Alison shrugged. “Time, maybe? Accumulation of infections. A thousand separate stressors combining over half a billion years until it can’t keep up. Maybe the whole thing we’re trying to preserve, the structure of parallel worlds, is what killed it. The stress of maintaining us.” She laughed a little. “I bet you’ve been thinking about God, am I right, Spiker?”

“Hard not to, right now,” he admitted.

“Bible God, Genesis God, right? Only, I reckon what we’ve got here is more like the Trimūrti, the Hindu three-in-one—creator, maintainer, destroyer. Makes you wonder what some old wise guy back in India might have contacted, now we know people have been in and out of the different worlds for thousands of years.”

“What, seriously?”

“You should talk to the girls a bit more. They found half a stone circle.”

“A stone semicircle?”

She laughed again. “Nope, half a circle, and the other half was in that dinosaur place they visited. Which means that, a few thousand years ago, some humans and some dinosaur-people got together to mark where the weak spot was. Only they couldn’t have known the weak spot was a crack, and that the cracks would keep on getting wider until everything fell apart. All because the force that was holding these worlds in place was on its way out, even then. And eventually, pop goes the universe.”

“Not sure I believe it, Matchbox, if I’m honest.” Julian did his best to sound blasé, overplaying it because he hoped he’d make her laugh again. “I mean, this is obviously a local Earthly matter. Hardly seems like it could affect the whole universe like everyone says.”

She didn’t laugh, though, becoming solemn instead. “Well, functionally you’re right, I suppose. I thought the same, so I’ve asked questions, in here.” She tapped the side of her head. “The rest of the universe might or might not notice what’s happening here, basically. There are the various timelines, and there’s a universe in each. And we have no idea if those universes are different to one another, save in what happened on their Earth. But the existence of the timelines is being actively maintained by this…thing, this stuff. All the academics seem to agree about that.” She kicked a heel on the membrane below them, making it quiver. “And everything collapses back when it finally dies off, so that we’re just left with this one Earth, that’s basically a mass grave for a corpse covering the entire planet’s surface. The rest of the universe would still be here, but only this timeline’s universe. All the other timelines’ universes—including ours—would simply be snuffed out. As though we’d never been. The Red King doesn’t even wake up, but just dies in his sleep.”

“Jesus, that’s jolly.”

“Isn’t it, though?” she agreed.