...what happens to possibilities abandoned...?

"...Did it fail?"

Makise Kurisu stood confused in the center of Future Gadget Laboratories, AKA the too small apartment over the electronics store. Okabe Rintarou stood stock still at the computer, a pair of modified headphones on his head.

Nothing had seemed to happen. He had activated the headset, so... shouldn't his memories have been sent? Had her calculations been off and they hadn't sent?

"...Don't tell me he was just pulling our legs the whole time..."

No, no, he had known far too much about her for that. His accounts of other world lines were too detailed, his mood too altered, his emotions far too real for it to have been nothing but a lie. So why was he just standing there like he'd been rooted to the spot?

Okay, maybe this was normal. She hadn't really thought about what would happen when he "left", but... shouldn't something be happening?

Was he even breathing?

Oh god, was he... had the device somehow caused- wait, what was that?

Kurisu wasn't sure what she was seeing. A patch of the self proclaimed mad scientist's hair had just turned steely gray, and was expanding outwards to cover his entire head.

"What in the world is... wait, is it... spreading?!"

The mass of gray had covered Okabe's entire body in seconds, and did not appear to be stopping. The leeching of color was spreading through the floor-

She ran. Before she could even process what she was doing she was out the door and bounding down the stairs two or three at a time. Kurisu had no idea what the grayness was or what it would do, but for some reason she was suddenly desperate to escape, a terror she could barely understand ripping through her being and giving her the single directive to get away from it right now-!

"Hey Nae! Doot do doo!"

Mayuri, about to enter the apartment. Stopped to talk to Nae. They didn't know-!

"Mayuri! Run! We need to-"

Kurisu had just enough to time to see Mayuri turn towards her, confusion evident on her face at the panic in her voice, before the grayness caught her foot. In half a second it had overtaken her entire body, and she froze on the spot, caught in a frantic, terror filled look.

"Yo, what the...?" were a nearby alley vendor's last words before the wave reached him and froze the sentence on his lips. A baby's ceaseless screaming stopped mid cry, silenced by the spreading ripples of time.

The city of Akihabara lost all color as the wave of gray spread throughout the ground and buildings. People, trees, birds in flight, unmoving as statues as it overtook them. The lands grew silent, the oceans turned calm and motionless. Light stopped in its tracks as the planet's rotations suddenly halted. Gravity blinked out of existence as even the black holes ceased their endless pull. Entropy reached maximum value, space itself stood still-

In a corner of Future Gadget Laboratories, the last grain of sand fell and moved no more.

World line 4586 is now inactive. Reinstating world line 4639 as primary timeline.