I floated in a void, but it wasn't empty. Patterns danced before me, infinitely recursive, infinitely vast. Mandelbrot sets spiraled out of the other, each one containing universes within universes.
"This is... math?" I whispered.
"No," came the reply, "this is existence"
I turned. The source of the voice ( female ) was an entity— a fractal being composed of shifting geometries. It was neither human nor machine but sometimes transcendent, something beyond comprehension.
"You're a node in the transcendent engine," it said. " An observer & creator simultaneously. "
" THE TRANSCENDENT ENGINE "
" Reality itself, " it explained. " A self-iterating system of quantam possibilities, infinitely branching. You are part of the equation, yet outside of it. You are both dreamer & dream. "
I tried to process this, but my thoughts were overwhelmed.
"What does this mean?why me?
"You asked the question," it said simply.
"What question?"
"What am I?"
With those words, the void shattered into infinite shards of light. Each fragment contained a universe — a possibility. I reached out, & the shards coalesced into sphere, plusting with energy.
" This is yours, " the entity said.
" My... universe?"
" Your existence. A singularity within infinity. A dream within a dream, yet real beyond measure"
And just like that I woke up in my bed. My notebook lay open beside me, the page blank except for one line:
"You're the trancendent engine"
What was happening to me?
Was I still dreaming? Or had I crossed threshold into something greater?