Saturday
At some point in the early hours Phil got up and got dressed. The storm was subsiding but he wasn’t feeling able to sleep, the clock was running and he kept having little panic attacks that had his heart pounding, his breaths snatched and uneven. He crept downstairs and looked into the lounge. To his surprise Karl was standing in front of the bay windows looking out, a dark silhouette against the pale light.
“The moons up.” Karl said quietly. “Look.”
Phil padded up to the window and looked up into the dark sky. He wasn’t ready for the sight that met his astonished eyes. The moon was huge.
“Its been getting bigger for the past couple of hours.” Karl said in a deadpan voice. “Can’t put that down to global warming.” He added with a sour laugh.
“Wass happenin’?” Phil whispered.
“The laws of physics are unravelling, the fabric of space-time is starting to tear. The moon probably won’t hit the Earth before the end.”
“Can us find t’portal?” Phil asked desperately.
“I think so.” Karl said after a pause. “Look across the street.”
Phil stared at the point where Karl was indicating. An empty bit of road, except it wasn’t empty all the time, a car was fading in and out of view, lit by the streetlamp, a streetlamp in another universe.
“As the other universe becomes more visible to us we should be able to find the portal, it will be the only piece of this universe that doesn’t change much.” Karl stated.
“If I’m right.” He added to himself under his breath.
Phil looked up again in time to see another startling sight.
“There’s two moons.”
Karl nodded silently, he had seen that many times in his silent sleepless vigil.
“Dawn is still hours away. You should try to get some sleep.” He counselled.
“Can’t.” Phil muttered.
“Yeah, same here. But we can’t do much until daylight.”
By unspoken consent they sat down in the armchairs and leant back, eyes closed but still not sleeping.

Phil blinked bleary eyed. The light in the room was much brighter, daylight.
“Here.”
A mug was lowered into his field of vision.
“Thanks.”
Karl sat down in the armchair opposite him.
“Your Mum’s up and fixing breakfast, gas pressure is dropping, the water took an age to boil.”
Phil stood up expecting Karl to follow suit.
“I’m a cup of coffee only man.” Karl said with a smile. “Get something to eat Phil.”
A twinge of pain crossed his face as he watched Phil leave the room. The truth was that he was feeling very queasy this morning and he couldn’t face any food.
Phil ate the cereal without any real sense of taste, it was simply a comforting ballast in his stomach, a piece of normality in the turbulent world.
When Karl came into the kitchen a little later Phil looked at his family and realised that this was probably the last time he would see them, before…
“I…” He began, but the normal litany wasn’t good enough this morning.
“I luv tha Mum.” He said giving her a warm hug as he stood up.
“Tek care Clare.” He said giving her kiss on her cheek.
“You tek care of theesen.” His Dad offered and then grabbed him in a bearhug.
Phil patted his broad back.
“Sure Dad, I’ll sithee.”
Karl led the way out of the house to the Rover; by a small miracle it turned over and started.
Karl drew in a breath as they pulled away in the eerie morning light.
“I was worried that it might not start at all.” He commented. “If gravity is up the pole, electricity can’t be too far behind.”
They cruised through the devastated streets around the football ground. Burnt out cars smouldered, some shells of houses too, but nothing and nobody moved. There were crumpled bodies lying in the road, on the pavement, carelessly draped over low walls, so many pieces of human flotsam cast up by the savage tide. Phil stared in horror at the carnage as Karl wove his way in and out of the debris and the bodies, he could not drag his eyes up to look for the portal.

Clouds ripped across the sky as gusts of wind tore and heaved at anything that could move, the weather descending into chaos as the dissolution accelerated ever faster.
A few people braved the winds and the possibility of further violence and went in search of the essentials of life, milk, bread, a paper. No cars moved now, except for the old Rover where the chemical reaction still limped along, squeeze, heat, bang, squeeze, heat, bang. They quartered the zone that their previous measurements had delineated, searching for a sign that a portal existed; an escape route for one person. But everywhere seemed to be the same, a rippling, pulsing thinning of the fabric of the universe so that wherever they looked they saw through the grey ‘reality’ to the other universe.
The Rover finally began to stutter at around midday, its coughing jerking progress bringing a sad procession of bewildered people out of their barricaded homes onto the riot torn streets closest to the football grounds smoking hulk. It choked to a halt and Karl hauled on the handbrake.
“We walk from here.” He said grimly and reached out a tire iron from the mess in the passenger footwell behind him.
As they got out of the vehicle they were face to face with the silent crowd of people.
“What they want?” Phil asked a little fearfully.
“I don’t know.” Karl answered him. “Come on.”
He turned away from the crowd and stalked up the street, his attention upon the houses on either side of him, looking. Phil followed him with many a backward glance. One by one the crowd returned to their homes, there was no help or order in those two strangers, no hope.
Doggedly Karl walked on as the wind stilled and an un-seasonally hot sun blazed from out of a sky that had purple blotches crossing it like unearthly clouds, but they were not clouds, they were holes and stars could just be seen glimmering in their darkened hearts. Phil began to feel light headed and woozy, his feet hurt, his eyes watered in the strong light; belatedly he fished his sunglasses out and put them on. A car silently ran straight through him causing his heart to race with anxiety. Despite trying to stifle a cry, it burst out from his lips. Karl turned about.
“You okay?”
“Phantom.” Phil admitted and pointed to his sunglasses.

