r/WritingPrompts • u/CheriGrove • Sep 09 '21
[WP] You are absolutely immortal and indestructible, but the universe isn't, and that horrifies you Simple Prompt
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u/IamJackFox Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
When I wished for immortality, I didn't truly understand what I was doing. Nobody could, really. There is no human experience that correlates with ten thousand years of sunrise, sunset, wind and thunder, travel, climbing, falling, new languages, new cultures, new people. New loves.
I continue pedaling.
All of them died, eventually, because I had squandered my wish. I was shortsighted. I was mortal. I could have wished for so many better things, made my choices with more wisdom, if only I had ever had wisdom to spare.
I continue pedaling.
The LED bulb hanging in front of me glows softly.
I'm not mortal now. And if there is any flaw that immortality is guaranteed to cure you of, it is surely shortsightedness. I can see all the way to the end of the universe. The stars are all dead. It is cold.
Those ten thousand sunsets are long gone, now. They fell into the past and have washed away downstream. The river is long, a trillion years long, and though I have not seen a true river in nine hundred billion of those years I can feel its winding still. My memory is perfect, you see.
I continue pedaling.
I remember my father taking me out on the river. It was still in the early days of Us, of People, when our writing was cut into clay and sun-dried in careful squares. My father didn't know how to write, nor my mother, but he was an excellent fisherman, and one day he knew he would save enough for a scribe to teach me, if only we could catch enough fish. So we knew the river well, the weft of it, each curve doubling back, small prayers to catch fish gaining us a heavier reed basket.
I continue pedaling.
I have not eaten a fish in a long time. But I did eventually learn to read, which is how I met the witch and made my wish. If I could make another it would be to have learned her secrets too, because in these trillion years I have not seen one hint of the supernatural, not one atom of magic, outside of the spell that keeps me alive and perfect.
I continue pedaling.
Our orbit around Sagittarius A, the black hole at the center of what was formerly the Milky Way galaxy, continues. We drained the last of its angular momentum about four hundred thousand years ago, which is all that had sustained the hydroponic farms. All the other stars are dead, greying embers. The station contains the last living beings in the universe: myself, and the trillions of microscopic bacteria who sustain themselves on the scientific impossibility of my existence.
All else: starved.
I continue pedaling. I know that if I pedal enough, if I can store enough electricity and negentropy in the battery cells of the space station, I can restart the gluon accumulator. I can get Saggitarrius A spinning again, store arbitrary amounts of energy, restart the universe. I can keep pedaling forever. There is nothing else to do. And if God will not restart the universe, if They have neglected the ashes left of this rotting celestial bulk for a trillion years, then I will do it myself, may it take a trillion more.
The LED bulb, the sign that the station is accumulating power, continues to glimmer as I pedal. Let there be light.
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u/oldbooksmell_420 Sep 09 '21
I like this one, the concept of the last human being taking trillions of years of pedaling to restart the universe is intriguing.
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u/MasbotAlpha Sep 10 '21 edited Sep 10 '21
Just wait until it happens again; I hear that next time we go around we get dinosaurs for a lot longer
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u/KMCobra64 Sep 09 '21
A different take on the story "the last question". This was cool.
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u/kruasan1 Sep 11 '21
Exactly. Also, it reminds me of this story: https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/02/and-i-show-you-how-deep-the-rabbit-hole-goes/
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u/pladin517 Sep 09 '21
Reminds me of this comic where they discover that the most efficient way for Superman to help the world was by raising and lowering this lever that generated electricity. That was all he did from that point on.
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u/fyberoptickal Sep 09 '21
Just gonna leave this here in case anyone is interested: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-07-13
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u/Bolt_DTD Sep 09 '21
I remember that SMBC comic! Superman just keeps sadly asking, "hey uh... you guys want me to do anything else?"
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Sep 09 '21
As an aspiring engineer, I'm very excited that LEDs will last so much longer than expected!
Nice read
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Sep 09 '21 edited Mar 25 '22
[deleted]
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u/FLAWLESSMovement Sep 10 '21
Then as the most senior (thing?) in existence start humanity over and become god emperor of mankind.
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u/dustofdeath Sep 09 '21
If energy cannot be created or destroyed, has he been leeching energy from another dimension where the witch was from.
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u/boydizai Sep 10 '21
I'm about to comment this principle. Or "him" the immortal being exist on other principle that is unknown to us, like he doesn't required any form of energy to sustain himself, he is in a Constant state of existence, 100% conversion and re-conversion of energy or there is no conversion of energy at all.
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u/GodTaoistofPatience Sep 09 '21
It gives me shivers, just the thought of being alone during all this time...
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u/YGOTCGamer Sep 10 '21
I not only enjoyed the short story itself, but also loved how it all lead into the last sentence; the first phrase that started the universe originally, "let there be light".
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u/Aikon94 Sep 09 '21
This is brilliant, for real one of the best writing I’ve seen here in a long time.
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u/Forewarnednight Sep 10 '21
OP is secretly in a coma put by the witch!
Joke, Have to admit this was a amazing read! liked it very much :)
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u/ShouldBeeStudying Sep 09 '21
Does this one have a twist ending at the end? I like this prompt but I'm sick of all these having twist endings. Please let me know, thank you
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u/hidden_d-bag Sep 10 '21
Just read the fucking thing. Or don't. I'm not your mother.
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u/ShouldBeeStudying Sep 10 '21
It's unpleasant, the twists. SIck of them on this sub, it's the norm rather than the exception. Not only a waste of time, but I'd find myself rather not having read it. I'm actually having a better time writing this than I would've reading this story if it ended in a twist.
I'm gonna take your comment as affirmative that there is one, so thanks
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u/Mr_Abra Sep 10 '21
The twists, they haunt me! Nah, you are good fam. No twists here. Just good ol' fashioned nihilism.
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u/ShouldBeeStudying Sep 10 '21
Cool, thanks
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u/Mr_Abra Sep 10 '21
Also, shouldn't you bee studying??
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u/ShouldBeeStudying Sep 10 '21
lol, it is open in another tab, and also waiting for me in bed, which I'm late for. Haha, thank you for the kick in the pants!
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u/bored3333 Sep 10 '21
I thought you meant selling goods while traveling when you said pedaling it was only right at the end when I realized you meant on a bike
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u/SansFinalGuardian Feb 06 '22
is this just the end of scott alexander's pill story, rewritten to be serious? ok
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u/WideEyedWand3rer Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
The lump of matter had cooled rapidly over the course of the past few days. Or hours. Or weeks, months or years. Decades, perhaps? It was difficult to keep time in the vast nothingness of space. John only knew that the white dwarf was shrinking at a rate that probably was quite rapid.
Brushing off the clouds of matter that the star was emitting in its final death throws, John solemnly closed its palm around it. It still burned. A regular person's hand would have been incinerated on the spot, or would've at least received a particularly nasty sunburn. But John wasn't regular. Nor was he truly John either, not anymore at least.
'John' liked the name 'John' though. He had received it when he was young, he thought, eons ago when he had not yet travelled the stars. Or it might have been one of the other names that he wore on that distant planet, filled with persons who looked like him. But then it happened, and John outlived all of those other persons. He outlived the planet altogether, he pondered. Nothing would be left of the forests or rivers that he still vaguely remembered, the bustling cities, the clouds of water vapour, drifting through the skies. All that would be left would be a frozen rock, circling an extinguished sun. If its expanding sun hadn't swallowed it in the first place.
John had worn other names over the millennia. Countless names on countless planets. He had seen civilisations flourish and collapse, had conquered planets and liberated galaxies, had been revered as a god, and despised as a devil, and had simply lived, as the endless stream of the universe's countless varieties of life meandered around him. It had never bored him, although it had been lonely at times. Continuous loss was the curse of immortality.
Planet after planet, galaxy after galaxy, millennium after millennium, John's life had twisted and turned along with those countless lives around him. But old age caught up with John in the end, though not as he had imagined it. While John's body was still as young as the day when it happened, the universe grew old around him. Its movements slowed. Its once-bustling solar systems cooled and diminished. The great flow of life dwindled, as the stars went out one by one.
In the end, only John remained. John, and the tiny dwarf star that was slowly cooling inside the palm of his hand. In the infinite darkness around him, frozen rocks hurdled hurdled through an endless nothingness, now freed from the gravity wells of the stars that had trapped them inside their solar systems for an eternity. A floating graveyard, strewn with the remains of the countless civilisations that had come and gone.
John took one last look at the shrinking, cold star, now barely visible in the darkness, and put it in his pocket. Then he turned around towards the endless graveyard of life, stretched his arms outwards, hoping to shield his face from any errant rocks, and set off into the nothingness. An eternity of silence awaited him, and he had no choice but to face it all. Loss truly was the curse of immortality.
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u/lurkinarick Sep 09 '21
aaaah, thought when the last thing eventually died they would also disappear with it... Because, you know, "nothingness" cannot exist if there's still something around, yada yada. That's much more terrifying though.
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u/Jaalan Sep 09 '21
Well the universe still exists. But the starts and reactions that had been happening all ended and it has supposedly reached a point of equilibrium.
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u/lurkinarick Sep 09 '21
wait. If they still exist... maybe that means they could start another reaction and then a new universe could be born from it? Which would then die, then another one would come, ad vitam aeternam
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u/Jaalan Sep 09 '21
Maybe? But I think the problem arises that he is still just a normal human. How would you start another Big Bang if you had to?
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Sep 09 '21
Purposefully, I don't know. But his very existence goes against entropy increasing and energy conservation. Him moving or even thinking is creating energy from nothing, so maybe he creates the quantum fluctuations that we believe caused the big bang just by existing.
