It’s always the last day of the world at Echo Beach. From fifteen miles up, the horizon is visibly bowed. The sun hangs swollen above an oily sea. The coastal range ripples up from the water’s edge, bunching together in wattles like the neck of a lizard. Scintilla flash from the ruins of a port city half engulfed.

The lounge is quiet, but it will start filling up soon. At a table in the middle of the room, an old man plays chess with an automaton. Every now and then, he reaches across the table and slaps the thing on the side of its metal head.

Near one of the large windows, a lanky, barrel-chested man drinks alone. Coal black skin, melanin-enhanced, tangle of blonde dreads. Circa 22C, a mod from one of the Martian arcologies. Clearly pre-Plague. Close enough to home for me that I want to say something to him, warn him. But what could I say?

A couple sits at the bar leaning toward one another, their heads touching. It’s difficult to say whether they are accelerated canines or regressed humans, but there is something very dog-like in their focused attention to one another. An aura of benign stupidity hangs about them like sweet incense.

The digital clock above the holo fireplace reads 4:22:00. As I watch, the numbers dissolve and re-form: 4:21:59.

I check my console, pour a shot of absinthe and a pony of pomegranate juice, set them on a tray, and send it floating toward the Martian.

I walk down the length of the bar to the couple.

“Get you anything else?”

The man looks up at me with watery eyes.

“No, thank you,” he says.

“I don’t think so,” the woman says at the same time. They look at each other and bark soft laughter. They lean their heads together again.

I decide to leave the old man and the bot alone. As I turn my back I hear a thump as he smacks it again.

I wipe down the bar, check my stock. Vodka from Ganymede, gin from Hotpoint, malts from Scotland. Scotland. I remember jagged green hills, black rock thrusting into a gray sky, mounds of rubble dotting a fractal coastline testament to the mercurial nature of power. I stood amidst the ruins of the Castle Duncan as a piper wailed defiance and loss to the cradle of the ocean. There was a small suitcase open in front of him. Tourists threw coins.

I wonder if there’s anything left of Scotland now, here at the end of Time. It’s a stupid thought, of course. The continents have shifted, the seas have climbed and receded a dozen times. North America is an archipelago stretching from pole to equator; Fiji is the leading edge of a megacontinent; the treasures of continental Europe lie beneath a cold, green sea.

The world-face changes, the abstract constructions of Man linger ghostlike. If I were to travel to the global coordinates occupied by Castle Duncan circa 20C, could I still hear the echoes of pipes in the salt air? Does Gaia remember?

The Gate hums quietly. Laughter echoes up from the Foyer. Heads emerge from the spiral staircase set in the floor at the far end of the lounge away from the windows. Party of four; two men, two women. Definitely post-Diaspora; I can’t place them on the Continuum. Definitely wealthy. They wear their entitlement like a badge.

One of them men catches sight of me, nudges his companions, and they all drift in my direction.

He says something to me in a liquid trill. A voice whispers in my ear: Give us your best table.

Arrogant bastard. I gesture at the nearly empty room.

“Have your finest pleasure,” I say, hoping that the odd phrasing will confuse his chip.

He gives me a strange look and gestures his companions toward the windows. They are selectively polarized; you can look directly at the sun’s disk. Structures writhe across its face. Precursor flares erupt like Medusa tangles from its troubled edge.

After a few minutes they sit down. I pretend to be busy with something behind the bar. The man clears his throat several times, finally gestures me over.

I grab a very dirty rag from the bin under the bar and carry it conspicuously as I walk over to them. I wipe down their table, leaving a greasy film.

“What can I get for you?” I ask. His companions ignore me.

His voice is water running over smooth stones. There is a sibilant whisper in my ear.

Do you have beer?

Moron. This is a bar, for Christ’s sake.

“Beer. Let me think.” I cup my chin in my fist, scratch my head. “I don’t ... no, wait. Beer. Yes, I think so. Four beers?”

“You’re very rude,” the man says, in halting System Anglo.

“It’s the end of the world, Holmes. You can sue me.”

I go back to the bar, pour a pitcher and set it on a tray with four glasses. I send it toward them a little too quickly and a foamy tongue spills down the side of the pitcher.

The Gate hums again. It’s almost inaudible, a subsonic rumble I feel in my feet. Business is picking up. The clock reads 3:37.

By 1:30 Echo Beach is packed. Ice-miners from the Belt, circa 24C, very heavy drinkers. A clutch of avian poets from Deneb IV, post-Diaspora. An accelerated goat with a bell around his neck. He doesn’t smell accelerated. Even though the place is S.R.O., there are empty seats on either side of him at the bar. He’s guzzling buttermilk and eating pickled onions like jelly beans.

It’s almost time for a visit from the Lhosa. I send a couple of bus trays weaving between the tables and wipe down the bar. Everything looks pretty good. At 1:05, the air next to me crackles like old paper and a humaniform outline begins to gather substance.

But it doesn’t quite coalesce. It never does. The Lhosa projects in as a hologram from some other place and time. Never in person, never via the Gate. Its manifestation is always a translucent cartoon-like rendering of a 20C Hollywood B.E.M. – bulbous forehead cradled by a delicate tracery of bone, veiny tributaries branching beneath the skin. Huge eyes, black pupils surrounded by bloody sclera. It’s wearing a jumpsuit with thin, pointy lapels. An elaborate raygun hangs holstered at its side.

I suspect that its appearance in this form is a concession to my kitschy 20C notion of alienness. I have no idea what the Lhosa actually looks like, whether it is a singular entity of unimaginable power, a representative of a vastly superior race of beings, or the fin-de-monde equivalent of a street punk working a three card Monty hustle on Lenox Avenue.