longer than any of the previous videos left to me.

As I waited for the video to load, I managed to push the cart out the door, down the hill, and next to the Cryo-Tube before the loading bar even reached the final 10%. From within the crate, I took out a pair of short polyethylene water pipes. I connected them to opposite ends of the Cryo-Tube and finished the initial installation just as the video came on.

“Hello Milton,” the man said to me.

I dropped what I was doing and stood dumbfounded, half my sight staring at blank space while the other at the man in the video. I remembered him from a distant past. Before the Cryo-Tube. Before Leila. Before even Joan.

With his green eyes that shone even to his later age and deep maroon hair that I inherited with pride, my grandfather, Timothy Kleve, greeted me from the other side of the video.

The old man began, “I wonder how many people before me started with, 'If you're watching this...'? Quite a cliché thing to say. But uh...well, you know, if you're watching this, you should be...” He took out his phone and swiped at it. “Twenty years to the end of the world, if my prediction is right.” He swiped at the phone again and squinted at the document on it. “Which it is. I'm so smart.”

I had forgotten how childish the old man could be. I gave a derisive sigh and went back to work on connecting the tanks of liquid to the machine, wondering if when I'm asleep, the tubes might break. I decided not to think of the things I can't control and carried on.

He continued, “You might be wondering why you? Why not a train soldier or someone more experienced or qualified?” I admit that I had thought of that. But at the time when I accepted the offer for the program, I had only a selfish intention of prolonging my life in mind. “Well, truth is, you're the only one who can.”

Tim looked solemnly off his desk. He reached out and retrieved a photo frame. Even from my faint childhood memories, I knew it was of a picture of my grandmother, Sally Sparrow.

“Your grandmother and I once stopped an end of humanity scenario from happening. A giant portal opening in the sky, a pandemic killing off the world. A few of our family and friends sacrificed everything to give us the chance to win.” He placed the photo back on the table, reminiscing on the past. It seemed that saving the world was indeed in our family. “It all sounds like a fairy tale now. But if you really are where you are supposed to be, then I'm sure such a story won't surprise you.”

I finished connecting the first tank to the Cryo-Tube. It would provide the liquid required to keep me in stasis for the next twenty odd years. Hopefully. I prepared the next tank, the one that would recycle and clean the same substance. Though I was not particular excited about swimming in my own filth for two decades, my options were severely limited.

However, my grandfather raised up his left hand and I stopped my work again. Glowing white lines like that of circuitry began lighting up his entire forearm. At first, I thought they might be tattoos, but realized they were more akin to blood vessels, bulging out from under his skin, the glow pulsing slightly at the pace of a breath. My mind worked to comprehend the event unfolding, and I had to force myself to not see the arm as a special effect.

My grandfather started explaining, “This thing here, Milton, is what gives me the ability to predict the future. But more importantly, it allows me to manipulate the Mist. It allows me to be immune to it. Your grandmother have something similar, and this was what allowed us to close the portal all those years ago.” I continued to stare dumbfounded. I did not even notice I had managed to unload the second tank. I half-heartedly continued my work, though now more focused on the video. “Apparently this is inherited. But uh...it skipped your mother and went straight down to you. So I'm guessing whatever problems you're facing that will end the world would likely have something to do with this.”

I looked down at my good arm and called, “Bullshit.” The fact that I was not immune to Mist Poisoning and was still dying from it, constantly reminded of the shortened life by my prosthetic legs and broken right arm, raised doubts to his claims. But at the same time, the portal he described sounded disturbingly similar to the one that I was facing, spewing Mist out like an anorexic.

Like everyone I knew, as if reading my mind, he continued, “But yours is kind of latent. Not all there yet. We're not sure why. Leah has this whole, 'inactivate' theory. But I hope that you'll get it to work by the time this video reaches you.” Again, he slumped to solemnity. “I'm really sorry to have put this on you Milton. I hope you can find it in you to forgive me.”

Forgive you for what? I thought. The man had given me a chance to live out my life. To see my daughter grow up and hug my grandchildren. His actions likely saved the world dozens of times over by giving our family a fighting chance. Yet, I could see in his eyes, the drooping dark bags that were under it, the flickering flames of the fight for life. I could sort of understand him now, as I too am tired of fighting a never ending battle against the dangers that life threw back at us.

“Grandpa! Grandpa!” I heard the familiarly strange voice come from off screen. I knew what happened next. I remembered.

Tim turned just in time for four years old me to jump into his embrace. “Grandpa! Do you have any new bikes!” It was a time when to me, Grandpa Tim was that cool mechanic with an awesome motorcycle collection. He'd never let me ride one of them, but would always find time to cycle around the block with me on his equally extensive bicycle collection.

The old man said to young me, “Well, let's go see, shall we?” He turned to the camera and winked to me, just as the last parts of the tank and pipe were coupled together. The Cryo-Tube was ready to go.

A searing pain shot into my guts and up to my lungs and I dropped my tools from the pain. The gears in my broken arm whirred as my brain tried to push it to grip at the pain. It was probably for the best that the prosthetic was not working. Given how hard my left hand was holding my chest, my robotic right would have likely ripped my skin off.

Through gritted teeth, I spat out, “Not now! Not! Fucking! Now!”

The pain subsided and I knew I was running out of time. Still in discomfort, but not enough to debilitate me, I quickly set the console to run on a timer for twenty years. The video continued to play in my left eye, my grandfather giving child-me a piggyback ride out of the room, their laughter echoing to the distance.

I climbed the old, rickety ladder up the machine and opened the hatch just as Agents G and Matthews had shown me all those years or days ago. Another round of hurt blasted through what's left of my legs and I fell, back first into the Cryo-Tube. Somehow, I had managed to pull the hatch close behind me and the isolated chamber was lit by the light from the old green button. I wondered if I had broken my spine during the fall, or if my nerves had been shot again, as I could not feel anything from it. Soon though, I realized neither of that was the case. My entire body was just in enough pain to overwrite my senses. Everything hurt equally.

“Hey, dad!” my mother greeted off-screen. They began chatting, but I could not hear them on the account of my own screams.

Reaching, grasping desperately, I got a hold of the oxygen mask and clumsily put it on. I felt I was on the verge of dying from pain itself. I lost count of the number of times I had almost passed out but was brought back to life by another pulse of heat through my body.

I reached for the button to start the machine. My hand fell to the floor. Wrong hand. I tried again. Success. Darkness engulfed me as I could feel the welcomed cool of the liquid filling the machine. The liquid seemed to be seeping into my body, numbing the pain from the outside in. Wrapping me. Engulfing me in blissful relief.

I heard young me shouting excitedly. “Let's play superheroes!”

For a moment, I wondered why the pain in my heart was the last to go.

Then my left hand glowed, lines of the same circuitry patterns that appeared on grandpa Tim's forearm now lit like neon light on the back of my hand. The line of light ran across my wrist, knuckle, fingers, wrapping around the each joint like strings.

I stared at in, wide-eyed in disbelief. Only after what seemed like hours did I noticed the liquid had been drained from the chamber and I was sitting, soaking wet, in the empty Cryo-Tube. I tore off my oxygen mask, wondering if something had went wrong.

The hatch above me flung opened and standing above me, hand reaching out, was my fellow time traveller, Pausa.

“Hello Milton Jones,” he greeted, his shadowed face backed by pale teal light. “Welcome to the end of the world.”