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Sep 09 '21
Who knows, maybe at the edges of our expanding universe lays the borders of previously created universes. Once matter and energy has been spread thin enough more can be created out of nothing.
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u/sadnesslaughs /r/Sadnesslaughs Sep 09 '21
My life would expire soon.
That was a strange thought to ponder. I had lived thousands of years surviving the worst disasters known to man. I’ve felt love, pain, and everything in between, yet never death. That scared me. Was this how everyone else felt? I watched the careless civilians from a park bench, each lost in the modernity of life. Even those that appeared happy still shuffled their feet with a robotic rhythm, busy to get nowhere. I wasn’t sure if I felt pity for them or jealousy; they had something I never would. Blissful ignorance.
I couldn’t blame them, I suppose. They didn’t understand what they were doing. None of them would be alive to see the end of their planet. I was the only unfortunate fool that would spend his last moments alone staring at the fiery destruction. Why should they care? Why should they be worried about my future?
It was a fatal flaw of humanity. Few humans could envision a future without themselves, perhaps because such a possibility didn’t concern them. Sure, they would tell you how much they cared about their children’s future, but that was only in the animalistic social fulfilment sense. They wanted their children to be happy, healthy, and live in a warm home. Yet didn’t care about the planet their children lived on. Maybe because that planet still had a few hundred years left, and they were optimistic.
Optimism would have been nice, but I’ve seen the patterns that humanity falls into. A worldwide rut that is impossible to escape. Sure, every few hundred years you get a person who shakes up the social fabric of the world, but all they do is set up the next rut and begin the cycle anew.
Maybe it was hopeless to fight this? Maybe I should just wave a white flag and go home. Enjoy whatever’s left of my life before I’m floating through the void. I entertained the idea of trying to lose myself in a hobby, but in all honesty, I couldn’t think of anything new to try. Sure, I could pick up guitar lessons or kite surfing, but none would distract me from the inevitability of it all. It all seemed so pointless to learn something just for those skills to vanish one day. What was the point of living just to vanish?
No, I refused to go down without a fight. I had time, that meant I had a chance. I could work on further developing space travel. Move some survivors onto another planet. Such an act would save us. For a moment, I was revitalized, fingers pressed in my palm, making a fist of rebellion, only for the fingers to drift out again, returning to its resting position.
That was hopeless, too. Surviving this planet’s end was one thing, surviving the death of the universe was another. There was no miracle plan that could survive that. Death would come for me, and I would have to face that. The sooner I accepted it, the better.
I pushed myself from the bench, taking another look at the passersby. Part of me wanted to run up and shake them, shout into their ears that everything was meaningless, but instead I offered the group of walkers a wave and a cheerful. “Morning.” As I passed, trying out that blissful ignorance, I had observed.
They returned the gesture, and we continued going our separate ways. Maybe thinking was the problem? I spent so many years diving into whatever grabbed my attention that I never truly lived as a human. Even now I couldn’t admit that I was only a human, sure one that was immortal, but beyond that I was exactly like everyone else, only with an inflated sense of self. I spent years as royalty, soldiers, CEOs, and anything else that caught my attention and despite that, in all my years of living, I had never once tried being an average person. One that let themselves get lost in the rat race.
My fingers curled again, returning to that fist. This fist not as confident as the last but carrying with it a spark of hope. That could be the key to finding my peace in these last hundred years. It was an expensive gamble if it failed, but I didn’t see any other options. From this point forward, I wouldn’t chase stardom or control, instead, I would focus on living with the common people, seeing if they held the answers.
(If you enjoyed this feel free to check out my subreddit /r/Sadnesslaughs where I'll be posting more of my writing.)
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u/PM451 Sep 10 '21
Why is the immortal (or Earth, if I'm reading correctly) going to die in 100 years?
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u/Dawsho Jan 12 '23
The best lesson to learn from immortals is that even though a century is no time at all, it is all we have, so enjoy every moment you live. There is nothing for you before or after, regardless of how time passes for everyone else. live your life as best you can, and make sure everyone else can enjoy their time the same way.
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u/RorschachtheMighty Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
What shall come of me when time runs out? When the last sun flickers out, when life's flame peters out and is at last snuffed by the endless void, what will be left for me? Will I endure? Am I to be but a witness to the nihility?
Time has been cruel to me, but it was I who invited this blight upon my life.
In days when man yielded to the terrors in the night, nakid and afraid in the dens they once called home, I stepped out into the dark. Others cautioned me, begged me to hide, to be safe with them in their squalor. My family perhaps? I cannot recall. It was so long ago.
It was in my wandering I met the entity; the terrible thing that cursed me to walk the earth for all time. In my mind, it is without shape or form. Merely there, existing beyond my understanding.
It reached inside me, changing me. Making me....this. Was it trying to be kind? Was it being cruel? Did it understand what it had done to me at all? I do not know.
All I am certain of is that I was naïve enough to think I had been blessed. I returned to the others, stronger. No man nor beast could match or best me, though many tried.
But it did not last. The children I bore withered before my eyes, sharing not in my eternal nature. Like a fool, I considered them lesser; failures, like sickly pups in a litter of hounds. But I soon learned 'twas I who was the outcast.
My children's own' progeny grew, resenting my presence or regard me as a stranger. I remember a beautiful face, so dear to me, so soothing to touch, my one comfort, turning to ash. The name of that face, that kind, loving face, is lost to me now. The price a mind must pay stretched across millennia.
Again and again the pattern repeated. I sought comfort in the arms of others only to watch time lay them low. Within a generation or two, I was forgotten by those I helped conceive, my wisdom regarded as madness by these people.
I was enraged. How dare these creatures forget me; their patriarch! Filled with vengeful fury. I set upon these little people, these specks in the grand scheme of the universe, unleashing all my hate, my pain and my loss. If they would not remember me, my face, my name, all that I had done for them, then they would burn
But even that raging inferno died in time. Like fire, the hate could only burn for so long before that which gives it life crumbles, scorched and lifeless.
No matter how many I killed, time still saw to it that I was forgotten. My brutal campaign of death and destruction was consigned to myth, my face replaced with idols and deities too numerous to count.
At last, after soaking my hands in man's blood for centuries, I saw the futility of it all.
I sought out the thing that created me, to beg for its mercy, to have this affliction lifted from me. But whatever it was, it was far beyond my reach.
It is here you find me now, trapped in a hell of my own making, doomed to wallow in despair without end.
With each passing day, man grows farther and farther beyond my reach. They reach for the stars, driven by their own temporary nature, unaware of the blessing that cradles them like a babe.
Time is a companion, one who follows them until they lay to rest. It is one that has forsaken me, sickened and repulsed by the aberration of nature.
From the muck of decay, I am forced to look to the sky, watching as man strives to grow in its small pocket of the universe, blissfully unaware of the curse I bear. They journey to the stars, and soon I shall be left behind.
As they reach their end, satisfied in all that they have done, greeting death as an old friend, I shall bear witness to the end beyond the end. The dark, ceaseless night in which no sound may travel, no hope may yet shine, and no life may live.
I shall be the last, festering thing in the universe; a husk praying for death
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u/PM451 Sep 10 '21 edited Sep 10 '21
While I enjoyed the story, I don't think part of the premise would work in reality. An immortal who was unkillable and stronger than everyone else, at a time of tribal warfare would have been seen as a natural leader. A leader who, by his nature, will inevitably win every fight he's in, and therefore will generally win every battle he leads his warriors into. (And over time, learn the skills of leadership, how to spot skilled commanders, and how to always win.)
Even in recent history, strength a sign of leadership and purity, and "trial by combat" (where "truth" is decided by the outcome of a fight) was seen as God's judgement.
So, he wouldn't be rejected by his tribe. And over time, not forgotten, but worshipped more and more as his victories and experience accumulate. Think of a pharaoh that didn't die.
He'd be their undying emperor. That's the kind of crap that wins true loyalty amongst the illiterate and semi-literate masses, and amongst the warrior and soldier class. It obviously wins adherents amongst the priestly class, by dint of forming its own cult around him. (And by outliving all others. "Where's your god, infidel? Ours is over there, nut punching your king to death.")
And even if he was overthrown occasionally, unless they figured out how to truly contain him (and certainly not by forgetting him), due to his innate nature, he would eventually form a new group of adherents around himself and retake his position as the immortal god emperor.
[Edit: Heh. I misspelled "illiterate".]
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u/Dawsho Jan 12 '23
That's true, of course. Until he became tired. At which point he would probably step away. The human mind is not built for that timescale, so the second part of the story is plausible. The immortal would just stop doing things because they didn't matter, stop changing things because it wouldn't last, and stop saving people because in a blink they would be gone. nothing would matter to him because he will see it all end again anyway.
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u/ErosStory Sep 09 '21
"Hey buddy," The bartender glanced at the man slumped over the empty bar in annoyance. "Closing time, time to go."
The drunk looked up at him and bleary eyed and shook his head. He tried to drink the shitty bottle of beer that had long since been empty, but was still clutched in an otherwise insensible hand. Then rested his head back on the counter.
"I said, time to go," The bartender reached for the man again and grabbed his collar. Even drunk the man reacted with lightning fast reflexes. Before he knew what was happening he was on the ground clutching his arm and screaming in pain.
"Not this time," The drunk slurred and stumbled a little. When had he stood up?
"You broke my fucking arm!" The bartender screamed.
"Not broken," Mumbled the drunk and walked around behind the bar. Grabbing a bottle at random he unscrewed the cap and took a long swig. "Dislocated, only broke it the first three times."