“Yeah, lets take a break.”
He nodded to their left where a low wall offered somewhere to sit in the shade of the houses.
“How long?” Phil asked him quietly.
Karl shrugged.
“Days, hours. All I can tell you is that it’s going to accelerate the closer we get to the endpoint.”
“Wha’ll happen, yuh know, at t’end?” Phil ventured haltingly.
“I guess we won’t be around for the final act, fade out or blow up.”
Phil frowned at him, he was the scientist, he should know.
“We aren’t immune from the breakdown Phil, our bodies are just complex chemical factories, they’ll stop working just like the Rover did. Like as not we’ll be unconscious or dead when spacetime finally falls apart.” Karl explained patiently.
“Just a matter of time.” He added softly to himself.
Phil didn’t like hearing that sort of news and stood up abruptly.
“Lets get on then.” He stated with more defiance than he felt.
Karl grinned weakly at him.
“Keep moving.”
They prowled the streets getting more and more thirsty under the relentless sun and then came across a corner shop that had been broken open and looted. Karl crossed the road and looked inside. Predictably all the booze had gone but the bottled water had been left strewn across the floor and a few bars of chocolate were still in the racks that had been kicked over. Karl scooped up the chocolate and two bottles of water, handing one to Phil. Each greedily drank their fill and dropped the empty bottles. To Phil it was the finest drink he had ever tasted, even lukewarm, the water was wonderful. He gratefully accepted the chocolate bar that Karl held out and devoured it. The chocolate hardly had any flavour but the sugar hit still revived him and he searched out another bottle of water to take with him. Karl followed his example then pulled out his wallet and placed a ten pound note on the counter, weighing it down with a piece of smashed shelving.
“Why’s tha doin’ that?”
“So it isn’t theft.” Karl answered him.
“But a tenner, we’ve had nobut three, four quids worth.”
“It isn’t worth anything anymore.” Karl reminded him and stepped back out into the hot sunshine.

Phil followed him and pulled his sunglasses back down, just in time for two girls to walk out of him and down the pavement. Karl saw him jump.
“Ghosts?”
“Yeah.”
“Must still be aways from the portal.”
Their search continued but Karl was walking ever more slowly and Phil was getting impatient, the sky was darkening, not with clouds but as it lost its blue colour.
“Shit.” Karl breathed as he saw the dark sky. “The atmosphere’s leaking away.”
“What?”
“The sky is blue because it is scattering blue light, the less air there is, the less scattering there is, ergo the atmosphere is leaking away into space. Either that or the light has changed its properties.” He added with a half laugh. “What a sick joke, the greatest experiment of all time, the end of time itself, and we don’t have the time to study it.”
Phil began to wonder if Karl was losing his grip.
“We gotta find t’portal.” He insisted.
“Yes.” Karl agreed but then looked upwards despairingly. “But how?”
Phil stared at him.
“We’ve pretty much covered the entire zone Phil, and there is no sign of any stable point.”
He waved his hand around at the slowly ‘moving’ patches of other reality that were peeking through at them, a burned out house was whole again, a car sped silently past on the desolate road.
He looked about to say something when he doubled over with a gasp of pain.
“Karl! Wass up?” Phil demanded in concern.
Karl held onto his stomach as though it was about to explode and whimpered at the pain, slowly his knees gave way and he crumpled to the pavement.
“Was it them choc’s?” Phil asked him. “They bad?”
Karl’s eyes looked up at him.
“No.” He said through gritted teeth. “I think my body is going down, we’re in the final phase Phil, not much time.”

