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In the shifting sea of space time, between vortices formed from spinning gravity wells, under storms of positronic lightning, a canoe was floating about. In the canoe were oars made of dead trees, and clothes on the body of a dead human.

The human, when he was alive, was just unlucky. How was he to know that a tiny lake in Northern Quebec contained a rip in the fabric of reality? He was not some scientist, nor a secret agent, just a lumberjack who got a day off. All he wanted was a day of letting the lumber lift him, instead of the other way around.

He was dead. Certainly any outside observer would claim he was dead, not that any such observers existed. But an inside observer would tell a different story. The Reaper hadn’t yet arrived. The man in the canoe was in an eternal state of dying, a quantum purgatory, a motionless march to the grave.

Notes

This was written in 5 minutes during a Joy of Writing meetup.