In a small room in one of the arms of the Restaurant complex a tall, thin, gangling figure pulled aside a curtain and oblivion looked him in the face.
It was not a pretty face, perhaps because oblivion had looked him in it so many times. It was too long for a start, the eyes too sunken and too hooded, the cheeks too hollow, his lips were too thin and too long, and when they parted his teeth looked too much like a recently polished bay window. The hands that held the curtain were long and thin too: they were also cold. They lay lightly along the folds of the curtain and gave the impression that if he didn’t watch them like a hawk they would crawl away of their own accord and do something unspeakable in a corner.
He let the curtain drop and the terrible light that had played on his features went off to play somewhere more healthy. He prowled around his small chamber like a mantis contemplating an evening’s preying, finally settling on a rickety chair by a trestle table, where he leafed through a few sheets of jokes.
A bell rang.
He pushed the thin sheaf of papers aside and stood up. His hands brushed limply over some of the one million rainbow-coloured sequins with which his jacket was festooned, and he was gone through the door.
In the Restaurant the lights dimmed, the band quickened its pace, a single spotlight stabbed down into the darkness of the stairway that led up to the centre of the stage.
Up the stairs bounded a tall brilliantly coloured figure. He burst on to the stage, tripped lightly up to the microphone, removed it from its stand with one swoop of his long thin hand and stood for a moment bowing left and right to the audience acknowledging their applause and displaying to them his bay window. He waved to his particular friends in the audience even though there weren’t any there, and waited for the applause to die down.
He held up his hand and smiled a smile that stretched not merely from ear to ear, but seemed to extend some way beyond the mere confines of his face.
“Thank you ladies and gentlemen!” he cried, “thank you very much. Thank you so much.”
He eyed them with a twinkling eye.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “The Universe as we know it has now been in existence for over one hundred and seventy thousand million billion years and will be ending in a little over half an hour. So, welcome one and all to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe!”
With a gesture he deftly conjured another round of spontaneous applause. With another gesture he cut it.
“I am your host for tonight,” he said, “my name is Max Quordlepleen…” (Everybody knew this, his act was famous throughout the known Galaxy, but he said it for the fresh applause it generated, which he acknowledged with a disclaiming smile and wave.) “… and I’ve just come straight from the very very other end of time, where I’ve been hosting a show at the Big Bang Burger Bar where I can tell you we had a very exciting evening ladies and gentlemen and I will be with you right through this historic occasion, the End of History itself!”
Another burst of applause died away quickly as the lights dimmed down further. On every table candles ignited themselves spontaneously, eliciting a slight gasp from all the diners and wreathing them in a thousand tiny flickering lights and a million intimate shadows. A tremor of excitement thrilled through the darkened Restaurant as the vast golden dome above them began very very slowly to dim, to darken, to fade.
Max’s voice was hushed as he continued.
“So, ladies and gentlemen,” he breathed, “the candles are lit, the band plays softly, and as the force-shielded dome above us fades into transparency, revealing a dark and sullen sky hung heavy with the ancient light of livid swollen stars, I can see we’re all in for a fabulous evening’s apocalypse!”
Even the soft tootling of the band faded away as stunned shock descended on all those who had not seen this sight before.
A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them,
a hideous light,
a boiling, pestilential light,
a light that would have disfigured hell.
The Universe was coming to an end.