The Plague of Scale

Beyond green grass spotted with white daisies, beyond hills that extended into large mountains, a young village was visited by the plague of scale.

The people of the village did not feel the plague creep up on them.

It started with pictures, one picture, two pictures, streams of pictures, thousands of lifetimes of unlived lives, documented in imaginary albums.

The huts grew higher, vertical lives rising to the clouds, the moon, the stars. The possibilities grew endless. Too much to do, but the plague would not touch time, which seemed to grow smaller and fainter. Not enough, it whispered.

To fight the plague, the people grew pills in vast fields of gold. Pills for the sleepless nights, pills for the possibilities, pills for unlived lives, missed chances, the teasing cruelty of probability, and pills to ease the side effects.

In a nearby village, a rabbit sat beneath a bush and watched the village hustle and bustle, growing higher and higher to an endless vast of emptiness spotted by the echoing light of past stars. What an odd sight. It finished nibbling on a pale daisy, how sweet it tasted.