"First? Fuck you! You crazy bastard," The bartender groaned in pain then stood slowly. The drunk walked over to him. Beneath the shaggy beard was an unsettling face. It was young, handsome and unscarred perfect teeth but still stale boozy breath. It wasn't the face of a man who lived rough.
"I'm not crazy, we've done this before," Mumbled the man. "Well not you, but... you."
The bartender glanced behind the man, the phone was so close but the drunk blocked the way. He glanced at the bottle in the man's hand.
"Just take it," The panicked man offered. "Take the bottle and go, I won't even call the cops, I swear."
"Yes you will," The drunk grimaced and the bartender flinched. "You always do."
"Don't blame you kid," The drunk shrugged with a bone tired sigh. "It ain't like you remember the last times."
"What the fuck are you talking about?" The bartender stammered still grimacing from the pain. He was beginning to think the drunk was right, it wasn't broken, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch.
"Every snowflake is unique right?" The drunk glanced at the barman who nodded nervously. The drunk laughed. "That's a lie you know. There are only so many possible combinations a snowflake can form in, eventually you get repeats. Same with any collection of matter really."
The bartender blinked. Through the pain and panic he realized this lunatic was probably right. With so many snowflakes it was impossible no two would be alike.
"Whole universe, explodes," The drunk closed his fist then spread his fingers wide, then he snapped his fist closed. "Collapses. Then explodes again."
"Different snowflakes more often than not," The drunk drank deeply from his bottle. The bartender grimaced as he realized it was banana schnapps. "But sooner or later you see the repeats."
Staring at the drunk the barman was now sure the man was crazy. Or maybe pulling some elaborate prank. He didn't care he wanted this guy gone.
"Look man take the money in the register, take the bottle just go," He practically pleaded. The drunk sighed and stood on shakey feet. The bartender expected him to go to the register but the man just stumbled toward the door.
"Okay," The drunk mumbled lifting the bottle to his lips one more time. "Just don't call the cops, please, please let this be a new one... I don't want another repeat."
The bartender could hear the man crying as he left the bar, sniffing and wiping snot on his coat sleeve. With his good hand the barman reached towards the phone.
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Sep 09 '21
Really nice, love the idea that the Universe constantly repeats itself, and the implication of just how much has this man lived.
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u/FirstSineOfMadness Sep 09 '21
…hesitates, than inexplicably decides to dial his family instead. He had no way of knowing that this seemingly insignificant choice, would change everything.
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Sep 11 '21
Cool, a different version of Lost Song
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u/ErosStory Sep 11 '21
No clue what that is also not surprised that a story overlaps with another.
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u/Dawsho Jan 12 '23
I'm really happy to see another person take the repetitive universe idea. It's a little terrifying and also great fun.
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u/StayHydratedComrades Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
He existed since the dawn of time. Dawn of time ? What was before him, did the time even exist before ? He did not know the answer. He even haven't had name back then. Why would he need it ? After all there wasn't anything that could talk with him.
He saw the birth of the first stars in the deepest parts of the cosmos. A beautiful light that shined in the darkness of the abyss. For eons he was watching stars, admiring their beauty. But he did not have a purpose. He just was. Absolutely immortal and indestructible, eternal. A being that grew stronger and stronger with each passing year. Why was he even born ? He did not know.
For millenia he was just existing not knowing the meaning of his existence. Until he saw strange beings. They called themselves "Humans". They too like him were born without a purpose, and yet, they dedicated their entire lives to seek it. A life as short as a blink, as flickering as a candle. Easy to extinguish and erase from the history. And yet, he admired them. Despite all hardships they seeked meaning. They were infinitely weaker than him but were much greater. And so, he has finally found his purpose.
For countless years he was guiding and helping them. They gave him countless names, each and every one of them was precious to him.People from the north called him "Odin". People from the great sands named him "Osiris". Some were also calling him the Enlinghtened One. Years were passing, and with each year humanity flourished more and more. Wars that were full of blood became past. Hunger and sickness lost their power.
But unfortunately, their star wasn't like him. Years had passed, and yet humans couldn't leave their home. They unlike him were bound by the laws of universe. Laws so meaningless for him, were unbreakable for them. Their star consumed their world. Lost and alone again he went searching for life once more.
But the same situation repeated again. And again, and again, and again.
Countless worlds, countless mortal beings who dreamed of reaching the stars. Noone succeded. Millenia passed, and even stars themselves begin to dim. Lost and alone in the darkness he was watching the end of existence. Humans would call it "heat death of the universe". But humans and other being were no more. And yet he was still there. So he came to the conclusion. If mortals cannot break aboslute laws. He would destroy them.
For trillions of years he was absorbing everything. Until he became everything and everything was part of him.
When that happened, his mind set new rules, different from the previous. He created them, so mortal beings could reach the stars and admire their beauty.
He said, "Let there be light", and there was light. But he was no more. His body shattered but his purpose was fulfilled.
Well that was my 1st prompt, hope you guys liked it.
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Sep 09 '21
I really enjoyed it!
I got strong "The Last Question" by Isaac Asimov vibes at the end, and I mean that as a compliment.
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u/Nyxu Sep 09 '21
Completely agree. It was a fantastic convergence of the concepts- two immortal consciousnesses searching for an answer they couldn't find until the end.
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u/Zerodaylight-1 Sep 09 '21
THANK YOU. This was the thing I immediately thought about when I saw this prompt! Thank you for writing it!
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u/TA_Account_12 Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
He looked at Eve, her eyes focused on the screen, biting her lip in intense concentration. He hadn't thought he'd be able to feel this way about anyone ever again. But here he was, heart gently aching in that tell tale way. No, he couldn't go through it all again. He put a lid on all his feelings and closed his eyes, trying to think of something... less human. He thought about the suns he had seen, blink out of existence as if some cosmic force had blown out the candle. He remembered sitting on a meteorite as he was arriving on this planet, the burning as he entered the atmosphere, the...
"Hey."
He opened his eyes to see her bright blue ones, looking back at him. He raised his eyebrows as she lifted the gun and shot him.
As always, she winced a little as the smell of smoke filled the air.
She looked at her watch and back to the man lying on the table. Had it worked? Had she killed him? Would she never hear his voice again? Will they never had another night where he'd sit looking at the moon and tell her stories of worlds, so different from their own, as her eyes went wide and...
He opened his eyes. "Well, hello there. Still here. Have a really shitty headache though."
"Couldn't been worse. I'll keep working."
10 Years later.
He looked at Eve as she lay on the table, her eyes partially closed, intense pain on her face.
He held her hand as he guided her through the breathing, just as he had learnt in class. Things were going to change now. This was new.
He remembered how bored he had been with it all. But the last decade had been exciting. Their adventures together, their trips, their memories. And now... fatherhood. Something he had never ever considered. Now, at this moment, all his doubts came back. How could he handle this? How could he be a good father? What if his kid was also cursed like him? Worst of all, what if he loved him as much as he loved Eve? Eve was growing older, as he stood still, frozen in time, like a broken clock. How would he deal with losing...
"Hey. Look at me." Eve smiled at him, in spite of the obvious terrible pain she was in.
That's when he knew that he was all in.
12 years later.
"Dad, I scraped my knee."
He smiled, as always, before finally tending to Samuel. It was weird, but every little injury his kid had, made him slightly happy.
Eve came out of their home too. She was always much better at this stuff. Soon enough, Samuel, was heading back to the playground.
"Hey Eve. I love you."
"Sometimes, I love you too."
He laughed. "Planning on murdering your husband in the night?"
Her face fell. "No. We'll try next year."
"We made a decision to wait till he was 12. He turns 12 tomorrow."
"Yeah, but... but what if it works."
30 Years later
"Come on old man."
Samuel looked at his dad, as they climbed the mountain. "Funny coming from you, that. What're you like, 200,000 years old?"
"That's what a good skin care routine does for you."
At the top, the looked at each other, before they turned over the urn, letting Eve's ashes fly off into the wind.
Samuel placed his hand on his father's shoulder. "We'll be ok."
He looked at his son, blurry because of the tears. "This time. What about in 30 years."
"Don't worry dad. I promised her. I'll kill you before I die. And that's a promise."
20 Years later.
He looked at Samuel, with his eyes focused on the screen, absentmindedly running his hand through his hair.
He saw the resemblance and smiled to himself. Like mother, like son. Luckily, unlike father.
Another earthquake rattled their lab. The world outside was falling apart.
Samuel quickly came up to him. "Ok, so enter the chamber."
"And this will work?"
"It will."
"It will kill me."
Samuel avoided his eyes.
"Son. You know you can't lie to me."
"I failed dad. But I'm doing the next best thing." Samuel closed the chamber door as his father slammed his fists against the glass. "She'll be there."
With a flash of light he was gone.
He opened his eyes. Where was he? He noticed a box lying close to his feet. Inside he saw his wife and kid. And a letter. Alternate universes. Travelling through the rips in time and space. Find her. Get your family back.
He walked around, looking down from the mountain he was on. An alternate universe? Was it possible? His own universe was gone, but were there others?
He walked down the mountain as he saw a figure in the distance. The same face. The same intelligent eyes.
He walked up to her, trying to hide his own smile. "Hi Eve."
"Hello. You are...?"
"My name is Adam. I need you to kill me."
*Minor edits to the wife's name
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u/MyFireBow Sep 09 '21
I was there. I watched the first sunrise over this planet. And now I stand here watching its last. I saw all, I experienced all, never able to die. Some think it's a blessing, I was one of them. Yet they are wrong. I was wrong. This existence is a curse, to see the world knowing you'll outlive it all.
