“Doesn't every previous era feel like fiction once it's gone?”

“But doesn't every precious era feel like fiction once it's gone? After a while, certain vestigial sayings are all that remain. Decades after the invention of the automobile, for instance, we continue to warn each other not to 'put the cart before the horse'. So, too, we do still have 'day'dreams and 'night'mares, and the early-morning clock hours are still known colloquially (if increasing mysteriously) as 'the crack of dawn'. Similarly, even as they grew apart, my parents never stopped calling each other 'sweetheart'.”

“But I guess every bygone era takes on a shade of myth.”

“Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end”

“Some say that love is the sweetest feeling, the purest form of joy, but that isn't right. It's not love--it's relief.”

“El amor se deteriora, los humanos fracasan, las eras concluyen.”

“I kept quiet, but the knowledge gathered like a storm. I could see the future: My father wasn't coming back. And this one fact seemed to point to other facts and others still: Love frays and humans fail, time passes, eras end.”