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Weightless, diminished and stretched through the vast emptiness of space and time; the lack of sensory feedback is as alarming as it is fascinating: no sensation, only sense. Only thought exists, and at once: all thought.
Brilliance echoes easily against the silent sounding board of his own creation. Constructing breakthrough after breakthrough is simple; to craft new perspectives that flip the world on its axis, that depict all of the known universe in ways no spoken or unposken language could possibly come close to communicating.
Outside looking in: his perspective for as long as he can remember. It is a comfort. Yet now he is both inside and outside of himself and of this infinite cosmos, shadow puppets dancing around his vision, clothed in torn remnants of what was and will be before and after.
There is no cold or solitude or silence; everything is nothing and everything at once. There is nothing but his one singular goal; the one key to inevitable perfection.
It is logical, it is flawless.
It should be shared, should be realised together.
“My partner died in this room.”
There should be no pain here.
There can be none.
“Doctor? You may begin the process.”
The void expands, engulfs, becomes what was always meant to be. There is only one singular goal, only one end.
If there is no cold or solitude or silence, how can he be bathed in golden warmth, hope and affection, when he neither needs nor deserves the comfort?
“Because I promised you.”
It's overwhelming, all at once, and it is, in the end, laughably, delightfully simple. Specks of dust in the vastness of space and beyond, coming together, in every outcome.
But the warmth, the radiance, the deep breath of relief: this is new, even if it is familiar from another time, another slice of existence.
He cannot breathe.
Not unfamiliar, but after residing in this soothing non-space for what feels like lifetimes, it is sudden, and it is shocking, and he cannot breathe.
Suffocating in sunlight and liquid gold and the sensation of warmth that should not be, because if there is sudden warmth, there must have been the opposite.
“Only you can show me this.”
He pushes himself back and feels hopelessly human.
Plunged into frozen water, inhaling ice, panicked, erratic, confused: it is all wrong, this is not what should be, or happen, or exist.
The warmth returns to his incorporeal but suddenly physical shoulder; five fingers all pressing down, grounding, melting the shards in his lungs, and it’s far, far too much and not enough.
His own fingerprints pressed onto a thousand faces, demanding obedience, calling to one infinite consciousness, merging, commanding. Crowning them for his own singular ascension, his obsession.
This searing touch disconnects, all threads woven into his new reality suddenly unraveling, collapsing as though it was and is nothing – and in the face of this, it was, is.
There should be no hope here.
Am I interrupting?
“We finish this together.”
There is only light, and warmth.
Only home.