Dark Times: Fading Eternity
During a bleak and dark night, an old man is walking through a silent snowy landscape, surrounded by gnarled trees and dusty ruins. His eyes are constantly looking at strange transparent bubbles all around the place, some are as big as a little house, other barely reach the size of a human head and several of them slowly move around. But all of them are filled with some kind of imagery, most of which is moving. As the man walks, he is dressed in an old shabby coat and holding a homemade walking cane, his body is frail but apathetic to the unforgiving winter. He stops for a while, looking at a human-sized bubble with two transparent young people inside, plotting something together while having great time, the same scene repeats again and again, lasting for about five minutes each time when they walk away and suddenly appear back. After watching the same cycle twice, the old man walks to his next stop - a small bubble lying on the ground, depicting a rock with symbols painted on it. "Oh, I remember." the man says and then looks a few meters further from it, the exact same rock is lying there but completely solid and with only a small traces of paint left. He walks very slowly to the rock and picks it from the ground, then puts it in the bubble, trying to match the position of the projection. The old man then sits on a decaying stump surrounded by a huge bubble projecting a sinister shaped tree with several carved pictures in it. Looking around, he sees dozens of bubbles, some containing people and animals, others just objects and a few meters from where he is sitting, a much more clearer but still transparent imagery can be seen – it is an old man standing and looking around, the same one that is sitting on the stump right now but with fewer wrinkles and a less shabby coat.
After staring at this projection for a while, he pulls out a plastic bag full of pills from his pocket. They are all filled with some kind of transparent substance, behaving like a fluid without the restrains of gravity, just moving around in the pills. The man puts one in his mouth and bites in it, holding the strange liquid for a minute, then swallowing it. "They taste cold." The man thinks for himself as a bubble starts forming around him, containing his exact slightly transparent copy inside. Then, he walks away far enough to see how a bubble with the image of him sitting on a stump is trapped inside another much more transparent bubble containing an evil looking tree. His next station is a child-sized bubble inside a ruin of what used to be a small shack, depicting a little boy looking around, holding a piece of wood. Several other bubbles with different objects such as diaries, toys and even bricks are floating in the air, these are the most transparent bubbles from them all, they could be easily overlooked by someone not directly looking for them. "If I only remembered how it felt." goes through the man's head as he stares at all the bubbles surrounding him. Time came for him to visit the very last place in this white valley of fading gray bubbles on a dark background. With certain effort, the man walks on the highest hill that provides him with a clear view on all the ruins, fallen trees and transparent bubbles, some of which are moving around the place in fixed directions. Then, he turns around to look at twelve other bubbles, some of which contain lying people with closed eyes and other animals with closed eyes as well. Each of the bubbles also contains a solid and heavy gravestone with carved words such as "Adventurer," "Companion" or "Spark." Just one word is on each grave. Staring at the bubbles, the man says: "If I only could ever create more." Then, he slowly walks away, leaving a trail of tracks in the snow.