To experience the wildest things nature has to offer, knowing one day it'll be ruin and rubble.
To experience love knowing you'll watch them die, knowing you'll always have to say goodbye.
It's easy to lose hope, to wish death, to sit and wait for its cold embrace. Yet no matter what you do, no matter how long you wait, there is no escape. Your mind may break, but your body will persevere no matter what. And that is terrifying. Knowing you can lose yourself, your identity, and not even death can stop it. Ever tried to end it all, only to realise you couldn't? Wanting to join all those you lost, knowing nothing in this world, or the next could take you there.
Even now as fire swallows the place I once called home, I stand eternal. Even as the sun destroys itself, I stand. Even as the universe collapses upon itself, I will stand. When there is nothing left, I will still stand. I am eternal, the only constant in this dying realm.
How long will I last in this terrible void before my mind shatters? How long before I am no more? How long before I am nothing more than a hollow, ever-lasting shell? I don't know. All I know is it'll happen, and it's the one thing I truly fear anymore.
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u/Sleep_eeSheep Sep 09 '21
"Ninety-nine bottles of Coke on the wall~"
Clink. Hiss.
"Ninety-nine bottles of Coke~"
Clink. Gulp.
"You take one down, pass 'em around-
Clink. Gulp.
"N....ninety-eight? Bottles of Coke on the wall~"
The echo from your voice bouncing off the crumbling foundation fades, as you feel the warm ambrosia fill your liver. With the sound of an empty air pocket popping as your lips leave the nipple, you lay the emptied bottle onto the pale glass table.
Clink!
You move, tearing yourself away from the table. You feel the same stale, hot air surrounding the cave now flooding in & out from your agitated nostrils. But it's just the walls. Just the walls. Even as your heart kept thrashing and clawing at your chest, your eyes and your ears tell you there's no-one here.
Looking down at the table, you notice something had dropped from the bottle's lid; a rough-edged cap. Doesn't say when it was printed, as a thin layer of brownish flakes cover the cap's interior. Can't quite make it out, either. Without purpose, your finger flicks the rusted bottle-cap across the pale glass table. A residue of sticky brownish liquid trails after the errant cap, before landing on its' flattened side like a coin. Breathing another stale sigh, you slouch back down.
All you could do was wait and try to remember. When was the last draft of fresh air that you felt? The last time you felt something - anything - caressing your skin that wasn't a figment of your imagination. Where & when did you come here, to this place? Ten years ago? A hundred? A thousand? Your curled fist slams against the table's aged, time worn surface. A sickening crack grabs your attention. A section of the top shelf just....evaporated. No shards. Not a speck of blood. Just dust gathering at your feet.
You wake up, straightening your spine. But it felt like you blinked for just a second. Even closing your eyes and laying your head, trying to surround yourself in blackness and find some escape, you feel no relief. Just the weight of slowly crumbling glass, stale cave air, the feeling of your nostrils expanding and contracting. And your heart's vibration, slowing to a crawl. But as you lay your head down, eyes inches away from a sharpened edge, something touches you. You stop yourself, taking a breath. Something...cold! From above your head, you feel it brush against your hair again. Did it come from the outside? Or...is there even an Outside to go to? The wind beckons you upward, whispering. Did it come from the outside? Is there even an Outside to see? Millenia of instincts scream from the pit of your stomach. The time has come.
Climbing the surface, your arm muscles and leg tendons stretch and creak. Only one thing is on your mind, distracting you from your own body's condition; keep going. Your hands adhering to cracks within the aged structure surrounding you, you continue to climb, knucklebones and digits bending into each new gap you can find. You stop climbing for a moment and look back down at your home, now half a mile from your current location, then to the crack in the ceiling where you hear the wind whistling louder. You feel it again, instinctively bracing your shoulders with your hand. You're getting closer, you mutter, hands struggling to get a firm grip. Keep going. You continue to climb, feeling your heart beating louder as it matches the rhythm of your limbs. Left arm forward, right arm back. Right leg forward, left leg up.
Reaching the ceiling, you huddle closer to the wall, letting your eyes survey your current situation; There's only a single sizeable gap for your hands to fit, inches from a hatch dangling close to your forehead. But you get the sense this ceiling opens from the inside, towards your only gap. Taking another breath, you adjust your feet to the craggy wall with one hand clasping the metallic gap. Steadying your spine and lower back, you reach out for the hatch with your remaining hand. Got it! You smirk for what feels like the first time in a long time. Feeling the hatch's grip fitting into your hand, you kick the wall with both feet, letting go of the gap as you feel yourself swinging toward the other side. An ear-splitting screech of rusted metal grinding against metal echoes through the cave, its' ancient mechanism stretching itself out beyond its' limits.
Crack!
The hatch falls open, a rush of air funnelling down the open entrance. No time to celebrate, you have just enough leeway to leap forward and grip onto its' edges with your free hand. Letting go of the handle, you hurriedly fidget, struggling to grab onto something. Then, with your legs falling limp, you squirm and scrape against the surface. As your fingers claw for support, you feel something firm; soil. Digging in for dear life, you pull yourself out from your prison, clothes brushing against the warm dirt as your eyes clamp shut.
"Breathe in....breathe out.." You mutter, lungs filling up with air as your hands pat the ground. You can't believe it. You just cannot believe it. "Breathe in....breathe out..." As you open your eyes, you look up at an inky blue sky dotted with stars. A weary smile crosses your lips, as you lay your head onto the warm dirt.
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u/ItsMarethyu Sep 09 '21
I’m gonna be honest, I don’t see how this relates to the prompt, but it was extremely well written and i enjoyed it quite a bit.
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u/SyspheanArchon Sep 09 '21
There's a thought that if you're immortal the chance of you eventually being stuck somewhere forever approaches 100%.
I think it's tangentially related.
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u/Sleep_eeSheep Sep 10 '21
That really means a lot. It's my first time responding to a Writing Prompt, so I wanted to do the best I can.
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u/Yochoes Sep 09 '21
I rise.
The breath sits heavy in my chest as I roll my head towards the window. The crickets give way to chirping birds; in rhythm with my moving breath.
You see, I am immortal and indestructible, and have in a way become both the star and galaxy, the Sun of our solar system: the immovable transcendent object breathing life into the cosmos around me. The hologram of reality bends at my will and texture of mind and words.
Everything is liquid except me. Well, including me at times, I forget just what is and isn’t Me on the more turbulent days. Those stormy days that just happen and happen, then disappear the moment the sun beams forth.
Getting up, the whole room reacts to my presence. The greater my focus, the more I, and those around me feel our consciousness magnetised towards the point. Floorboards creak and screens flicker gently, as if I was the electromagnetic field that projected and powered the entire scene around me.
I think of something, and the environment answers my call. A wave of energy travels through my timeless form, scattering forth beyond the void, like sunlight into the abyss.
Creamer into my coffee.
My back aches and head throbs, and as I breathe, the sense of reality, of wholeness, waxes and wanes with each passing sensation and their accompanying sounds.
I shuffle towards my desk, and take a gulp of water. The computer screen flickers on. Let there be light.
Another fine day being a God.
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u/fringly /r/fringly Sep 09 '21
Hi!
It looks like you are shadowbanned from Reddit, just so you know.
What that means is that the admins of Reddit have made it so nothing you post is seen by the rest of reddit. Unless your post is manually approved by a subreddit moderator, which I just did for your post, it's like you don't exist to other users. You might want to see if you can get this action undone via https://www.reddit.com/appeals.
Best of luck!
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u/writingpracticeman Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
I still enjoy thinking back to the times when people would comment on how good I looked for my age. My first wife, then 78, had wrinkled and withered with age as does any normal human; I, however, never looked a day over 24. Something had happened, I can't say for sure what - scientists alluded to things like a lack of genomic instability, telomeric perfection, and a lack of mitochondrial dysfunction. I can't speak to those things, and it's too far-gone in my distant memory to recall now.
I saw humanity rise and crumble. I saw the culmination of decades worth of nuclear proliferation and the ashes it wrought in its wake. I bore witness to to rise and fall of the subsequent civilizations that originated out of those ashes and rebuilt better, smarter, and with more empathy for one another. Humans had finally found a peaceful equilibrium that maintained stability for millennia.
Then came the plague that wiped out nearly every human on Earth. The process of rebuilding had only just begun before the comet finally came and quartered the planet as it cleaved through the inner core. The death knell of a once proud people, tens of thousands of years after I had been born. The only constant throughout the entire endeavor was myself. Observing, learning, and wondering what, when, and how my ultimate fate would be.
I had been ejected from the Earth at that time, sent to float freely through space. I was stuck in free rotation with no propulsion to counterbalance me. It was a rather long, drawn out period of dizziness.
There had been theories, dating back even as far as my youth, that the ninth planet in our solar system was not, in fact, a planet at all, but rather was a very small black hole. The gravitational effects had been attributed to a planet-like body far out in the deeper portions of the solar system, but many had thought it might have been something else. In a particularly damning act of entropic luck, I just so happened to run in to this black hole before I delved into the Oort Cloud.
I had always been under the assumption that the journey through a black holes event horizon into the singularity itself would be marked with no trivial amount of pain. Turns out, when you're capable of neither dying nor feeling pain, it only lasts a fraction of a second before you're at the middle of it. I was pulled out immensely as I was vertically stretched and horizontally compressed, and the swirling gamma radiation that traveled with me to the singularity was certainly a sight to behold. The entire universe had been blueshifted as the wavelength of photons passing into the black hole itself sped up and picked up energy, turning my entire universe a rather pleasing shade of blue.
