"Look at family 4A, how happy they are. God, it only makes me sick. They have a party nearly every week, and no it's not this big huge drunken fiesta or anything. It's a comely little party for comely little people in comely little lives.

"Now, Residency 67E is pretty interesting. The wife is addicted to some combination of drugs only her husband can make, probably the reason they are even together, and then the kids are crazy. They're both teenagers that think they own the world and you can't tell them otherwise: just look at the fancy house! They get what they want and they don't even notice their mother behind a floral curtain snorting up some yellow substance that probably smells like cat-piss.

"Hell, I'm almost jealous of their exciting lives… ha! If only."

Adam Vitae finished his tirade with a successful smacking of a circular blue button to his left. The bottom screen along the panel that had been static now bounced to life, displaying in monochrome a young blond man playing a guitar. He lay down against the windowsill, which had a broad ledge anyone could sit on. He splayed his legs outwardly, poising the creamy instrument on his lap. He placed his finger gently on the strings, humming along with his tune.

The screen sometimes blinked with color, the reason Adam could make out the guitar and hair, but mostly it returned to a greasy black-and-white with zigzags racing across the front, rolling through the image. It was like peering through a snow storm.

Adam picked up a box of food one of his workers had brought over. He opened it and found steamed vegetables soaked in inky sauce. He poked at them with his fork, his bloodshot eyes pinned to each screen in turn.

Family 88F was now gathered around a television screen, staring directly at Adam and under the illusion they were watching a professional show. The parents raised their arms and hollered in glee. The children, pecking at the snacks scattered around a wooden table, watched and yelled something. The video provided no sound. Adam paused, the prongs of his fork hanging above a thin strip of carrot.

The daughter looked familiar to him. She was lying on the floor, her chin propped up by her palm. Her nails were painted black, the same color as the streaks crossing her blonde hair. Her legs waved behind her, propped up. On one ankle a pink band dangled. Adam stared at her for longer than he should and fell behind. He quickly scanned the other screens, munching on a new chunk of vegetables.

"Something catch your interest?" A coworker, to whom he had spoken earlier, said behind him. Adam shook his head vaguely, putting the fork in the empty container and setting it aside. The coworker picked it up and disposed of it, returning next to Adam and taking Families and Residencies 1AA to 34XZ. Her eyes glazed over and she fell into a stupor, lost in her work.

The two did not speak for a long time.

Adam's eyes occasionally flicked back to the girl. What was her name? Mary? Adam didn't know, at least he told himself he didn't. He kicked off his shoes, knowing he still had upwards of three hours, two if his boss decided to be kind, and he could relax for now.

His hand hung over a red button, marked with a vivid cross along the front. His short nails traced the figure without seeing it.

Now Family 7B was arguing. Two hands encircled the other's throat, throttling, and then throwing into the ground. Adam was tempted to highlight this screen and press the black button, to his left, but he waited. He could not be rash in a job so vital. He frowned. Now the couple was sprawled on the floor, struggling, panting.

(Adam?)

Now a plume of blood, black on the screen, burst from one of the heads, from the mouth, from the eyes, and now the body was shaking with spasm. The other figure tossed his head back in mad shrieks of laughter, shaking, still gripping the corpse's neck.

(Adam!)

On another screen a group of teenagers were gathered in a room, their television muted but still seeing, watching patiently with bright blue eyes. One of the children was on the floor, gasping for breath and smeared with some sort of substance across the nose and lips. What marvelous clarity he had! Adam thought ironically, watching as the other teenagers did nothing about the sprawled boy with mounting contempt.

"Adam?"

"Huh—what?" Adam turned to his coworker, as if he had woken from a bad dream.

"Look." She turned, her black hair bouncing.

She directed him towards the other wall. In the darkness a timer in bright blue digits was quickly falling, now at 1:00:00 and now 59:59:45 and going down more and more, like sand through fingers. Adam felt a cold lump stick in his throat. Had he really been here that long? When he started there was over a decade left.

Above the timer was a glowing picture, the only light outside of the screens. It depicted a skull's profile, outlined in a thin membrane of flesh. Where the brain was supposed to be, an empty vessel roughly in the shape of a womb partook. Inside was a moving picture, an illusion by lights on the others side of thick glass, of an infant in utero. When Adam started there was nothing inside the empty womb. Now, the infant had grown full length, bent along the womb, all the vertebrae adequately broken into place. Small, translucent figures moved, all connected with a thin tube to where the eyes were supposed to be, like an optical cord to see the truth.

