VAN at the end of the world

Pyotr Grün stared out the
windshield, still not sure of
the realness of what was
happening or seeming to
happen in front of him as
the proverbial end of the
world as we know it
commenced. he
somehow sensed
it was off a little bit,
but time slid forward.

"We should turn off the van to
save the gas," Hannah Gallagher
said, also still staring out the
front. Her eyes scanned the
edge of the parking lot, the
edge of the building, the
sky up above.

"Yeah, good idea," he said, then
proceeded to turn up the heat and
the radio. The air would turn cold,
but it would keep it circulating. The
music would pierce the silence of the
night and bring back some semblance
of normalcy.

Hannah stood up and headed to the back
of the van. "I'm going to get some rest." Her
hands massaged his shoulders for the
briefest of moments.

He threw up his hands to give her a double
high five. It was going to be a long night.
He didn't hear her or see her, but he
somehow knew she was smiling
as she curled up under a blanket
on the back seat.

Time slowed. He knew it was passing
because of the sound coming out of
the radio and the cold air from the
heater hitting his face, his shirt...
it was off a little, though. He
sensed it was a little slower
again.

Then it happened. Half an hour after
Hannah slipped to the back, the air
and the music both noticeably slowed
until they both stopped. The surroundings
faded, slowly, the now familiar parking lot
where the least amount of interference
happened as people scrambled about
for the last half hour of the type of life
that people had come to known.

His eyes opened. He turned and saw Hannah
looking at him. She was weary, but there was a
look of determination in her eyes. He started the
van and drove down the dark road without his lights
on, via memory. In a few minutes they were behind
the old steel plant in a massive parking lot.

He parked underneath one of the light posts. The van
was still running.

She didn't tell the joke about running out of gas this
time. This time it was a little different. They talked
about a dream she'd had during her nap. They
talked about her upcoming shift to drive the
van and get them to a safe spot - follow the
path and get to the parking lot so they could
spend roughly 24 minutes together before time
slowed to a halt, then faded, with them waking
with their memories of all the events.

The first few hundred times things were a little crazy
as people from around the planet replayed the last
half hour over and over again. It drove most of them
mad. People soon realized, though, that if you died,
you didn't wake back up when it cycled again. You
were gone.

As time wore on, there were less and less people.
Pyotr and Hannah, who'd met at University, were
able to spend the last 20 minutes or so in relative
peace if they followed the right path at the right time.

Occasionally someone would find them in that last
10 minutes, but by then it didn't really matter. With
time slowing, they could dodge bullets, defy gravity,
and a handful of other tricks.

It was routine, but they were alive. They were alone,
but they had each other. Over the first hundred years
they really got to know each other. Living the same
half hour over and over again, they didn't age physically,
but their minds ripened. They learned to know what the
other was thinking without even speaking. It wasn't
telepathic abilities (yet), but they could read each
other better than any two other humans in the
history of the planet.

And now, with the planet trapped in a loop,
slowing, slowing, stopping, fading, with the
earth facing this over and over, the souls
who were left around the planet waited
a few more hundred years for something
to change, for time to stop hiccuping and
continue on. It never happened, though.

Over the next several hundred years, now
able to interact with the rest of the planet
via inter-dimensionary thought transfers,
they formulated a plan to focus enough
of the seventh and fifth dimensions
through to physical earth to give it
a boost during the slowing process.

They reached a consensus, though, to
continue the loop for a few more centuries,
then a few more. Just one more perhaps.
By now they could shape the molecules
of matter with just a thought - they could
move mountains and enjoy thirty or so
minutes of a slowing earth and the laws
of physics taking an extended holiday
vacation.

Eventually, they forgot their names. Not
who they were, but what their labels were
at one time. They integrated with the universe
and became part of the equation.

"Turn off that star, we're going to run out of
gas," she said.

He smiled.

At the end of it all, they became aware of the
fact that they had to restart the earth, place it
back in the timeline so to speak. If they didn't,
it would eventually all fall apart. They hadn't
noticed before (in the van in human form),
but now it all made sense.

To fix it, though, they would have to erase their
collective memory of what had happened. Well,
they couldn't erase it (what happens happens),
but they could bury it deep in the psyche of the
population of the planet right before it happened.

"We're leaving now," she said.

"Indeed," he said.

The universe slowed and in a fraction of a second
before it stopped completely, they tunneled through
a rip in the fabric of space and time and slipped
through to the earth before it all started.

She opened her eyes. He opened his eyes.

"We better stop for gas," she said.

He just looked at her and smiled. Their first camping trip. It was going to go really well. He felt that deeply.  "Yeah, good idea."