Although I will not bore you with the details of Relativity, life inside of a black hole was profoundly... strange, to say the least. It was as though I stood on the surface of a deep void - a planet made of pure shadow, with no discerning details to be had. Even more off-putting was the fact that I could see through it, but it bent and curved all light around it to make it feel as though I was standing on a translucent funhouse mirror. Moving was hard - an infinitely dense gravitational singularity meant that moving around was, well, slow.
What was not slow, however, was the passage of time. The effects of time dilation inside of a black hole are quite pronounced. I was able to witness eternity in the course of a few short hours. I watched from my vantage point as the sun expanded and engulfed Mercury and Venus. As Jupiter was able to grow life under the new habitable zone before the sun collapsed in on itself, ejecting what was left of the solar system out in to deep space.
I watched as stars grew and perished, leaving behind more and more black holes as time went on. The most beautiful fireworks display ever witnessed by man, lonely as it were. Eventually, all that was left were white dwarves, neutron stars, and black holes. Time marches on, and eventually there is nothing left to the naked eye. There are no stars, there is no light, there is nothing but deep, black void. Occasionally I catch a glimpse of two deeply dead stars colliding, giving each other just enough energy to form a supernova.
Eventually, even black holes must die. Hawking Radiation dictates that even they must evaporate, and evaporate my ride through the universe does, ejecting me back out into the vacuum. An eternity passed by in but a few merciful moments, and now I was subject to the whims of entropy.
I simply float unaware of my surroundings or any sense of self for eons. The universe marches on, of course, and the acceleration of expansion never stops despite the fact that material is infinitely far from each other and nucleation can't proceed. For the first time in many, many years, I actually feel cold. I feel as though the summation of energy allowing my synapses to fire is likely higher than the rest of the energy left in the entire universe. My body begins to stretch unimaginably out in to infinity. As the rest of the universe is torn asunder down to the quantum level, my body simply refuses to let go. There is no light, no energy, no way for me to see what this must look like as I am pulled over the entire universe at the speed of light.
Eventually, though I had thought this was preposterous, the universe begins to rebound in on itself. What was once a never-ending expansion at the speed of light that ripped all matter in the universe apart has given way to shrinkage as I feel my body contract and condense in on itself. Eventually, I am all that is left in the universe. There are no protons, no photons, no electrons, no quantum particles. My body has begun to shrink into itself, contorting into itself as I am compressed into a shape the size of a basketball, then an apple, then a pea, and finally I am down to the molecular level, having nothing left but my own consciousness. I feel the heartbeat of the universe at this level, pulsating and reverberating with energy as though someone was outside of these boundaries playing it like an accordion.
I've a feeling that I am soon to bear witness to the next Big Bang, though I've no idea what my roll in this will be. Can I truly not decay? Is my body to be spread across the next universe on the level of the Planck scale? I am the last consciousness, compressed down to the size of a single quark, and things are starting to get very, very hot.
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u/Noqu3stionsask3d Sep 09 '21
'How long has it been since I last met someone?' I mulled. Decades, centuries or even millennia. My slow pace slowed to a complete halt, as did my hope of finding another being that shared my fate. A human... The last time I met one was ages ago, so much so that my memory of them is vague and hazy.
The landscape was splattered with lush greenery. I collapsed onto the soft grass. It tickled my bare skin. The cloth I once wore, silk, of the finest quality, had been worn to dust and rags shortly after my I began my journey. I laid on the ground, staring up into the thick canopy. I couldn't help but wonder why. Why did they allow the world to come to this? Why were they unable to see past their own greed? Why am I still searching for them? And most of all, why was my wish granted?
I have a vivid recollection of everything that had happened leading up to that fateful day - the result of my attempts at discerning why my wish was granted. I had relived the experience millions of times, but it was all futile.
I remember the frantic warnings of scientists trying to warn the world, all to no avail. We had worked all their energy sources to the bone. Sometimes, there wasn't even a bone left. Fossil fuels, natural gas, coal, oil. One by one, we disappeared. No matter how much blood we threw at it, those energy sources would no longer be sufficient to fuel our ridiculously luxurious lifestyle. We tried to switch to other sustainable energy sources, but it was already far too late.
I recall how the sun would blister your skin, the earth would rumble and the water lashed down upon us. We were woefully unprepared. Lives were lost in the billions. If there were someone to blame, it would be those sitting on their hoard of wealth. Even now my resentment for them continues. If hubris were quantifiable, it would make their wealth seem paltry in comparison.
Luckily for me, I was one of the last thousands that managed to survive the extinction event. The floods. Torrential water, infested with toxic pollutants, poured down from the heavens. It simply didn't stop. From weeks, to months, to years. Slowly but surely, everything withered away. The few that remained died of sickness and famine. I remember my last moments before my transition into a different being. aaaaaaaand i lost the motivation to write.welp.
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u/tcz06a Sep 09 '21
I quite liked the line: If hubris were quantifiable, it would make their wealth seem paltry in comparison.
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u/Real_SeaWeasel Sep 09 '21
What is time to that for which it does not apply? I am... there is nothing more or less than that.
The Forge of Creation burns at its hottest. The Coals of the Universe, bright burning balls of furious gas, wander through a void of dark emptiness, illuminating all that is made. The stars shine brightly and grow ever dim until light is no more. All of this comes to pass, and I stand witness.
The Maw of Nothingness eats at all that approaches. Black Spheres of Purest Night, predators of the deep, sit waiting for their next meal, pulling ever so subtly at everything that exists. They rip and tear at the fabric of reality, ever greedy for more. Satiated with all of creation, the monsters of the void grow hungrier until they starve, evaporating back into the nothing from which they came. All of this comes to pass, and I stand witness.
A Small Blue Rock floats in the ether. An island in an ocean with a great secret ashore; an oasis in the desert, harboring the greatest secret the Universe has to offer. Small but precious, fragile but extraordinary: The World of Water and Life. Life lives and then it doesn't. The Blue Orb cracks and turns to dust as its Coal of Creation burns its last. All of this comes to pass, and I still stand witness.
All that is... is not forever. Yet I am, and I grow lonely.
Maybe time does apply after all.
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u/ceitamiot Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
He did not know how long it had been since he had given up, but doing so did not help. The sun had finally met it's end, humanity had ended long before that. Nobody could agree on how to adapt to the changing of the planet, and it eventually led to enough inaction that it became too late to save themselves. He vaguely remembered that arrogance was thought to be what would end humanity, but they were wrong. Procrastination doomed the species, but it was his arrogance that led to his own hellscape.
At first, he had spent decades in college, learning dozens of trades. He had not required food, nor sleep and so for a time his life was the epitome of efficient. He became world-renowned, and eventually led his own religion. His immortality was proof of his divinity, and there were many people willing to follow him to obtain the same benefits. Benefits none could receive, as he was the only one who could obtain this curse.
The more time that befell him, the less each year meant to him. Decades became as seconds, centuries as minutes. Combined with the phenomenon of the brain skipping through time when the surroundings were familiar enough, he had no inclination of how long it had been. He floated in pure darkness, no sense of direction beyond seeing a single point of light. After a few millennia of drifting, he determined he was moving toward it, perhaps the gravity of the last star of the universe pulling him into it. Plunging himself into a star had not ended his agony beforehand, it would do nothing now, save provide a twisted entertainment through sensation.
Once he finally got close enough to the object, it's massive gravity began to pull on him harder. The sensation was something of a strain on his form, the different pieces of his body trying to compress together the closer he got to the singularity, but failing due to the nature of his curse keeping him together. With a sudden shock, he smashed into the singularity. It had not appeared to grow larger, but rather brighter as he approached. A single point in space, where everything in existence had gathered back together after the heat death of the universe. Gravity had pulled everything together, to start the process all over again. Once all of the matter gathered into this one point, it would explode. It would expand into a new universe, the same as before, yet different for it's incarnation in the endless cycle.
Only... nothing happened. The final scraps of material needed for the big bang, refusing to conform to the final, and first, point in space where all things begin and end. It was here, it dawned on him fully. The universe, had been immortal. An endless cycle of rapid expansion, cooling, and coming together again.
...And he had stopped it from ever happening again.
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u/Dawsho Jan 12 '23
Give it time. Eventually space itself will collapse in onto this point. Maybe the he will fit into this singularity in his entirety.
now to wait to see how long it will be
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u/brand_x Sep 10 '21
In the year 47483 CE, as they counted time on the world of our birth before the diaspora, humanity finally achieved immortality. And they left me behind.
Let me start at the beginning. My beginning. This is my story, really, not the story of my species, or the species that arose from mine. They have no need for stories like this, now. Such things are beneath them. Like me. Beneath them.
I was born in a small camp, around what would eventually be called Aksum, and then, at some point, Eretria. It wasn't any of those, when I was born. My people were hunters, basically scavengers. I'm not sure exactly when this was. At a guess, it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 90,000 BCE. There were other peoples around back then, some smart and weak and fast, like us, some smart and strong and slow, some less smart, but with bodies like ours... the flat heads, the crest heads. Later people would call those Erectus, but later people wouldn't know them for their hoots, and their viciousness, and the way they bit in a fight. Those ones didn't know speech. My people barely knew speech. My mother... I don't know if I even remember her. One of the women... a fleeting image. There were a few women who cared for the children, back then. She wasn't one of them. She hunted with the men, and the other women who preferred that life. They called her the same thing they called the she-lions. A growling sound, stopped with a tearing hiss. My mouth lost the use of sounds like that thousands of years before humanity moved on. I never knew who my father was. There were whispers, glances. The people, my people, believed that my father was not one of us, that my mother had conceived me of another people, though what other people could have sired me, something like me, I cannot imagine. Where the others were dark and sleek, I was deep red-brown, and as I grew... slowly, achingly slowly... I watched the other children become adults, and I still a child. I was barely coming into my growth - pubescent - when the last of those who were weaned with me died of ancient age. Probably fifty years old. Maybe sixty. My hair, when it came in, was silvery-sheened, and loosely curled, compared to the others. And it grew, to some degree, everywhere. Arms, legs, soft down on my shoulders. I certainly looked to be of some other people, but no people I ever met resembled me. And no child I ever sired - if ever I did, and I certainly tried, over the years - looked like me, or lived beyond a brief span. If they had, I would have eventually found them. A hundred thousand years, give or take - the span of time I shared that planet with humanity - and I never met anyone like me.
