Dreamed of a tiny ship with really cramped quarters and flinging ourself 
into space in desperate need to capture a ship before us, before they got to 
The End of the Universe.  A ship that held the Angels of the Apocolypse, 
which, when they reached the End of the Universe myth said that they would 
destroy the universe utterly.  We knew that they were the bad ones 'cause 
they would stop, occassionally, and do nasty damage to what planets  were 
out there along our course to The End; and we would always be too late to 
shoot at the source of the problems and often too late to do much about the 
damage they left behind, though we would try.

There was also the 'normal' wrack and ruin and war waged, but there were 
some more interesting problems that we had to try and fix.

[Think... they let loose a virus on one planet that couldn't be 'cured', a 
derivative of the common cold that infected 90% of the planet and the bad 
thing was that they also put a particular quirk in the virus that made it 
extra difficult for the population to get *rid* of the virus once they'd 
contacted it.  Imagine 90% of the population with a cold ALL THE TIME.  It 
was frightening just how many people died because of being slower or a bit 
stupider than they used to be, and how many killed themselves when it felt 
like it would never end.]

There were only three angels on our ship, (which, I have a feeling, is part 
of the reason we were always behind the others even if they took some time 
to stop and do damage along the route) and we angels just kinda 'knew' which 
of us were angels because we looked like anyone else, human wise.  But that 
was possible only in close quarters and/or with some function with the 
ship...

Anyway, at one point, one of the planets mounted a better defense than 
anyone had expected against the angels we were chasing and a few days later, 
we were fairly sure that one of their angels had *died*.  [Which was a very 
uncommon kinda thing, it felt like the angels were immortal if not 
invulnerable, and that, on the most part, they stayed on their planets and 
took care of their jobs and lived forever, something that the three of us 
chasing the other four, were risking and had accepted as part of our duty.] 
 The spirit of it was still with the ship, and in the literature there were 
some hints at one of the riders being insubstantial, so there were debates 
as to wheither or not the spirit of their angel counted as one of the four 
that would trigger the Apocolypse.  We kept going and it had become a dead 
straight chase as without their dead breathern they were slowing.

Then, at one point, I saw one of the very, very few kids that were on the 
ship.  There were very few to no kids on ships, and he was kinda an example 
of why, as the radiation up there really did mess with the genetics, and 
this kid not only had a cleft palate, but the cleft was up most of his 
cartiledge in the front of his face.  Our medical technology had obviously 
kept him alive, but couldn't fix the fact that his whole face was split to 
the point where one eye was very definitely higher than the other and he 
wore glasses that were offset to match his eyes.  He was very alert though, 
and sat quietly in the bridge, watching and learning, and I kinda realized 
he'd been up there fairly often but had been quiet enough that I hadn't 
really noticed him.

I met his mismatched eyes, and he met mine and I blinked.  He was an angel. 
 We now had four angels on board.

Were *we* the angels of the apocolypse, and would *our* arrival at the End 
of the Universe be the trigger, rather than the others'???  Were they just 
bait to bring us to the End?

I woke up on that question.

One of the things I realized, afterwards, is that in most of the cases when 
*we* arrived on the planet, whatever trouble the others had seeded was in 
full bloom, and I wondered how many planets' folks had cursed  *us* for what 
was happening.

 -----
Liralen