The end of the world was silent and still. George floated in the center of the nanobots and all he wanted was to stay there. Stay where there were no people. No world to save. Nobody to let down.

But he felt a tugging in his stomach, that feeling of movement as a car accelerates down the highway. His body shot upward and broke through the surface of the white cloud that had been the earth. The edge of the cloud swirled with his passing and then closed like a wound closing.

George found himself floating beside the moon. He felt buried by stars and space. Looking around he realized that there were so many more stars than he'd ever imagined. And they were all unique, different colors, shapes, and sizes. The word star didn't do justice to the variety that surrounded him. Floating there he felt so small. He was just an atom in a mote of dust.

And like a seed on the wind he drifted away from the cloud of white that had been the earth. It danced and swirled. Flickered and glowed. He passed the moon, massive and gray like a mountain of stone hanging in the black of space. Planets flitted by like memories he couldn't grasp. Over the shock wave at the bow of the solar system he continued into the wasteland beyond. But it wasn't a wasteland at all.

Dark worlds lumbered in the black, shadows hidden from view but felt all the same. And there were always those stars in the distance.

Faster and faster George felt himself pulled further and further from everything he'd ever known. The stars turned to streaks of light drawn out against the black like chalk lines on a board. And then George began to move not outward, but up and away from space itself. He looked down and he could see the universe curving away. It was like looking down at the circle of the earth and finding stars instead of the sea.

Soon he'd left the universe completely and could see it laid out before him like a marble. He pulled back further and the edge of another universe came into view, and then another, and another until universes stretched out forever on every side. And every universe glowed with the light of the stars that lay within. Off into the distance George couldn't even see the individual globes, just a sea of light so bright that it hurt to look.

And he realized that every person who had ever lived, every choice that had ever been made, every possibility he'd passed without thought, and all the acts of love, hatred and sadness that came with them, were laid out before him.

And then just as quickly as he'd come George felt his stomach lurch and he began to fall down, down, down towards one of those globes. His body broke the surface and streaked along space until he found himself floating again over the earth. No longer was it just a mass of ravenous machines. It lay whole before him, brown and gray. Cities were visible sprawling out across the landscape, but not trees. Even the oceans were the color of granite.

He plunged into the atmosphere and felt the chill of water droplets on his skin. He broke through a thin layer of clouds and down towards the massive city of Chicago. The metal spires broke up out of the earth, bones through the skin. And then George blinked and found himself seated on the Airbus.

Rain pounded against the windows, thick and heavy. It thrummed in the air around him. People were packed into the seats. A thin wisp of fog remained on the air around George and dissipated. George watched rain roll down the windows and realized that it was over. There would be no more beasts chasing him down the streets, no more mad generals, no threat of looming destruction. This world would not die in a flash, it would wither forever on the vine.

George watched the rain and thought of Monica an infinite distance away from him. He remembered his arms around her and the way she'd dissolved like a dream in the morning. And all he wanted right now in the world was to have dissolved with her. Not to linger here, knowing that he'd failed to save her. Knowing that those forests were in the past now. That they, like Monica, lived in his mind alone and no where else.

Putting his head in his hands, George wept.

Next Week: Finale.