Beyond the Great Oblivion

A thousand years of darkness and decay! A thousand years of blight, brutality, and atavism; of Nature overwhelming all man's work, of crumbling cities and of forgotten civilization, of stupefaction, of death! A thousand years of night! Two human beings, all alone in that vast wilderness—a woman and a man. The past, irrevocable; the present, fraught with problems, perils, and alarms; the future—what? A thousand years! Yet, though this thousand years had seemingly smeared away all semblance of the world of men from the cosmic canvas, Allan Stern and Beatrice Kendrick thrilled with as vital a passion as though that vast, oblivious age lay not between them and the time that was.[...]