Why does everyone always expect the world to end in a bang? Surely, mine did not. However, I do find the crunching of leaves underfoot a great backdrop to the sound of nothing. But as the ocean-like rustle of leaves turned into the sharp tap of linoleum, my team and I entered the facility. Not “a” facility, this is the last.

If our task goes well, then mentioning my name is irrelevant. I don’t want to jinx anything, especially when we’re so close to our assigned task.  So, “we” refers to me and my team, consisting of Rena, Sven, and Tia. As for our task, we need to find the metaphorical “Garden of Eden” to renew the world, according to a note loosely held by the last egghead we found. Shockingly, the paper hadn’t faded in the grip of bleached knuckles. After all the calls for more samples, subjects or syringes, we still followed the scientists’ orders, even in death. We found it funny, and the scientists probably would have as well.

These were the halls we grew up in, running around in the warm glow of halogen light. Deemed too dull to handle musty biology tomes, we quickly found our place as guardsmen. Even if we weren’t, the head researcher didn’t hesitate to volunteer us over his son. And now here we are, returned home. We exited the airlock, the fanfare of broken pressure pipes heralding our return.

Tia had hair glowing orange like autumn leaves, with freckles dotting her raised cheekbones and a rare smile that could illuminate a room, if you were lucky enough to see it. She was a shy, quiet girl, always with us but always following behind us. That’s why it took a while for us to notice her lying in a pool of blood. Turning a corner, we heard the scuff of flesh dragging on concrete, before turning around to see an abandoned experiment haul off its prey. We shot it, and they kept shooting until the holes in its body whistled as it fell. This wasn’t going as planned, and now she, her name, and her smile are irrelevant.

After fleeing through the halls, I found a room with a functional lock, and we hid inside to regroup. Sven slumped on a red coach, the groan of the fabric matching his own. “We can’t just leave her sprawled there!” he shouted in a broken voice. I paid attention in class, and the scent of blood was one thing experiments were trained to smell, in order to gather survivors. Ironically, it gathered us here, albeit minus one. “Yes, we can and we must leave her sprawled there. Another one’s probably eating her right no-“

I didn’t even feel the ground after his fist split my lip.

I woke to the sight of a frantic Rena shaking me back to life. “He’s bringing back Tia, and I just heard gunshots in the hallway. They need help!” I felt my bleeding jaw, and then corrected her. “HE needs our help. There is no her, not anymore.” Rena covered her mouth as her eyes watered, and I regretted my bluntness immediately. I managed to stammer “I-I mean, we need to go help him, as he can still be saved.” Resolve replaced the fear in her eyes, she nodded, and we grabbed our guns, edging to the door. I felt like I was finally getting the hang of communication, but there was no more time to talk.

We barely edged our feet outside the door before I saw the glimmer of dozens of gleaming white eyes on half as many pitch-black bodies. They slowly rose from crouching over Sven, and I felt fear. I feared failing my mission, I feared the monsters knee-deep in friend, I feared going to wherever he was now. And I ran, vainly shutting my ears to the screams.

They could smell the blood on my lips and the blood on my hands, I had to keep running. The only thing I had left was issued by dead men so that their dreams may live on. They dreamed of a world born anew, free of their failures to save it.
My dream is irrelevant, but my team—no, my friends— died for the dreams of these dead men. They may have been snuffed out, but their dream still burned as a dim ember, the scant possibility that I would fulfill it.

All I could do now was run, so I ran, but not away. Every door, hallway of burnt-out lights, infested library, one of them had to be our destination. On the most average of searches, I finally ran into the answer.

There was a simple red button labeled “reset,” backlit by a single halogen bulb in a clean-room the size of a janitor’s closet. The sanguine button held the hopes of every ex-survivor, a new beginning. And I, along with everyone else, had no idea what “reset” would do. Everyone dreamt so many dreams out of infinite possibilities in the faraway past, for the infinitesimal chance of utter fulfillment, and that kept them going.

I never knew what my dead friends wanted from it; I certainly didn’t know myself. But all of them, they all involved the button as the means to actualization. I never had a dream of my own, but I had theirs.

I pressed it. It felt like God is locking up shop, reality closing for the night. Like tomorrow there would be a new world, brought to life by someone who had no dreams for it. I felt meaningful, not through completing a simple task like pushing a button, but by realizing a dream, even if it isn’t mine or even known. For a few seconds, I felt like a new man, as the universe dissolved into cosmic foam.

At the very least, I feel relevant. By the way, my name is-—