Slupetzky had arrived—at the most beautiful place on Earth. Before him stretched the horizon of the Pacific, the greatest ocean on this planet. In a few minutes, the sun would set behind it. Soon after, as usual at this time, the sky would blaze in fiery red light. He heard the waves crashing with immense force against the rock beneath him, and the many small birds chirping as they flew across the blue sky in the late evening sun.
A few meters ahead grew a small agaves hedge, planted right at the cliff’s edge. Its thick foliage shielded him from the drop. Behind it, the ground plunged hundred meters straight down. The abyss was only a few steps away.
Now the sun had reached the horizon. It sank in glowing embers behind the line. In just a short time, it would be gone.
Now. Now it was gone. The sun had fully disappeared behind the horizon. Slupetzky heard the waves pounding loudly against the rock below, and for a moment the birds chirped even louder. Then, as twilight set in, they grew quieter—while the crickets began to chirp with full force.
“Whoever looks into the abyss with the eyes of an eagle has courage,” Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote. Now Slupetzky himself gazed into the abyss before him., in all imaginable beauty. A tiny bird chirped one last time, just as a small gecko darted past.
Slupetzky looked straight ahead. He had reached the end of the world. Before him, beyond the drop, lay the Pacific—the peaceful ocean, the largest body of water on his small planet. It was so unimaginably huge, that all the landmass of the Earth could fit inside it. At the edge, the greenish blue of the sea blended into the reddish blue of the sky. Beyond that, the Pacific stretched thousands of kilometers westward until it met Asia—where the sun was rising right now.
Now it grew darker, the sky turning red. The ocean before him lived up to its name—peaceful. The mood of this moment was truly surreal. Slupetzky had arrived. Before him the steep abyss, behind it the silence of the ocean. Did he want to go further?
No, he didn’t want. He just sat there—he had made it. As the sky turned blood-red, he knew this, in all its splendor and perfect beauty, was the decisive moment of his life. If he took a few more steps forward, the end of everything would be reached.
He looked straight ahead in silence. This moment had been given to him by G.O.D. Since childhood, he had gazed eastward from his room at the sunrise towards Asia—thousands of miles across flat land. That idea had always frightened him. Back then, he had longed for the west. Now he sat here, looking thousands of miles towards Asia again — but this time into the sunset, westward — and before him, the land ended.
If he took a few steps forward now, the end of everything would come. That would be it. Did he want that?
No.
Slupetzky slowly stood up, looked one last time straight ahead, turned around and walked back.
Thank you, dear God!
—
Vienna Calling 