The Terrible Line

Each day it marches on. 

Women named Evelyn or men named Dale (but it’s typically the Evelyns) are the final holdouts. But biology has its limits. Somewhere just shy of six score years, the limit gets hit and the line takes over (there was one soul who pushed beyond this limit. Literally one. Congrats to the French). 

On The Line presses. Relentless and real. Go back and watch the old YouTube footage and you’ll see those it has passed. New York City, 1911. A classic clip, the first “glimpse of the past”-style vid I ever discovered. I’d have to Google it to be sure — there might be a few final stragglers. But New York City 1911 sits right on the edge of the line. 

Imagine dropping back into those old 8mm frames. Walking the streets of Manhattan, three years before the Archduke died. Men in striped suits. Women in their final decade of frilly hats taller than a toddler and dresses made of Robert’s Rules of Order.  

“Hello ma’am! Good day sir! Have you heard of The Line? The Terrible Line?” 

Quizzical looks. 

“The Line? You know The Line? That Terrible Line that each day marches on?”

Furtive glances as the crowd scurries on. No one knows it. 

“Good people of 1911, don’t you know The Line?! The Line lies scrapes forward, about 110 years hence. This Line marks the moment when everyone alive today is GONE!”

The scurrying stops. People listening. 

“It’s coming for all of you! Every heart beating around the globe will succumb to The Line. All the whirring organs, all the rich fractal thoughts of every man woman and child will cease. Life runs out, entropy wins, and the ground takes all. I come from two-thousand and twenty three. It just so happens that my time is your Line. The last living souls of 1911 are expiring as we speak! Don’t you see? This great, terrible Line is coming for ALL of you. This bulldozer of death does not miss.” 

Silence. Sadness. 

“Yes, yes, this Terrible Line of Certain Death for everyone you know and love, from friends to your kids to even that newborn down the street, early in the next century will be — what? What do you want?”

A young man steps forward with something to say.

"Ya say The Line's 'rotten', huh? But ya got it all twisted! The Line ain't for any of us fellas. It's just fer you! Knowin' that all this livin' will end one day — that thought, it gives a fire to today, see? This “Rotten Line” might be on its way, but not today, pal! Today, we got our hearts pumpin' and life buzzin' through us. The Line? It just means we ain't around forever. But ain't it the short-lived things that are the sweetest? Your folks in two thousand twenty-three, they got their own Line, just as real as ours. Don't go sheddin' tears over it."

The crowd cheers. The clouds of fear are gone. On they walk beneath their newfound sun. And I depart 1911, back to 2023, where my own Glorious Line waits for me.