The enormous golden clock is suspended over the restless ocean, its intricate hands marking the passing of every hour, every minute, every second. The silver gears behind it spin tirelessly, keeping time in check. The sky is overcast with mist that blurs the line between the sea and the indifferent clouds. I am lying on my back at the edge of a cliff, with my feet dangling off. Directly above me is the huge clock, and we are face-to-face. Mine is speckled with dirt and the salty spray of the ocean. The clock’s face has an image of a grayish planet, a planet long forgotten, a planet whose inhabitants have long ago destroyed it. Our earth. Well, not exactly. The reign of mankind has ended. Family, friends, neighbors—they are all gone, and I haven’t the time to grieve. No, there is no one else on this rock but me. Thus, I can more correctly call it “my earth.” These thoughts flicker in my head as the second hand moves to fifteen seconds before twelve o’clock. I am not sure if it is nearly noon or nearly midnight, but that doesn’t seem important any more. It’s now ten seconds before twelve; the hand seems to slow down. Seven seconds left. Six. I close my eyes. Five. Four. Three, two... As the hands all join together, pointing north, the golden clock begins its dozen chimes. With each chime, an unlit lantern appears next to a number on the clock. The first chime seems to shatter my fragile eardrums. I clasp my hands over my ears and curl up into a ball. The second still penetrates painfully through my empty soul. Five more rings, and I narrowly miss rolling off the cliff in my crazed agony. The chimes begin to get softer. My eyes squeeze open, and, as the twelfth ring sounds, the clock melts out of the sky. But the lanterns stay, and a small flame flies from one to the next, lighting all twelve of them in less than a second. Droplets of melted clock, gold and silver, sprinkle me in a sparkling rain. The liquid metal pools around me, then falls into the sky again. It swirls around the circle of lanterns and forms an enormous golden phoenix whose wings span from horizon to horizon. The fire from the lamps flares up and bathes the bird in blinding heat. I am glued to the ground in terrified awe as the majestic bird brings its wings backward, then flaps them once. With that, all that remains from houses and roads and mankind’s existence is blown away with the force of a thousand hurricanes. But not a hair on my head moves, not a leaf in the few surrounding trees stirs. As the wreckage is blown away, I tear my eyes from the barren landscape to the golden-feathered firebird. Its glowing eyes, able to perceive the slightest movement, turn to me, and a fierce power rushes through my veins. I scream and writhe on the ground in agony. My suffering is immediately relieved as the creature brings its enormous head up to the sky and great plumes of yellow fire billow out of its mouth and turn the entire sky a blazing color. The sky expands. The phoenix’s metallic flames stop moving, and I feel as though I am looking at a still shot of the apocalypse. Then, the fire begins moving again. But this time it encircles me, orbiting faster and faster around my body, picking up pieces of dirt and rock. Now the bird is above me, and it breathes its cleansing golden fire around me. I barely have the time to see everything around me disappear before I am thrust into darkness. The last image I see is a new planet, a vibrantly alive planet, a planet whose inhabitants are just beginning their long saga on it. Our earth. Their earth. I hear a word whispered through my soul before the sacrifice becomes complete: REBORN
