A Love Beyond Time, in a World on a Timer

He had to save the world to redeem his sins. But the world had already ended. So he lurched along through his pointless corporeal existence, awaiting an overdue reunion with his perished family. Bereft of purpose in a man-made apocalypse, Noblé worked in the most suicidal profession, one known to expedite a longed-for reunion with his wife and daughter. They called it couriering, the simple act of escorting people, usually climate refugees escaping famine and drought, from one place to another. Desperate to leverage favor with the fates, he eschewed all material attachments and compensation for his deeds. As he dawdled over the years, playing at living while his mind was lost in the afterlife, a creeping and overwhelming feeling of failure to fulfill his destiny with his family took hold. The contagion of this intractable depression drove him toward suicide. On his way to die, he happens upon a benign, unremarkable young woman, who unknowingly holds the key to saving a once thought to be unstoppable global warming feedback loop. She possesses the one thing humanity needs to repent for its ancestors’ ecocide, and more important to Noblé, the one thing he needs to atone to get back to his family. His mind is mired in the afterlife with his loved ones, and the black hole pull of such a longing has him losing his earthly sanity more every minute. But fate, it seems, is not finished with him yet.