At first they thought they would not have enough erasers, but then one of them suggests acetone, turpentine, whiteout, the Ctrl+Z function. Diversify your arsenal, and you can end the world twice over.
They divide up their tasks. Misha erases the oceans first, because if you erase the land first then you would have nowhere to stand. Ben swabs turpentine on the sky, watching the colors run. He gets distracted and erases two white streaks behind a cloud, and he says, "Misha, look."
Ben points at the cloud and says, "This one looks like a rabbit."
"I think it looks like a bug."
They turn back to their work. They erase the seas and the clouds and the stars and the moon ("We will leave the sun 'til last," they decide), the deserts, the cities, the jungles, and all the humans and all their dreams and their ambition and their loves.
To their surprise, they find Jeremy Carver hiding in a crevasse. "Thank god," Jeremy says. "Thank god you're here. What's going on? Where did the sky go?"
Misha looks at Ben and says, "I thought you were going to erase him."
Ben replies, "I thought Jeremy was your job."
And Jeremy says, "Wh-" as Ben and Misha erase him together, chiding each other about shoddy workmanship and blame-shifting. Teamwork means they must be able to trust each other, and what kind of teamwork is this?
"There's no use fighting about it at this point," Ben says. "We're almost done."
"What now?" Misha asks. Nothingness is dark. He can't see Ben beside him, and he resists the urge to reach out and make sure he is there. "What now that it's all gone?"
"Not quite all gone," says Ben.
"What do you mean?" And then understanding dawns, and Misha says, "Ah."
Slowly, with ceremony, they begin to erase each other.