"Come… my child…"

Adam rose mechanically. When he started he had been trained right away in what he must do when the timer said so. He moved with steady easiness towards a back room. He pushed a door open and entered a room lit in deep crimson light. In the bloody light he saw before him a withered figure. When he started the man was full, warm, and grinning under heavenly golden orbs.

The figure raised one hand, the bones crackling with the effort, and smoothly beckoned Adam closer.

"Come… my son…"

Bowing his head, Adam obeyed. He edged to the long bed, with a white sheet turned pink in the light hanging over it. Like a tourniquet a white sheet spread over the figure. Sharp eyes gazed through a gaunt, shrunken face at Adam, a slow smile spreading.

"You understand your task, do you not?"

Adam nodded.

"Then you are ready when the timer strikes zero."

Adam nodded again, preparing to leave. Before he did, the old—no—ancient hand rose. It bade him to stop and Adam did, waiting for an answer to a question he did not know. The voice, like words on a yellowed page, came slowly and then all at once Adam understood the meaning. He listened briskly, conscious of the numbers slowly ticking away.

"My son, before you leave you must understand why I ask you to undertake this task. You are one of many men, all of whom possess great power to hate and love. The line is fine but it is the only true measure of man. There is no sin, no virtue and vice, no good and evil, no badness to match greatness. There is only the passion that drives men on. It drives them to spill blood and ink. It drives them to write words and destroy lives. And yet they are all man and there is no one book that can constrict this powerful, strange creature into a single volume. There is no way to even tell if man is truly the one ruling power of the planet, not until now when we can let the world take her original course…"

"Have you told me the meaning of life just now?" Adam asked, forgetting his manners.

The figure responded with a shaking laugh, as if the notion amused him.

"Why must I tell you? Everyone already knows it."

Adam shyly nodded, blushing at his outburst.

"Do not worry my child. Go and remember your instructions. My words are now useless."

Adam left the room, stepping back into the blush darkness. He sat down at his seat. He looked for his coworkers and found that they had left. He turned to the screens that showed them at home. He spotted the dark haired woman he never knew what to name. She stood before her parents and embraced them, most likely whispering how much they meant to her.

His other coworkers gathered around those they loved. Confused faces changed to happy expressions at the love they received. Most did not know, by their twisted mouths and furrowed brows what to do or say in this moment. His coworkers said nothing to inspire fear or excitement, just that they felt sentimental.

Adam poised over the black button, knowing he would have to press it first, and then the red one so he could go too. He missed his brother suddenly, wishing he had said something to him before he was chosen for this task. He bit his lip, looking at the clock.

Now the final five minutes remained. Adam went to shut the screens off, unable to handle with what they would look like when the time came. He paused, his hand poised over a lever. He clicked a mouse to highlight one of the screens, the family watching the game with an all too familiar girl now holding up a cell phone and tapping her fingers against the screen. Adam highlighted this one.

A sea of darkness, penetrated by one last glowing fish remained. Adam knew by heart where the red and black buttons were.

Three minutes left.

He watched the girl and her family, seeing them laugh and point, not knowing how simply and swiftly their ends would come. They did not need a preamble or an epilogue. It would come and go: there wasn't really that much to it.

Two minutes.

The girl looked up and peered at the screen curiously, obviously not watching a game. For a brief moment Adam thought her eyes met his. A flash of light bounced on the screen. Her eyes were blue too.

One minute left.

She frowned and opened her mouth to say something, surely about the mysterious man that had been watching them for so long. She said something. The boy across from her picked up a large bowl of fluffy popcorn and passed it to her. She sat up, placing it daintily on her lap, and picked it up, still staring directly at Adam. Her eyes were challenging: daring him to do it.

(Press that button, Adam, I'm not afraid. So why are you?)

Adam grinned, renewed by this girl's vigor.

"I wouldn't expect my daughter to be any other way." He muttered under his breath and pressed his finger down. The family paused, as if overcome by a sudden, painful headache. They peered around, especially at the screen that had gone blank.

Their world trembled, and, like a snuffed candle, the light was out and all that remained was a final breath and then, sweeping, magnificent peace. Adam pressed down on his button.

The lights here went off too. He tilted his head back, embracing the darkness, the oblivion yet to come. He welcomed it, welcoming death like an old friend. He welcomed the end of the world because it was bound to happen. It came and went without explosion, without a fight, with only a tiny whimper and barely even a whisper in the great universe.