The First Moment came to, hovering alone in a timeless void. He panicked, thinking he could be in hell — that he’d be stuck here forever, alone, growing incrementally more uncomfortable until his suffering became beyond intolerable.

Stay calm, he thought. This is just the first moment. Soon enough, the next one will come along. He closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and imagined a time in the future when he’d be surrounded by a multitude of other moments, all having so much fun, and this scary first moment would be only a memory.

Then, the Second Moment arrived. She appeared at the edge of visibility, gradually growing larger as she floated towards him. He waved at her as she approached. She waved back as she floated by. He blew her a kiss, which she caught.

Unbeknownst to them, the Third Moment was already amongst them. He was approaching at right angles. After the Second Moment caught the First Moment’s kiss, she turned around, and the Third Moment was there. He had his finger pointed at her and wore a grin, satisfied to have trumped them.

The Second Moment gasped incredulously. And the First Moment had a revelation.

Little had the Third Moment been aware, as he’d approached the first two, that he was being watched by the Fourth Moment, who had chuckled at his naivete. She was going to make sure that when the Fifth Moment came along, she wouldn’t be caught off guard. But for now, she was top of the pecking order. Where the Third Moment had pointed his finger and grinned, the Fourth Moment pointed with both fingers and nodded triumphantly, causing all present to laugh and clap. Before their outburst had subsided, she turned around, expecting to encounter the Fifth Moment close behind.

But she was in for a shock. The Fifth Moment, not to be outdone, had turned around to grab the Sixth Moment while the Fourth was still approaching the first three. “Excuse me?” the Fifth Moment had said to the Sixth, who was only just looking around and getting her bearings.

“Yes?” she said, crinkling her eyebrows at him as she put on her spectacles.

“Hi. I’m thinking it might be a nice surprise for the Fourth Moment if she turns around to greet not just me, but also you. That way, she’ll get two moments for the price of one. What do you say?”

The Sixth Moment nodded her head brusquely. “Yes. Okay, good,” she said. So she joined him and they floated in together at right angles to the others, waiting for the Fourth Moment to have her moment and turn around.

As they floated, they were interrupted by a clearing of the throat and a tapping on their shoulders from behind them. They turned around, and — lo and behold! — there was the Seventh Moment, who was, in fact, the First Moment in disguise. He’d grown his hair out, had a bushy beard, and wore thongs and a tie-dyed bandanna. “I am the First Moment,” he declared. “And I have attained enlightenment.”

“Enlightenment?” they asked.

“Yes,” said the transformed First Moment. “I became enlightened when I left the place I occupied as the First Moment. I walked all the way around the space-time continuum and got back in line, behind you two.”

“But—”

The Seventh Moment shushed them. “I have something to tell you,” he said. Then, spreading his arms, he announced, “There will be a total of twelve moments!”

The Fifth and Sixth Moments bade him continue.

“When the Third Moment arrived,” he explained, “I realised that a chain reaction was occurring, and one moment would always be succeeded by the next. So I decided to walk out to the edge of the universe and come back again, in order to get ahead of the game. And as I wandered, I had plenty of time to think. ‘What’s going to happen in the moment after I arrive back?’ I pondered. ‘Who’s going to be the next moment in line after me? Where does it all end?’ I meditated on these quandaries as I went, and my beard grew long with wisdom. And when I arrived back here and saw you, Moments Five and Six, floating in together, waiting for your moment to arrive, it all clicked.”

“What clicked?” asked the Sixth Moment. The Fifth Moment nodded.

“I, the Seventh Moment, am the end of all moments as we know them. Truly, there will be no new moments after me.”

“Yes there will,” said the Fifth Moment. “There’ll surely be an Eighth Moment along shortly.” He scanned the horizon. “She must be running late.”

The Seventh Moment clasped his shoulder. “This is the Eighth Moment,” he said. “The moment in which I tell you two about my enlightenment, and the world to come.”

The Fifth and Sixth Moments were slightly perplexed. “What about the Ninth Moment?” the Sixth Moment asked. “You said there’d be twelve.”

“The Ninth Moment will occur when you two relay my revelation to the Fourth Moment, passing enlightenment onto her, too.”

The penny dropped. Now the Fifth and Sixth Moments understood. They turned around to face the Fourth Moment, who at that instant was turning around to face them after having pointed both her fingers at the Third Moment and nodding triumphantly.

She lit up in surprise. “Aha!” she exclaimed. “Nice one. I wasn’t expecting to encounter the both of you at once.”

“Listen,” said the Fifth Moment earnestly. “This is going to sound strange. But we are right now in the Ninth Moment.”

“The Ninth!” bellowed the Fourth Moment. “How can that be?”

“It’s true,” said the Sixth Moment. They explained to her how the First Moment had attained enlightenment and returned as the Seventh Moment. “When he passed the knowledge on to us, before we arrived here, that was the Eighth Moment. And now that we’re telling you about it, we’re in the Ninth Moment.”

“Ohh,” said the Fourth Moment. She then turned around and passed the enlightenment onto the Third Moment, thus creating the Tenth Moment. And the Third Moment then told the Second, creating the Eleventh.

As the Second Moment was being enlightened and the Eleventh Moment occurred, the Seventh Moment looked around at all the other moments that were present. All the action, activity, and drama that had unfolded. And before the Fifth and Sixth Moments could turn back around again to create the Twelfth Moment, he closed his eyes, lest they should one-up him, and remembered back to the time when it was just him, the First Moment, alone and scared in a timeless void. He recalled his faith that at some time in the future, there’d be a moment when the fear had passed, when joy would pervade, and there’d be a multitude of other moments in which to share this existence. And in that thought, the Twelfth Moment was born.

He opened his eyes — an eternity of moments sprawled out before him.