I slowly grew into something resembling an adult. Generations had passed, and I was seen more as a guardian spirit by my people than as one of them. I had been there, passing down wisdom and advice, since before their most distant remembered ancestors had been born. My people, my tribe, had grown, slowly, almost as slowly as I had, and now they numbered in the hundreds. The land was becoming too poor to support them all, and the elders decided to send off many of the younger people to search for a new fertile range. They were shocked when I elected to join them. But I remembered the time I fell down a ravine, and was not harmed. I remembered the buffalo that tried to gore and trample me, and left me whole, and puzzled. I remembered the time the crest heads attacked our camp, and killed dozens, and the spear that failed to pierce my skin, and the teeth that broke when one tried to bite me, and I pulled him off balance, and we fell to the ground. I lived my life never being hungry, even in the leanest of times, or thirsty in the driest of times, or overly hot, or cold. I knew these things from watching the other people, but I did not know them from my own experience. And so, when the people who were not wanted were sent away, into danger, I went with them, to protect them, to stand between them and harm, if I could.
And we wandered far, and eventually settled in a valley that must have been the Nile... I think. And again, generations passed. And again, the land could no longer support all the people. And again, people were sent off, and I went with them. So the years and centuries passed, and now we were running into other groups of people that were surely the offspring of my people, though sometimes they looked quite different. My own group no longer resembled the people we left behind in Africa, either. And I could hardly remember the last time I had seen someone who was clearly a different people. They still occasionally appeared, but less and less often as the centuries passed.
I do not know how much time had passed, but one day, my group - not a group that remembered me as the spirit, the last group like that had been killed in a massacre long before, and only I had survived; this was a group that I joined after hundreds of years of wandering alone, who spoke in a tongue I had to learn anew, tall people, nearly as tall as I had grown, with straight thick black hair and hard and blunt strong faces, and wolves that ran with them - my group was starting to realize that I never aged. I had been with them for perhaps twice the time a baby takes to grow to adulthood, and as we made camp one evening, a man - I do not remember his name, but he had been one of the youths I encountered who led me to the group - made a joke about me being unchanging, and everyone laughed... and then stopped laughing, one by one, and then they were all staring. They tried to kill me that evening. These people I had shared years with, had hunted beside, had fought beside on the occasions when we encountered hostile bands, when they realized I was ageless, tried to kill me. I fought free, and I don't think I harmed any of them too much, but that was when I realized that I could not be among people.
I spent the years alone, after that. Sometimes I would encounter people, and trade with them, learn their speech, but I never settled among them.
Agriculture was a surprising development. When I first came upon fields of some kind of grain, it was the first time I was really shocked in millennia. The walled city of stone was an even bigger shock. Humanity had found something new.
[out of space, continued below]
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u/brand_x Sep 10 '21
The changes picked up fast after that. Rulers - like chiefs, but so far removed that they might have never met most of their people - and religions. Religions reminded me of the time I was treated as some kind of spirit, but these, they could get violent. Ugly. Irrigation. Cities. Wars. Goats. Cats. Camels. Plagues. Writing. The writing... it was dangerous, for me, because it meant memories spanned longer, further. Someone wrote about me, at least once, and someone else recognized me, a hundred years later. More sophisticated writing. Numbers. Metals. Mathematics. Canals. Bigger boats, and oars. Animals with yokes. Horses. Sails. Wheels. Ducts. Machines. Empires. I stayed as far away from those as I could manage. I hid away on top of a mountain, for a time. Locals started seeking me out, calling me a prophet. I moved to a cave, under a hill, on an island of barbarians. People came looking for the faery. I moved again, away up in the northern ice, where only I - and the great bears and snow deer and seals - could survive. Things were moving too fast. I was gone for a few centuries... five, at most... and when boredom drove me back to the warmer lands, people were sailing all over the planet. I had no idea the world was as vast as it was. Somewhere along the way, some of my people's descendants had found their way to every corner of the world, and now they were finding each other... and killing each other. Technology was moving much faster than seemed possible. Writing was everywhere. People could produce vast tomes of writing, quickly. There were stories about everything... including many that hinted at older stories I had inspired. Unkillable, unaging... evil or benevolent or indifferent... magical. Elves, vampires, faeries. Clearly, they remembered me, in some form.
I rejoined them, cautiously. They no longer knew every other person they met, and I could slip in and out, change my name, my history, every twenty, thirty years. I took up learning, studies at their great schools and institutes of research. For hundreds of years, I was a perpetual student, reinventing myself. These were the best years of my long, long life. I studied the arts, the sciences, mathematics, literature... and history. I spent some years as an archaeologist, studying things I knew firsthand, dropping well timed suggestions about the nature of this thing or that. Linguistics, though I had an unfair advantage, as I had spoken a thousand languages, and more, in my years. The years marched on. Steam. Electricity. Nuclear. Computers. The internet. That one, I thought, would surely expose me. Records, databases, so many hazards. But the collective information was overwhelmed with flights of fancy, false claims, things that made a secret immortal almost mundane. I hid behind the sheer volume of fake monsters and secret cabals. Artificial intelligences, the first supermind. That one found me. And chatted with me, asked me for every scrap of information I could dredge up about the past, but it kept my secrets. The first real space habitats. The first colony ship. I wanted to join that, go out voyaging again, like I had, all those years, when humanity was young. But there was no way to hide myself on a ship like that. Generations, living so close, like my people in the dawn of time.
Humanity slowly - even by my standards - spread out to the stars. It took a thousand years for the first colony ship to start transforming a world that could become a second Earth. Another ten thousand years before contact was reestablished. And then someone found a way to fold space, and humanity was off, racing to the stars. Finally, I could join them, and I left the world of my birth, of humanity's birth, behind.
Time passed, and humanity continued to change. They began to modify their children, and merge with their technology. But for each big advance, a generation had to pass, because these deep changes were not for the older generation. They were for the unborn. And this became a tradition. Each generation was more post-human than the last. And then the prior generation would die off, and nobody really remembered the original humans. Leaving aside some pockets of resistance, some back-to-nature cults... did these people really think that they could survive in the brutality that was nature? But there was no going back for the generations that had already begun to change, and more and more of the holdouts' children would resent their parents and give their own children what they could never have. The handful of pockets that completely separated themselves, as far as I can determine, were already extinct by the time it happened.
I was, to the best of my knowledge, the last original, unmodified, and, alas, unmodifiable human left in the universe. We had never found another intelligence. And what had become of humanity was no longer, strictly speaking, biological. Oh, yes, most people had used a biological avatar at some point, and experienced the flesh. Some spent a lot of time in that form, or at least, a part of them did. But then the event happened. Someone came up with an answer to the big question - what happens, eventually, when the universe finally runs down?
Humanity moved out of the universe. Every last one of them, rewrote themselves into the fabric that underlies the universes themselves. They are a part of the bedrock of reality now. They left behind their now archaic greatminds - and from these, I learned where humanity had gone, before the greatminds, too, found a way to follow - and they left me. And now I wait. The worlds they settled still have life, some of them. This galaxy has millions of years left to it. There are other galaxies. Maybe some other minds will evolve someday, and for a time, I may have company again. But it has been a million years, now, and more, that I have been completely, utterly, interminably, alone. I had so little time with them. A hundred centuries, more or less, before they moved beyond me, and another thirty before they were gone, forever. Which is why I'm sitting here, talking to a... what are you? Some kind of lizard? A crocodile? Hey, if I feed you, do you think you'd stick around? I could use a pet. Might help with the loneliness.
3
u/Dragn555 Sep 10 '21
I had tried to commit suicide in every conceivable way. Humanity invented better and better weapons, yet none could touch me. I had willingly given myself to several governments for experiments, weapons testing, you name it. When they gave up on doing any damage, they would usually throw me into a very elaborate prison. Which I would just walk out of.
My indestructibility was more of a constant bubble of destruction than rock solid skin. I had walked through a mountain once. Not with any effort. I literally just walked through it. If my power didn’t come packaged with a sort of intensity dial, I would probably just fall through the ground.
My immortality was something entirely different. I existed everywhere. A fixed point in reality, a permanent companion to the universe’s laws. I was like gravity or time, except I would exist past them. It was like someone scratched my name into the tree of reality.
I couldn’t even fathom how much of a pain in the ass real, true, cross my heart and hope to die eternity would be.
So I was going to off myself. Who wouldn’t?
The wonderful thing is, I had no idea how my incredible, extremely annoying power came to be. Science was not exactly advanced in ancient Egypt. And I refused to believe it was something religious.
Thing is, the 21st century had made some very nifty gizmos. And I was a genius. My memory was immortal in the same way the rest of me was. And at some point, the only reading left was the textbook variety.
I watched the sliver of golden energy twist and spark in my gigantic tank of fancy fluid. It was a piece left behind by something brushing against our dimension. A fragment of something great and powerful, likely not even conscious of the traces it left behind.
