There is a plain under a dim sky. It is covered with gentle rolling curves that might remind you of something else if you saw it from a long way away, and if you did see it from a long way away you'd be very glad that you were, in fact, a long way away.<br /><br />Three gray figures floated just above it. Exactly what they were can't be described in normal language. Some people might call them cherubs, although there was nothing rosy-cheeked about them. They might be rumored among those who see to it that gravity operates and that time stays separate from space. Call them auditors. Auditors of reality.<br /><br />They were in conversation without speaking. They didn't need to speak. They just changed reality so that they had spoken.<br /><br />One said, It has never happened before. Can it be done?<br /><br />One said, It will have to be done. There is a personality. Personalities come to an end. Only forces endure.<br /><br />It said this with satisfaction.<br /><br />One said, Besides... there have been irregularities. Where you get personality, you get irregularities. Well-known fact.<br /><br />One said, He has worked inefficiently?<br /><br />One said, No. We can't get him there.<br /><br />One said, That is the point. The word is him. Becoming a personality is inefficient. We don't want it to spread. Supposing gravity developed a personality? Supposing it decided to like people?<br /><br />One said, Got a crush on them, that sort of thing?<br /><br />One said, in a voice that would have been even chillier if it was not already at absolute zero, No.<br /><br />One said, Sorry. Just my little joke.<br /><br />One said, Besides, sometimes he wonders about his job. Such speculation is dangerous.<br /><br />One said, No argument there.<br /><br />One said, Then we are agreed?<br /><br />One, who seemed to have been thinking about something, said, Just one moment. Did you not just use the singular pronoun "my?" Not developing a personality, are you?<br /><br />One said, guiltily, Who? Us?<br /><br />One said, Where there is personality, there is discord.<br /><br />One said, Yes. Yes. Very true.<br /><br />One said, All right. But watch it in future.<br /><br />One said, Then we are agreed?<br /><br />They looked up at the face of Azrael, outlined against the sky. In fact, it was the sky.<br /><br />Azrael nodded, slowly.<br /><br />One said, Very well. Where is this place?<br /><br />One said, It is the Discworld. It rides through space on the back of a giant turtle.<br /><br />One said, Oh, one of that sort. I hate them.<br /><br />One said, You're doing it again. You said "I."<br /><br />One said, No! No! I didn't! I never said "I!"... oh, bugger...<br /><br />It burst into flame and burned in the same way that a small cloud of vapor burns, quickly and with no residual mess. Almost immediately, another one appeared. It was identical in appearance to its vanished sibling.<br /><br />One said, Let that be a lesson. To become a personality is to end. And now... let us go.