The collapse of the First Universe did not sound like thunder. It sounded like the tearing of unwashed linen under the weight of an iron anchor.
In Qiao Ming’s unsealed memory, the great shipyards of Taiyuan disappeared beneath a wall of black water three leagues high. The flood did not go down from storm clouds. The fabric of the sky vault simply dissolved, releasing the ancient salt water that had been held behind the high sky since the dawn of time. Entire mountain ranges were scoured clean of their forests in minutes, reduced to heaps of rounded gravel that rolled across the drowned plains like marbles spilled upon a stone floor.
He was standing on the high watching bridge of the Ark Nadir, ninety deep-water lengths above the central keel.
Through the giant stone viewports of eight-inch layered sight quartz, he had watched the stars go out. They didn’t put out cleanly like candles in a gust. They imploded, their bright white light curdling into dense, violet whorls of void-rot that sank through the black water column like lumps of poisoned pitch. The three thousand laws of the universe were melting in the salt water. Gravity became uneven, pulling sideways toward sunken peaks. Heat ceased to rise, pooling in stale, boiling drain pits at the bottom of the valleys. And time itself began to stretch and curl like parchment held too close to a charcoal fire bowl.
