He smiled and sniffed the carnation in his buttonhole. “Yes, I thought as much. It’s all very simple, really—and quite ingenious. Chlorophyll is the key—Ow!”

I looked at his hand. His skin and flesh were starting to swirl as the wayward nanodevice thawed enough to start work, devouring, changing and replicating with ever-increasing speed.

I looked at him, wanting to ask a hundred questions but not knowing where to start.

“I’m going three billion years in the past, Thursday, to a planet with only the possibility of life. A planet waiting for a miraculous event, something that has not happened, as far as we know it, anywhere else in the universe. In a word, photosynthesis. An oxidizing atmosphere, sweetpea—the ideal way to start an embryonic biosphere.”

He laughed.

“It’s funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? All life on earth descended from the organic compounds and proteins contained within Dream Topping.”

“And the carnation. And you.”

He smiled at me.

“Me. Yes. I thought this might be the ending, the Big One— but in fact it’s really only just the beginning. And I’m it. Makes me feel all sort of, well, humble.”

He touched my face with his good hand and kissed me on the cheek.

“Don’t cry, Thursday. It’s how it happens. It’s how it has always happened, always will happened. Take my chronograph; I’m not going to need it anymore.”

I unstrapped the heavy watch from his good wrist as the smell of artificial strawberries filled the room. It was Dad’s hand. It had almost completely changed to pudding. It was time for him to go, and he knew it.

“Goodbye, Thursday. I never could have wished for a finer daughter.”

I composed myself. I didn’t want his last memory of me to be of a sniveling wretch. I wanted him to see I could be as strong as he was. I pursed my lips and wiped the tears from my eyes.

“Goodbye, Dad.”

He winked at me.

“Well, time waits for no man, as we say.”

He smiled again and started to fold and collapse and spiral into a single dot, much like water escaping from a plughole. I could feel myself tugged into the event, so I took a step back as my father vanished into himself with a very quiet plop as he traveled into the deep past. A final gravitational tug dislodged one of my shirt buttons; the wayward pearl fastener sailed through the air and was caught in the small rippling vortex. It vanished from sight, and the air rocked for a moment before settling down to that usual state that we refer to as normality.

My father had gone.