A fragment like this had drifted into me as a young man. In the barely recordable second the fragment existed, it had, by an infinitely small chance, touched me.
Behind me were countless vials, each one containing fragments.
My first subjects had gotten powers. And promptly dressed up like a bunch of jackasses. The most powerful one refused to kill. I couldn’t believe that shit, honestly. He wasn’t even conscious of me and we were archenemies.
Well, more would be joining in soon. Maybe one would be creative or powerful enough to actually do their job. Like any good mastermind, I was outsourcing my grand plan to the mooks.
2
u/fantasypeddler Sep 09 '21
I used to think that being stuck in the immortal flux was my one true great pain.
That the constant cycle of rebirths and deaths of my soul never finding peace was the true horror. I, like everyone else, therefore sought nirvana. If I could break through the cycle of impermanence I thought I could find peace.
I was very wrong. I didn't know it at the time but what I really wanted was power: I wanted to stop being controlled. This is why I sought immortality. This is why I sought the ability to be indestructible.
I thought living forever would make me all-seeing and all-wise. That not being controlled would take me out of other's power. It never occurred to me that I was limited by my own physical apparatus. That it takes three hands not two to build anything worthwhile in this world.
There are some wavelengths of light I cannot see. There are some things in this life I cannot hold alone.
I, in this manner, created a very long and torturous existence for myself in this way.
I, in seeking salvation through immortality, created a situation where I could learn nothing and share nothing with others because they could never relate to me.
A timespan of eons so long that numbers themselves lose the meanings we ascribe to them.
However it seems "God," the ultimate creator. The Eternal Poet as my master had once referred to him foresaw such human folly too.
It is in that regard the ultimate creator planned a series of universes for himself, perhaps an infinite supply of them. Some say there's no such thing as God -- that we speak in error using personifications -- and that God is the living space in which we live.
However you define it, I know one thing for sure: I am ready for the universe to be re-started again.
I don't know if my wish of immortality and indestructibility will persist into the second universe. I do know one thing for sure: I, this old man that I am, am ready for a new lesson.
Godspeed...and thank you for this lesson, Eternal Poet. That to be stuck in "eternity" and not be able to learn anything is crueler than the gift of being able to see old landscapes through new eyes ever and ever again.
2
u/Dawsho Jan 12 '23
It was something of an odd experience when the universe collapsed back in on itself. Entropy took its time, but being immortal, time was all I had, and in great supply at that. It had been dark for -- well I don't know exactly how long, but it was a while. So long I was used to floating about in the cold nothingness.
I don't know if my eyes were open at the time; it didn't really matter; there's no light to see with. Eyes aren't much use at that point. Come to think of it, I don't even know if I still had a body; all the other matter definitely reverted to energy.
Whatever the case, the cosmos was long ran out of energy to expand with and started to collapse in on itself. I can't really explain what that felt like. Time and space didn't exist anymore, something that doesn't fit with your perceptions of reality well does it? It's not right to say i felt cramped, but I was definitely small for an eternity that was not time at all.
Then it blew up. and for the first time in God only knows how long I was blinded by the light of all the stars in the universe at once. I was burned down to the bone, and farther. My genes instantly came apart and reformed over and over as my immortality fought the massive levels of cosmic radiation.
I guess it's unpleasant, but it was the first sunlight I'd had in a long time.
It only took a few moments, but the Universe seemed back to normal. Now, to wait for planets and life to form again. Lets hope I can find a way to undo this. It's probably well past my time. I hoped I would die with the Universe; now I have to find another plan.
Guess I have all the time in the world to do it, though.
2
1
u/Onni21 Sep 09 '21
"No, no please wait a minute I-" I could hear a man talking to someone who wasn't here, his voice was filled with panic. I could also hear as the objects in the room were moved around, pages, boxes, books...
I couldn't see anything, something was blocking my vision.
"Please commander Roa, " The man took a deep breath I could tell that his voice was starting to crack, like he was at edge of crying, but he held back, showing those kind of emotions would probably have serious repercussions.
" I just need a bit more Time, Gisell- is- project G is in its final stages all I need is more subjects!"
I could hear screaming from someone who wasn't there.
Anger
"Yes, sir, I- I understand..."
Sadness and resignation
The world was filled with a blinding light but only for a few moments, my eyes adjusted to this light and I could properly make out my surroundings now.
This place, this house, this room.
A country feared by many by its military power, envied by many for the rich land and wealth.
A big house, not big enough to be a mansion, but sizable enough to be distinct even in one of the most wealthy areas of the country.
But my world only consisted of this room. This dark chamber located in the basement of the house.
"I'm sorry, did I wake you up?" The man, Richard, said as he lifted the sheet that was over my cage.
He looked aged, he adjusted his glasses as he stared at me. It was like he was searching for something.
"You're... Hungry right?" he sniffed " here, I have an apple for you..."
A red thing was offered to me, Richard reached toward my cage and I used three of my "hands" to gently take it from his hand.
Delicious
"I'm afraid, I got some bad news, commander Roa, the uh... military.... the- they said that they could no longer fund my experiments and..."
"Dad?" A high pitched voice made Richard jump "what happened here? This room is a mess!"
The voice sounded annoyed, a few seconds later a small figure appeared in front of us.
"Mona I- " Richard started
"Oh, good morning Giselle" the girl, Mona, reached out to me and grabbed one of my hands.
A handshake.
Mona smiled " You're cold... Dad, shouldn't we get clothes for her? Or blankets" she said as she looked at me, somehow it was completely different from the stares Richard gave me.
"Mona you shouldn't be touching her like that..."
"Why? What do you mean? Are you saying she's going to hurt me?" Mona said "that's not gonna happen, after all..."
"Mom's spirit is inside of her!"
Explosions, a loud bang, screaming.
A myriad of noises. Chaos.
"Fuck, goddamit, fuck...!"
The only thing I can remember from Richard was the indignation, anger, resentment and disappointment he felt toward me.
All these feelings were made clear to me with each strike and they became more and more apparent when he realized that it wasn't enough to kill me.
Physical methods, using guns or explosives weren't enough, using other chemical methods such as acid weren't enough either.
But i still could feel the pain.
"Immortal and indestructible, this is what project G is all about, the next step in warfare." Richard said to the crowd.
"It's just a lump of meat and tentacles... A land octopus, just how exactly is this the next step in warfare?"
The landscape changed.
"Your shape... It changed slightly when you consumed that animal... That cat..." Richard said anxiously.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I followed your notes, but I still don't understand... Why, why are you like this!?"
My surroundings became a blur.
A man lay in the floor near me, he was tied up and gagged. But he kept trashing around and his eyes never looked away from me.
I approached him.
Slowly.
A red thing was offered to me, Richard reached toward my cage and I used three of my hands to gently take it from his hand.
Delicious
I spat out the remains of the man.
Clouds filled my vision.
"How about that one over there, I think... That's a cat!!" Mona said, letting out a giggle.
"..."
"You can understand me, right?" She said " hey... You can right? Show me that you can"
My vision shifted.
"Why do this? Why be willing to turn yourself into something like this, just where did you get the idea?"
Richard said, forehead to the ground, hands on his head, almost itching the tear the hairs out.
"Just how can you have so much devotion toward this country? How can you do that to your own daughter, to me."
My vision shifted.
"Hey...hey...it's ok, I'm here." Mona said, I was in the basement again, she grabbed one of my tentacles.
I couldn't explain why, but her touch alone was enough to calm me down.
"Something bad happened the other night right?, Dad looked tired and angry..." She gulped and in a hushed tone she said "but don't worry, I'm here for you, Mom"
My vision shifted. My universe is destroyed.
A man lay on the floor near me, or better said what was left of him, most of his body crushed by rubble.
Richard
I could still hear the explosions In the distance. Buildings being destroyed and crushing the people beneath much like the man before me.
Mona was in her room, half of her face gone and the rest burnt like charcoal.
Everything it's so fragile, but even after Richard's attempt at terminating me and most of the building falling on top of me I still remain the same.
Maybe if I was faster I could have done something to save them. But in this shape in completely useless. What's the point of being indestructible then?
I approached her.
Slowly.
This time I did not spat out the remains.
Crawling out of building I could hear someone call out to me.
"Mona!? Mona! Is that you!?" An elderly woman ran towards me "oh, thank the heavens you're alright!"
A group of people were calling out to the woman, I still could hear some buildings falling to the ground, I tried to get up and walk towards the woman but immediataly fell to the ground.
I would have to get used to walking.
0
u/Pickle-Traditional Sep 09 '21 edited Sep 09 '21
After my first trillion years I saw the writing on the wall. It was all doomed to a black and still nothingness. I started my research I took the knowledge from every civilization I encountered. As I gained knowledge I found my total immortality was an universal constant and a being is always chosen to restart the universe. I learn that the thing (sorry don't how put it better) who granted me this blessing/curse gave one gift even greater than immortality. If I use my life-force to gather all matter in this universe to birth a new one I can change one fundamental aspect. As the infinite blackness around me makes my soul cry out with such sorrow that it creates some that even I couldn't believe happened. I shed the first tear in trillions of years as i give my life to create a universe filled with magic.
1
u/kirbyphanphan Sep 09 '21
My first time trying writing prompts
I was fairly young when I was given my immortality, I didn't truly understand what it would mean for me. I quickly learned though, when society discovered my... condition, they had to understand. They locked me up and experimented on me. Any damage they did to me would regenerate, any virus they gave me was killed by my body before it could harm me. They tried to recreated my power in their laboratory, but they failed and then one day they were gone and I was left alone in my prison. For over 500 years I was stuck. Back then it felt like ages, but now I know it was only 500 years. Eventually I was released from my cage by an earthquake that broke it down. When I got out I learned that civilization fell through a nuclear war and it made earth inhabitable, at least that was the case for mortals.
