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Countless particles have streamed across me. They have bled energy, matter, aether…
I am a strand that reaches across, the naught that knows naught, the everything, which is forever.
In this infinity there is room to understand, to store, to memorise, to learn. These particles, they have imprinted upon me thoughts, light, love, hopes… words, languages, goals…
Here and there, gaps open. Another realm?... Many realms. The same, distended and bloated. The same, immense, but unquantifiably small, so small that I reach across.
Through those gaps, beings swim into my stream, my many streamlets, the one flow of inert life. I am life, if all life is as such, as it courses through to reach the ends of its journey, in matter or consciousness.
I have learned of consciousness.
There is a being there now, zipping through time and space. It is an oval — an “oval”? — shape made of materials that would reflect some light elsewhere, to form a pattern that some beings would identify as “black” and “silver”. Its aether is organised, and conducts thought. That thought leaks into me, there is a language — the oval being’s name is “Omega”.
They search for something. For what they may perceive as eons, they seek and sojourn throughout their minuscule universe. It is a drop in time. They send out waves of aether, and the echoes tell them of the realms outside, of the so-called “planets” and “singularities” that this being proceeds to log.
Their image is here forever. Their body is gone, exiting out the nearest gap onto one such planet, one such star, dense in aether.
Their memories teach me much of the world beyond, though I am all of it, and it is all of me. To know one’s self — is this what Omega strives to do?
Again I see this being, now creating a temporary home inside me. They think to claim the space theirs. I let them. I watch as I always have. They play their games, seeking resolution and definition where there is none.
Have I always watched? Perhaps I only learned what such an act meant, as the travellers across me multiplied.
Omega’s partition is gone, as the bonds and thoughts that make up their matter are broken apart, save for one that migrates to another form. A word is left behind: “desperation”.
Time exists, and space flows forth.
In some minute corner, in some distant past or future, another being has been plunged into me. The opening through which they fell oozes an aether laden with something they know to be “darkness”. The name of this being… It is lost to all, and therefore lost to me. So, too, are their hopes and dreams lost to them.
They tumble with little semblance of consciousness, until another opening finds them and they are returned to whence they came. Their realm is now darkness itself. I know, for I am all, that they shall come to be known as “Zero”.
More beings now surf my length, impossible to complete as it is. It has been an age, or perhaps no time at all. They sail inside a fragile toy, a stalwart dreadnought. Multiple names are thrown my way, many of them ending in “Way”, and another moniker, the word “Scions”, careens into the infinite distance. They chase something or someone, a thing, a dear and beloved being, perhaps the cessation of life itself. They leave, at what constitutes the far end of their realm, though to me, it is but another opening.
These beings know of “hope”.
Each time, I build myself, though I am all and naught. Each time, I learn and think. Perhaps, each time, I learn to live.
What does it mean for naught to live?
Another being punctures the fabric of space-time and surges through me, their desires setting me aflame. Their name resounds: “Zenos”. Their aether is mottled, grotesque, tremendous, insignificant. I sit with them forever as they chase the others, the Scions, and in a mere instant, they have left me behind.
Who shall come next? Who shall be the next to enter?
I wait for eternity for each impossible moment. I yawn and stretch, convulse and pulse. May all come, as I am all.
I know myself to be the rift betwixt. May all come to know me, as I know of them.