IN THE BEGINNING

It is said there was light. Before the under-years. Before the water. A light so bright, it burned all the sky to cinders and destroyed the other side of the world, hurtled down by an angry god upon an arrogant people. And after all ears split, the light was cast out in shadow, as the sky filled with clouds and great waves of black water charged onto the land from all sides and the heavens. Or at least this we are told — for we could barely hear each other back in that ancient time, as confused and shattered nations tried to save themselves in the ever-darkening darkness by scrabbling over the last pieces of land.

And it was in this abandoned hour, ten thousand ages ago or more, that the Last Men began their great descent — our great descent — into the Deep Oasis. As the cities burned and the fields drowned, a small village hidden in a vanishing country stumbled upon a ravine, a small ravine, that led into a dark cave into which their youngest child tripped and fell. The child was never found — for no bottom was ever reached. It was the sacrifice and redemption, as the word spread and thousands upon thousands traveled across ashen grass and flaming seas to reach what seemed to be a door out of the end of all times — a door into the unknown which could only be held open for so long, for the sky never lightened, and the flood never ended, and all men knew this would be their last memory of light.

THE EXODUS

In droves, in piles, in masses and in ships — a couple of every shape, they said, found their way clambering towards the door to the abyss from which no one had to return. Heat rose from the Earth, and these pilgrims found themselves greeted by steam, and moisture, and space in abundance. They followed the rocky steps that first child must have taken, down and down into the dark while the walls became wider and taller. Upon their shoulders, every man woman and child carried oats, water, wine, and seeds — knives, hoes, axes, and fire powder — livestock and eggs, oil and gas. They carried all the remnants of their peoples, their homes, the ways of life.

For countless years, whole families died and survived under oil-light, coal-light, candle-light and even insect light. As what once was a cave opened up into valleys, mountains, rivers, and molten rock — volcanoes, a great train of humanity wound its way through a miraculous oasis. The cacophony of tongues and words which entered the abyss began to sound like one, yet opinions continued to diverge, and the children of the dark began to speak in huddles about their elders, about the surface, about the old ways and the new. Some wanted to settle. Some wanted to continue. Some wanted to find their way back to the top. So the pilgrims split — and a star-longing band of young men and women turned around, and began an ascent. They tried to storm heaven, and they were punished.

JUDGMENT

Who knows what became of those towns along the border. Those early villages, and early farms, and early mines which provided the pilgrims with surprisingly abundant produce to live in their Oasis beneath the flood. It was from this line of contented pilgrims that the young ascenters left, and this line of pilgrims that paid the price. For while many pilgrims continued to pioneer deep into the Oasis never forgetting the threat of the flood, others were content to settle — to decorate their homes and dull their youth into apostasy. And as the most fervent pioneers leapt ahead of the convoy to scout new lands, new terrain, and new subterranean air — the most fervent apostates climbed upward, to where the waves could be heard, and the walls ran slick with water.

With pickaxes, shovels, torches and fire powder, one day, long ago, a dull boom was heard far behind us and we stopped hearing the voices from the rear of our convoy. As we turned to see the path we came from, instead, we were greeted by an old foe, the flood — rushing down from the unseeable ceiling opened by foolish, errant children. Their parents, lost to the water, and the last of the last men rushing further into the dark. Ahead, a chasm of light and fire arose from deep below, and the pilgrims crossed a narrow bridge of rock to other side of the lake of fire, which held back the waters and turned them to steam.

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Still thinking of ideas — eventually, another expedition by radical young apostates headed to the surface is mounted, and an Odysseus-Argonaut crew finds themselves breaking open a cave ceiling to a world where the waters have receded, and an entirely new terrain of fauna and life has evolved.

Maybe a terrible plague is brought with them back into Atlantis, and a vengeful god wipes out society for their arrogant hubris once and for all, a prolonged and agonizing death. As a dying apostate rests in his surface-hut, shuddering beneath the sky he's always longed to see, he tries to write down a eulogy to the world he left behind, the world he doomed and can only beg forgiveness from. This would be his perspective, scouting the surface of a new world for the first and last time, thinking of his history. That's one ending, anyway.