They'd found the universe's greatest wonder. A planet full of infinite possibilities, each future branching out from one another like the edges of a Koch snowflake. Glimpses of alternate worlds winked in and out of the air.

John stepped out of the spacecraft. He gazed at the kaleidoscopic world before him, and began to walk. Vaguely, John knew he and his crewmates had come on a mission. They had something to do, something to save before it was too late. But his crewmates were nowhere to be seen. There was only John, the planet, and the thousands of other Johns walking, talking, doing things the present-time John might have experienced had he chosen a different path.

In one future John was at the snowy peak of a mountain, his face and fingers numb from the cold as he posed for a picture. All the sweat and training had culminated into this one, exhilarating moment. He was living the dream. No one could take this feeling from him.

Another John was kneeling to the love of his life in front of an odd but familiar pyramidal building. He presented a wedding ring. Before he could even finish his words, lips met each other and he was kissing his future husband. The men went on to spend the rest of their lives together.

Envy wrung John's heart. He watched as yet another version of him stumbled blindly in the dark. He called for help, but no one was there. Only the noise of night creatures answered his cries as the scent of decay grew stronger. The ground dissolved to dust beneath him. A horrible plunging sensation yanked at his gut. The window to that reality stitched close, and the real John stepped back, blinking away the terrible and wondrous sensations.

But he couldn't look away. So he continued to wander, stopping to stare at the multitude of realities that laid before him. More Johns, more voices, more what-ifs beckoned to him with their promise of a different life. Where he walked, some Johns followed, while others folded out of view.

"Which of you is the real me?" John asked.

They answered, flooding John with a cacophony of noise, sensations, and thoughts that weren't his.

"Your reasoning doesn't make sense. Please, elaborate."

"It's not working. The machine's not working!"

"Look, just go to bed and everything will be okay."

"We're almost there! Just a little bit more..."

"Sometimes I wonder what's out there."

"But that can't be, that's not possible--"

"What are you waiting for? Just leave!!"

"We'll come back as heroes. Promise."

"You need to be fixed, you know?"

John backed away. The other Johns stepped closer. But the real John was safe. The parallel universes bled into each other, but there was a sort of barrier that kept it all from spilling out. The world was at his fingertips, and he could choose anything. So John continued onwards.

He travelled through valleys and plains, forests and deserts, places that were barely distinguishable from one another apart from the shapes his parallel futures took. He watched his future selves live their lives on the surface of lakes, within tiny grains of sand, sailing the back of the wind. Voices formed and faded as day and night passed without distinction.

The future Johns fanned out into an innumerable amount of choice. They began to cross paths. Time trickled away as John walked. The futures started to converge. They bled and fused into fewer strands of possibilities. With every step John took, another window was sealed. One by one, his futures winked out like a city ready to go to eternal sleep. Faster and faster they disappeared behind John. But John didn't look back.

As John and the other scientists walked the surface of their newest discovery, the infinite planet shrank. The planet grew denser and heavier, pulling on the fabric of space and time. Possibilities funneled into each other. Infinity was reduced to millions, then thousands, then dozens of choices, before converging into a single future that ended with nothing at all.

Light years away, human civilization waited for the scientists to return to Earth. They searched the skies for a message of hope, but there was none. Trees wilted, oceans rose and animals became carcasses. Then, another discovery: the Infinite Planet had reappeared into view as a black hole that was making itself the new anchor of the universe.

Not too long after, Earth crumbled upon itself. But with destruction came the creation of something new. The future was never far, as long as the past remained to be built upon.