Eric

"Oh, no. There's masses of them," said the creator, beginning to fade away. "That's quantum mechanics for you, see. You don't do it once and have done. No, they keep on branching off. Multiple choice they call it, it's like painting the - painting the - painting something very big that you have to keep on painting, sort of thing. It's all very well saying you just have to change one little detail, but which one, that's the real bugger. Well, nice to have met you. If you need any extra work, you know, an extra moon or something - "

"Hey!"

The creator reappeared, his eyebrows raised in polite surprise.

"What happens now?" said Rincewind.

"Now? Well, I imagine there'll be some gods along soon. They don't wait long to move in, you know. Like flies around a - flies around a - like flies. They tend to be a bit high-spirited to start with, but they soon settle down. I suppose they take care of all the people, ekcetra." The creator leaned forward. "I've never been good at doing people. Never seem to get the arms and legs right." He vanished.

They waited.

"I think he's really gone this time," said Eric, after a while. "What a nice man."

"You certainly understand a lot more about why the world is like it is after talking to him," said Rincewind.

"What're quantum mechanics?"

"I don't know. People who repair quantums, I suppose."

Rincewind looked at the egg and cress sandwich, still in his hand. There was still no mayonnaise in it, and the bread was soggy, but it would be thousands of years before there was another one. There had to be the dawn of agriculture, the domestication of animals, the evolution of the breadknife from its primitive flint ancestry, the development of dairy technology - and, if there was any desire to make a proper job of it, the cultivation of olive trees, pepper plants, salt pans, vinegar fermentation processes and the techniques of elementary food chemistry - before the world would see another on like it. It was unique, a little white triangle full of anachronisms, lost and all alone in an unfriendly world,

He bit it anyway. It wasn't very nice.

"What I don't understand," said Eric, "is why we are here."

"I take it that isn't a philosophical question," said Rincewind, "I take it you mean: why are we here at the dawn of creation on this beach which has hardly been used?"

"Yes. That's what I meant."

Rincewind sat down on a rock and sighed. "I think it's pretty obvious, isn't it?" he said. "You wanted to live forever."

"I didn't say anything about travelling in time," said Eric. "I was very clear about it so there'd be no tricks."

"There isn't a trick. The wish is trying to be helpful. I mean, it's pretty obvious when you think about it. ‘Forever' means the entire span of space and time. Forever. For Ever. See?"

"You mean you have to sort of start at Square One?"

"Precisely."

"But that's no good! It's going to be years before there's anyone else around!"

"Centuries," corrected Rincewind gloomily. "Millennia. Iains. And then there's going to be all kinds of wars and monsters and stuff. Most of history is pretty appalling, when you look hard at it. Or even not very hard."

"But what I meant was, I just wanted to go on living for ever from now," said Eric frantically. "I mean, from then. I mean, look at this place. No girls. No people. Nothing to do on Saturday nights..."

"It won't even have any Saturday nights for thousands of years," said Rincewind. "Just nights."

"You must take me back at once," said Eric. "I order it. Avaunt!"

"You say that one more time and I will give you a thick ear," said Rincewind.

"But all you have to do is snap your fingers!"

"It won't work. You've had your three wishes. Sorry."

"What shall I do?"

"Well, if you see anything crawl out of the sea and try to breathe, you could try telling it not to bother."

"You think this is funny, don't you?"

"It is rather amusing, since you mention it," said Rincewind, his face expressionless.

"The joke's going to be wearing pretty thin over the years, then," said Eric.

"What?"

"Well, you're not going to go anywhere, are you? You'll have to stay with me."

"Nonsense, I'll - " Rincewind looked around desperately. I'll what? He thought.

The waves rolled peacefully up the beach, not very strongly at the moment because they were still feeling their way. The first high tide was coming in, cautiously. There was no tideline, no streaky line of old seaweed and shells to give it some idea of what was expected of it. The air had the clean, fresh smell of air that has yet to know the effusions of a forest floor or the ins and outs of a ruminant's digestive system.

Rincewind had grown up in Ankh-Morpork. He liked air that had been around a bit, had got to know people, had been lived in.

"We've got to get back," he said urgently.

"That's what I've been saying," said Eric, with strained patience.