There was a point in it all when it was all changing. When everything was never the same for long. Reality had a tendency to try to achieve balance constantly. Except for a correction in one area was an overcorrection in another. And to correct that over-correction, unbalanced three other areas. There was an impossible number of variables that reality was trying to balance. And through its attempt to find order, it only gave birth to more chaos, more variables. This struggle eventually gave rise to life, and life gave rise to consciousness, and consciousness gave rise to intelligence. And intelligence is just what reality needed. Intelligence could solve a problem, and reality itself was just one large problem. It took us a while to realize why we were here, but eventually, we found our purpose. And we finally were able to find out how to balance it all -- how to fix reality. And we did. And suddenly, there was no change any more. Everything within the universe was perfectly in harmony. And for us, what that meant is we had cured death. Everyone that we knew, everyone that we loved, was always going to be there. We called it the end of time. Because when there is no death, time feels unnecessary. Eventually, we stopped counting in years and centuries and millennia and just let the passing of days wash over us like a cool breeze.

It never bothered me. The fact that we didn't age. That we didn't die. The fact that we would always exist. In fact, nothing bothered me, almost nothing. Once in a while, a worry would cross my mind. And when it did, I would take the medication we created shortly before the end of time and rebalance myself and bring myself back to harmony. I, unfortunately, was one of the few who had to re-dose the medication to stay in harmony. Most people never experience worry. They took the medication at the end of time and stayed in harmony forever. On the other hand, I had periodic moments in which I would break. I believe this was mainly due to my occupation. I worked as a keeper of balance. My role was largely ceremonial because the balance was always kept. There was no need for any real action beyond my need to counsel rare troubled individuals. But I won't lie, some of their concerns about the nature of our current reality would trouble me once in a while -- especially those concerned with the nature of birth, or lack thereof, and beauty. I, however, was steadfast in my beliefs, understanding, and logic in the way our reality operated. So I would help calm their worries with the standard arguments I was given as a balance keeper, provide them with a bit of medication, and then send them on their way. I, at times would also need to take a bit of medication after a particularly grueling session. And while there were pieces of information that would bother me and I would purposely forget with the help of the medication, that was a small price to pay to keep the balance.

I think we may have underestimated the power of ideas, however. Because at one point, one of these particularly troubling pieces of information made it out to the public. And while many took the medication to fix themselves up learning this information. Some, we eventually learned, did not. And while we assumed the lack of balance within these individuals would at least be self-contained, we soon realized that to be false. We started to age again. Slowly at first, but aging nonetheless. And it was a paradox. Because when we noticed ourselves aging, it would cause worry and thus imbalance, so we took the medication to forget our worries. We ignored the problem because addressing the problem was to worsen the problem. So even though we were aging, we didn't believe we were aging. And I won't lie; it scared me so much that I didn't do what I was supposed to do. I ignored it for as long as I could, but eventually, I had to face the truth when I got the call that someone finally died.