Many times the previous day and night Phil had been assaulted by the little panic attacks now as his only hope lay dying on the pavement he experienced a full on attack. He was hyper ventilating, the world rushing round and round insanely, fear crushing him, unable to move, speak, frozen.
“Phil.” Karl’s voice filtered through the blank paralysing wall of fear. “Phil!”
Karl had sat up and grabbed hold of his shoulder to shake it.
“You’ve got to keep it together. Help me up.”
Somehow Karl’s need broke through the attack and he numbly pulled him up off the pavement to stand on wobbly legs.
“Good, now start walking, good.” Karl encouraged him, limping along beside him.
“There has to have been a crossover Phil. You came here, your shadow self went there. Did you see anything? Feel anything?” Karl quizzed him as they moved haltingly along the deserted street.
Last Saturday, a lifetime ago. Where had he been, what was he doing?
The match, he and Al had been at the match. It had been piss poor and they had been grumbling about the lousy performance of their team but Al had been fairly positive. Then suddenly he had been as gloomy as they come and banging on about the world ending; prophetically true. Phil stopped.
“Phil?”
Something had changed, what had he been doing? They had been walking home, taking this route he realised, and, and he had needed a pee…
“Down ‘ere.” Phil pointed along a sidestreet that was mainly lined with old industrial buildings.
It was slow going, Karl could barely support himself and Phil found his own breath was short, no matter how deep he breathed he couldn’t seem to fill his lungs.
“Airs going.” Karl rasped and tried to cough but hadn’t the strength.
“Oh my God.”
His whispered cry brought Phil’s attention back to him. Karl was staring up into the sky, it was nearly black and the stars in their millions were steadily blazing down on them. A sheet of something whisked across the stars, bright green and red, glowing curtains rippling and twisting high overhead.

“Aurorae.” Karl gasped breathlessly. “But…how?”
 A much brighter light began to fill the heavens and they dragged their watering eyes towards the sun. It was now a bloated disc that was growing ever bigger.
“Oh shit! The suns gone nova.” Karl choked on his words. “You have to get to the portal Phil, only minutes left.”
Phil just stared at him dumbly.
“Where?” Was all he could utter.
Karl cast his dying gaze around the grim scene of industrial dereliction, fading and phasing with views of the original universe that was continuing to function, supremely indifferent to the imminent death of its own shadow.
“There!” He gasped and his arm shot out.
The alleyway that Phil had taken a leak in seven days previously, where…something had brushed past him. The alleyway was long and dark but whilst all around seemed to be shifting and thinning, it remained solid and dark.
“Come on.” Phil exhorted Karl and began to drag him towards that inviting black pit.
“Can’t.” Karl muttered weakly.
“Course you can.” Phil argued as Karl began to slip through his hands.
“No way out for me Phil.” He said weakly as Phil crouched over him. “Has to be two way, the other me would never come here. Go.”
“No.” Phil rebuked the dying man. “Come on.”
He hauled him across the last of the pavement and began to enter the cool darkness but it was getting ever harder to drag Karl’s dead weight, something was holding him back.
“Go Phil.” Karl said faintly. “Only you, only you…”
The words faded out and the eyes looked upwards sightlessly.
“Karl! Karl!”
He shouted and shook the limp body but it only slid from his nerveless hands, thinning and wavering like the rest of its shadow universe. The harsh searing light was beginning to flood into even this dark recess and Phil knew that he had only seconds to escape back to his own universe. He staggered deeper into the alleyway only to find something, someone blocking his way. He tried to go round him but his shadow seemed to know just what he was thinking and mirrored the move even as he made it. Phil shoved hard against the figure but it shoved back with equal violence and the air was now so thin that he felt like he was drowning. His vision was going black around the edges as he struggled with his shadow self, each desperate to survive.
They fell over in a heap of arms and legs, kicking and punching at each other as the darkness slowly overcame him.

“Phil? Yuh alrait?” The voice came to him as though very far away but the hand that reached down to him was tangible, real.
He seized it with his last energy and found himself hauled up and out of the alleyway and into the overcast afternoon light. Phil doubled over sucking in the cool air as though it were life itself.
“Shouldna mixed tha drinks.” The familiar voice chided him.
Phil straightened up and stared at the face of his friend.
“Al.” He whispered.
His legs nearly gave out but Al grabbed him and held him up.
“Stupid bugger, tha’s pissed.” Al said in a light tone. “Cum on, I’ll get thee home.”
Leaning heavily on his friend, Phil allowed himself to be guided away from the apocalypse that was occurring at the other end of a dark alleyway.
“Shades.” He uttered.
“Wassat? Lost yuh sunglasses huh?” Al replied. “Too bad, well smart them.”
Phil remained silent, his sunglasses had fallen off in the struggle but he hadn’t been thinking about them. He was thinking of a near stranger who had devoted his last hours to helping him escape the shadow universe. Who had helped him have a second chance at life.