Darkness. An all-consuming nothingness stretched on for what felt like an eternity—a world without shape, without sound, without end. Time itself seemed to unravel, moments stretching into eons, eons collapsing into seconds. He floated in the abyss, weightless and unmoored, his thoughts - his very self - scattering like ash in the wind.
It was gone. That little worm, tumor, parasite - whatever it was - was gone. His mind was quiet for the first time he could remember.
I finally shut you up, you little monster!
I win! you lose!
But… What is this place?
It was the first thought he had in an instant eternity. As though the very idea itself was smeared across some infinite-infinitesimal space like chalk on a board.
He sat there for a time. Can time even be applied in this scenario? Wandering and wondering, he moved about within the darkness. As if the very ideas of motion and space could be applied there!
Is this Heaven? Hell? Limbo even?
He was not bored, but he was also not content. Maybe that's what energy is - the universe simply being uncontent with the way things are, craving change. He craved change too; to escape the endless monotony of this boundless nothing.
A change! Plucked from the void like an ant from its colony, he found himself somewhere different - where the concept of difference applied again.
Light! It was everywhere, in every direction, as though the sun had engulfed the entire sky. The light flooded his senses, an assault on his mind that clashed violently with the eternity of darkness he had grown so accustomed to. His vision burned with the brilliance of it, seared by the sheer intensity of the light. It was as if someone had placed his eyes right next to the sun.
Wait… I have eyes?
In contrast to the ever-shrinking, incorporeal before, he felt his body—or something like a body. It was an unfamiliar thing – alien, as though it had been stitched together from fragments of memory and self. Pain radiated through him, sharp and constant - he was certainly no longer adrift in the void. But even that pain was a strange comfort, a sign that he was here, wherever here was.
He laid there, wallowing in the agonizing pain - writhing within his newly acquired body. It was so overwhelming. He felt – felt – as though he was going to die.
Is this hell?
Yahweh? Allah? Zeus?
Please, somebody, anybody, help me!
I'm sorry for everything I didn't do.
I'm sorry for everything I did do.
He pleaded for some higher power to save him - for anything to release him from this torment. But his pleas felt hollow, even as he thought them. He had never been one for faith - not in gods - not in anything. But now, adrift in this strange, infernal light, he couldn't help but wonder. Had he been wrong? Had there been something greater out there, something that could have prevented this?
Truly, it was the first time in an eternity that he had experienced anything. After a few moments of shock, the pain subsided, and he realized it wasn't pain at all – it was something he had long forgotten. Sensation. The absolute nothingness of the void had become so ordinary that the return of feeling was like a rude slap to the face. It was the shock of becoming aware of his own existence again, of realizing that there was a difference between sense and reality, that things didn't simply cease to exist when he wasn't looking at them.
First came touch. He was lying on a surface—a floor perhaps. It felt sturdy, solid, yet porous, like some kind of spongy stone. But it was also smooth, as though polished by centuries of erosion. His back felt damp, and he realized there was a thin layer of water covering the floor, cool and still. It reminded him of a concrete slab after an intense rainstorm, the kind that left puddles shimmering under streetlights.
Then came taste. His mouth was filled with the flavor of something sweet, like cotton candy melting on his tongue.
Smell followed—the air was damp, yet it carried the scent of a valley in spring, permeated with new life.
Sound came next—the soft ripple of water as he shifted.
Finally, his sight returned.
Looking above him, he saw that the sky was a brilliant white—a white so pure and perfect that it defied description, it was like he was seeing the platonic ideal of 'white'. In opposition, the ground stretched out like an ocean of darkness, dotted with small, irregular holes which seemed to glow with a warm light.
At first, his vision was dull, his eyes struggling to focus. Maybe I forgot my glasses? he thought, laughing inwardly at the absurdity of needing glasses after dying.
Slowly, everything came into focus, the world sharpening into clarity. The ground beneath him now looked as though it were the entirety of the universe in liquid form, like someone had poured a glass of spacetime and spilled it across the floor. What he had initially mistaken for holes in the ground were galaxies and stars, each one glowing with a warm, golden light. They swirled and pulsed, like celestial dancers performing an eternal waltz. The liquid ground did not reflect the brilliance of the sky above; instead, it seemed to absorb the light, leaving the spaces between the galaxies dark like a deep ocean.
The sky, too, had changed as his eyesight adjusted. What had once been a blinding, perfect white now revealed itself to be a vast canvas peppered with tiny black dots – like some strange inversion of a starry night. These dots were not mere absences of light but seemed to be holes in the sky - eating up the light greedily. The white expanse between them shimmered faintly, like the surface of a still lake disturbed by a gentle breeze.
Finally gaining a bearing on existence again, he stood up. His first few steps were shaky, like a baby who has just begun to move its legs. Then, with trepidation, he stood – and fell. Slowly the muscle memory came flooding back, washing over him, and within a few minutes he was standing normally.
With his new vantage point, he looked around. There was nothing as far as the eye could see—nothing but the dazzling lake of galaxies beneath his feet and the inverted starry sky above. The vastness of it all pressed down on him, a weight that made his chest ache.
I'm alone, he thought, the realization hitting him like a truck. Completely, utterly alone. Memories flickered at the edges of his mind—faces he hadn't thought of in years, voices he'd long forgotten. People he'd loved, people he'd failed, people he'd never even tried to know. Was this what it all came down to? A lifetime of choices, and here I am, standing on the edge of nothing, with no one to even remember my name?
The loneliness was a physical thing, a hollow ache in his chest that spread through his body like a cold, creeping vine. He had never been one to fear solitude, but this was different. This wasn't just being alone – this was a cosmic kind of loneliness.
