The fear comes when they first open the shutters.

I was at my twelfth cycle when it happened to me.

The other travellers who are on their eighteenth or nineteenth cycle say that if you are shown, you are chosen. Chosen for what? When someone reaches their twentieth cycle they disappear.

I was chosen and sit in this cold, metal room with a bed and chair, staring out of an unshuttered window. A huge sphere moving in and out of view and then blackness with pin pricks of light.

This is the last pass of my nineteenth cycle. I watch the sphere in the window disappearing as I wait. 

But for what?

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