At the end of the world, after the sun (finally, nearly trillions of years off schedule) had swelled and expanded, ballon-like, into a black hole and swallowed up the Milky Way, there was nothing left for Gabriel to do except restart it. It was a good run, considering—one of the better ones, actually. This time, when Earth caved in on itself, it wasn’t because of any amoebae or animal or any lifeform. It was just time, just the slow and steady march to the inevitable undoing that nothing—maybe not even God Themself—could halt.
As with any reboot, Gabriel went through the mind-numbing process of formatting the disc. Time might’ve been inconsequential to beings such as they, but there was still such a thing as monotony. One did get boring sitting there, millennia in and millennia out, doing nothing more interesting than erasing some trillions of years of data. When they heard that some humans had theorized that heaven was naught but a constant chorus of hallelujahs, Gabriel was racked with nausea. Sameness tired them, and they were sure that even God would find it exhausting, all that droning and worshipping.
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