He thought of Alfred Worden and the Apollo lander floating in the vastness of space, and almost laughed. At least he knew there was something out there, something alive. Even he had some microscopic life with him aboard the Apollo thirteen. But me? I'm not even sure if I'm alive anymore.
"Is this my punishment?" he spoke, his voice trembling – as though there was someone to hear him. "To wander this infinite expanse for the rest of eternity?" He was alone, to never be perceived by another living thing again - like some distant star which burnt out long before its light could even dream of reaching earth.
Do I even exist? he pondered, his curiosity momentarily overcoming his existential angst.
Maybe this is just my dying brain hallucinating; making shit up to fill in the gaps left by my failing organs? Or maybe I'm just a Boltzmann brain, and I just dreamt it all up, my entire life being some great illusion cast by my lonely mind?
Could it be that I'm just some brain in a vat, with this being some kind of trial?
The thought sent a shiver down (what he thought was) his spine.
The world rumbled with a deep roar, cutting his philosophical musings short and threatening to throw him to the ground. The galaxies beneath his feet began to coalesce into a single, radiant point not far from where he stood. Where the lights converged, a great upwelling of the liquid universe formed, like some gigantic fountain reflecting the stars. But this fountain wasn't reflecting the stars – no, it was the stars
The liquid flowed from the light, as though some vast underground reservoir had been tapped. The upwelling of the liquid swelled and grew until it was a tower, dozens of meters tall. The tower crystalised, suddenly freezing without warning, like supercritical water that has just received the perfect seed for the rapid formation of its ice crystals. The golden light glowed brightly from within the crystalline tower, its rays reflected and refracted by the newly formed solid, casting shimmering rainbows in every direction.
The crystal cracked - then shattered - sending glittering shards floating through the air. The light – now a solid object - began to morph, its shape coiling and roiling.
From the churning radiance, a ring of light emerged, hovering above the main body of the glowing form. It began to spin, faster and faster, until it was a blur of golden light, leaving a low, resonant hum in the air. The sound was deep and steady, like the vibration of a massive bell, and it seemed to reverberate through the very fabric of the void.
Then, instantly, the ring stopped – as though it had used spacetime itself to brake. Ripples radiated outward, distorting the air like heat waves. The ring began to transfigure, its solid form dissolving into a loop of strange glyphs. Despite never having seen the characters in his life and death, he vaguely felt their meaning within himself.
~ Self. Change. Truth.
Induced by the ring of glyphs, the main body began to transform. Appendages shot out from the lumal mass, they were unwieldy and rounded, like someone had sanded down a statue, leaving only the general shape of the body. The exterior of the mass deflated, its form solidifying into something more defined.
It was a massive humanoid, sitting cross legged across from him and staring intently. Its skin was pale and wrinkled, and its body emaciated, with ribs protruding uncomfortably from its chest. Its hair was wispy and unkempt, and it had sharp, pointed ears. It had the face of a woman who had endured a millennium of hardship, its eyes glowing faintly with the same golden light that had birthed it. The being's entire body was highlighted by a golden aura radiating out from its core, where a golden luminance shone through its chest, opposite its heart.
For a moment, they simply stared at each other, the silence between them heavy with unspoken questions. A pained expression etched itself across its features – it looked tired, like it had lived far too long and had been waiting for a chance to pass on. Its golden eyes, though radiant, seemed dimmed by the weight of countless ages.
He felt a pang of sadness at the sight, for he knew that pain all too well. It wasn't a physical pain, not something a painkiller could dull, but a pain within the very soul itself. Not too long ago, he knew that pain firsthand, having lived with it until he died – until he was relieved of it by the darkness he had dwelt in for a few eternities. Seeing that same pain reflected in the entity's gaze stirred something within him - a strange, aching kinship.
"Wh-" His voice caught in his throat, the words crumbling before they could fully form.
Before he could say anything, the entity extended its arm toward him. Its atrophied muscles strained under the motion – as though the mere act of moving required all its strength. It opened its hand, quivering from the strain.
The golden light in its chest began to flow through its body, until all the light condensed in its palm. It flowed out of the entity's skin and formed into a scintillation of auric light, which hovered in its palm for a moment. The being's golden aura was gone now, its skin was even paler than before, its eyes were now a deep, captivating blue. Its hair had become a haunting silver, and it seemed to quiver even more under the strain of its body. With a laboured exhale, the entity blows the little ball of golden light toward him.
The tiny spark of gold floated lazily towards him, its surface seeming to flow like lava, with the strange runes forming and dissipating on the surface.
He caught it in his hands, cradling it gently, like the ember of a dying fire. He could feel its importance—a weight on his heart, a significance that transcended the understanding words could offer.
"W-what am I supposed to do with this?" he asked, his voice trembling with uncertainty.
Without a word, the entity cups its hands and holds them to its chest, trembling. Tentatively, he imitated the gesture, cupping the little spark in his hands and pressing it against his chest.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then, he felt it – the spark entering his body –its warmth spreading through him like liquid sunlight. It flowed through his veins, filling him with a sense of calm and purpose he hadn't felt in what felt like an eternity.
The entity slumped, letting out a contented sigh. Its body began to dissipate, but it could not rest yet. Mustering all the strength it had left, it lifted its arm and picked up a crystal shard from the floor, its hands shaking with every motion. With a trembling finger, it carved three symbols into the shard. By now, half of its body had disintegrated into pure white ashes, scattering across the oceanic puddle that covered the ground of this strange place.
Finally, it pointed the inscribed crystal at him and, with a shaky hand, gestured toward the dotted sky.
He was flung skyward, towards the great bespeckled white that was the sky, his hair billowing in the immense wind.
As he looked down, he saw naught but white ash atop a sea of stars.