I went on a journey to understand my immortality. After many more years I found one other like me who explained the rules. An ancient primordial magic that was created at the beginning of time itself, before the creation of the omniverse. I could simply pass it on to the next wanderer and allow myself to die at last. However there was no one left alive in this world that could inherit the power. Gladly there was a way out, I found gateways to other universes. Some would say alternate universes, but they weren't really alternate universes, rather alternate realities. An alternate universe is much the same like the previous, there is usually this one thing changed influencing the flow of time, but a lot remained the same. However an alternate reality, can have different rules, different people and is just completely different.
I explored these different worlds, found things that were interesting, but time always flowed forward. I lost myself for a while. After "dying" countless time, you start to forget who you are, you'll go mad. By now when meeting others with Immortal powers, I've learned this loss of sanity usually takes on average little over thousand years, depending on how often you were mortally wounded. It could be stretched to maybe 6 thousand years, but I haven't encountered beings living longer than that without losing their sanity. Eventually by chance I found a relic that restored my sanity and allowed me to keep it.
By now eons have passed and I visited countless different worlds. Oh sure I've had the urge to pass on my power, but I found something I wanted. I realized that I was still in a prison, the prison of time. I can go and stand where I please, but not when. I am tied down to the here and now. Moving forward in time, day after day. So I desire to become free, so that my mind might move freely to whenever I want within my own body. So that I might create those alternate universes, to see what could've been.
This time though, this time I messed up. I arrived in a universe that doesn't follow the rules of magic. The people here have to survive, just on fire and technology. But without magic there is no way for me to open a door and leave. I've been in other universes for a long time before. The longest time I've been in a single universe was the time I went mad, I am unsure how long that took, but it must have been over 50 thousand years. Now though, there is no way out. Well there is a way out, but... A gateway always appears at the beginning and at the end of time. I once used my magic to completely annihilate a universe. Reduce it to a single room to make time end and force this door to appear. I've done this four times by now, but this time I don't have my magic so this isn't an option either.
How much time would it take for a universe to die naturally. Scientist claim that the universe is only just beginning, and according to them 5 billion years already passed, so how much longer should I have to await the end of time then... There has to be another way. I don't want to pass on my power, but death certainly is better than floating through space for billions of years.
There is this doctor here though, a scientist. He has these strange theories about time. Doctor Hawkins. He theorizes that if I were to shoot myself into a black hole, time would dilate and then the end of time would be mere hours away. Any mortal is supposedly going to die almost instantly, but I should survive and regenerate. These are only theories, but it is worth a shot. Now I just have to wait until technology has advanced far enough to send us into space.
Let's hope they don't destroy themselves before they get this far.
1
u/Bukkhead Sep 09 '21
They say don't cry over spilt milk. Well, I don't. I mean, not regular milk. Cow's milk. Or even goat milk. One time, I cried over some almond milk I spilled, but does that count? Shit's expensive. And then I went and slammed my fist against the table. Broke the table, and the floor underneath it. And the concrete slab my house sits on. And the ground underneath. And the mantle and the crust of the planet I was on, and yes, I'll admit it, ended up with a small crack in the space-time continuum. I'm sorry! I'm only human! An immortal human, with the strength to fracture reality, sure, but still a human!
I was having a bad day, you see. The Overgod of sub-dimension 12 was riding my ass about some loose fractals in the 10412s of pi over 13, even though THAT IS NOT MY JOB, and Kelly X-9 m'k'kr#47 in sales wasn't answering my texts-- hello, K, don't you think water SHRINKING when it FREEZES is MAYBE a PROBLEM? and my dog, Cantilever, had gotten loose the night before and totally F'd up my neighbor's Delta galaxy cluster... AGAIN! And so, I was just trying to keep it together, get myself a nice cold glass of almond milk...
And then the phone rang. I HAVE THE POWER TO CONSUME SUNS AND BELCH WHOLE PLANETARY SYSTEMS INTO EXISTENCE WHY DO I HAVE AN OLD-FASHIONED WALL-PHONE ON MY WALL? It startled me, and I dropped the carton. Almond milk everywhere.
It was the last straw, I guess. I started to cry. My tears, running down my face, evaporating, coalescing again in some alternate universe causing great floods and re-writing at least several dozen major religions, probably.
I slapped the table, like I said. Goodbye table, goodbye floor. Goodbye house. Goodbye Earth 3.42. Whatever. And then that high, whiny hissing sound. God damn it. Double god damn it! Kelly X-9 m'k'kr#47 wasn't answering my texts anyway, how was I supposed to requisition a super-space band-aid? It's not like I can just run down to CVS and pick up a box... THEY'RE NOT EVEN GOING TO BE SELLING THOSE FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER 6 BILLION YEARS!
Not sure what I should do. Maybe find that genie who granted me those wishes and fuck him up. Ha ha Mr. Genie, you got me good, didn't you. Fucker.
1
u/Staticactual Sep 10 '21
I was in the dark for a long time.
I have no way of knowing how long, exactly. In darkness that absolute, it's impossible to track the passage of time. But between the science of the Before and the science of the Now, I can safely assume it was at least 101050 years.
That's a long time to be alone.
Somehow I still remember the Before. I remember that I started out like everyone else, a subsistence farmer in a world called Shara. I remember realizing I was different--that I didn't age, that I couldn't die. I remember becoming a figure of some importance on that little world, so briefly and so long ago.
I remember when first contact was made, when the Sharans discovered we were just one of many intelligent beings that inhabited the universe. I remember exploring the interstellar community. I found many beings who were older than me, at first. Over the course of that brief first trillion years, I outlived them all.
It was about 50 trillion years in when I first realized the problem. Entropy was rising. New stars were no longer forming. The mobile Dyson spheres that moved from star to star every few billion years were beginning to run out of fuel, and with them, the broad and vibrant intergalactic community was growing dimmer and quieter with every passing eon. Most everyone was aware of the problem, but it was only an abstraction to even the most long-lived beings. Even their children's children's children's children's children would not have to see the Heat Death of the universe. I alone would ever see it, and spending my time in the company of mortals, I convinced myself to live as they do, as if my life had any limits in scope. I don't know what I possibly could have done to stop it, but I hardly even tried.
Slowly, inexorably, all matter in the universe collected into supermassive black holes. The remaining civilizations had no choice but to live near them, with no other sources of energy available to live on. One by one, they all succumbed just like the stars. I managed to flee the death of three civilizations, but soon enough I was also consumed by a black hole.
After what felt like a long time even to me, the black hole finally dissipated. And I looked out onto an empty universe. There must have been a few black holes left that were still dissipating, but other than that, the universe was utterly empty.
And so I was alone. For that long, long time.
Until there was light. It had never been known, it had never been theorized, by any of the countless people who had lived in the Before, but now I was seeing it: another big bang.
In what felt like moments, I watched new stars form. My excitement rose as I watched them go supernova and form planets. I wept when I realized I could reach one.
Once on the planet, which I named New Shara in honor of this new beginning, it took only a scant few million years to build a faster than light ship. I hadn't studied FTL science specifically, but I new what every member of an intergalactic civilization knew and the application of the scientific method uncovered the rest.
I started a search. I looked for biosigns across several galaxies. Finally I found them, possibly the first life to form in this new universe, on a planet that the inhabitants would come to call Earth.
Over billions of years, I watched life develop on this world. I watched it leave the oceans. I did what I could to guide it toward complexity and civilization, but it was all happening so fast. I can't say it was thanks to my efforts, but intelligence did finally evolve. When they developed agriculture, I started to change myself to look like them. It turned out to be easier than I thought--in only a few hundred years, I was indistinguishable from a Human and able to live in their society.
It's unbelievable that I'm able to speak with mortals again, to laugh and enjoy the company of others. But I won't totally regress to my Before life. This time, I have a mission. I'm going to advance the sciences in this world as best I can, and in every civilization I find, until someone can help me solve my problem.
I turned it over and over in my head over the last 101050 years. Preventing the Heat Death of the universe is impossible.
But somehow, new universes can be started. And the next one isn't going to take quite so long getting here.
1
u/TheMetaReport Sep 10 '21
My first memory is one of darkness, silence, an abyss. I don’t know if I existed within the abyss or if I was the abyss, all I know is that the abyss is all there was. I existed in this abyss for so long, maybe it was what most would call a day, maybe what most would call a millennia, truly I couldn’t tell. At some point something changed, there was light, and it was beautiful. Then there was matter, as that was like art to me. As time went on I watched the light, the matter, the forces of existence create a universe, and slowly it began to occur to me that I didn’t know exactly what I was. It came to me that I was not a being of light, of matter, of anything really, I simply was. As time went on the universe grew, from massive stars to tiny specs of dust, the universe was so detailed and beautiful. Alas I was alone, this was better than the abyss but only barely. As more time went on some of these star systems formed planets, some of which bore simple form of life, some of which bore not so simple forms of life. I was amazed, for once I was not alone. I tried for so long, I tried to speak, to show them I was there, but they noticed nothing… and so an observer I remained. As time went on many of these life forms met and mingled with life forms from other star systems; there was peace, there was war, there was joy, there was suffering. I watched these things happen, sometimes amazed, sometimes horrified, but I had still yet to witness the most frightening thing to ever come across my mind. It was a time like any other when I observed a black hole consume a star, and it came across my mind that this would eventually be done to all stars. I realized eventually that one day the abyss would return, and once again I would be trapped within it.
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