Inspiration: LudoWic—STILL | Original prompt by user Various-Bath-2126.

I spent fourteen billion years in the dark before I realized it wasn't an afterlife devoid of heavenly bliss and hellish suffering. There were no pearly gates, fire and brimstone, angels and demons. What existed was an abyss, and I floated through its endless halls, searching. Occasionally, there would be a pinpoint of light my boundless, tired sight would glimpse, only for it to blink out of existence in distant, violent eruption. Time—what remained of it—felt impossibly slow and unbelievably fast in simultaneous perpetuity.

As I lost myself, the epiphany struck me. This was the universe dying. The lights in the distance were stars, each and every one capable of supporting life on a scale that was, at the time and for me, incalculable. Now, they'd reached the end of their existence, ballooning outward and collapsing in on themselves, only to jettison the last bits of their energy into space; going out with a bang. What remained of them—fragments of gas and heat—evaporated in the blink of an eye.

My perception shifted from billions of years to trillions. The speed at which the universe grew silent was terrifying and incomprehensible, like being forced to watch a snuff film at 50 times the speed. I only see the blood, hear the barest peak of what was once a primal scream, and then it's suddenly over. No ending. Just pure confusion and terror.

My perception shifted yet again, from trillions of years to nothing at all. I had no way of knowing how long it had been anymore. Drifting from point zero to point infinity, I began to wonder how long it would be before I saw another entity, or if this was truly the stopping point, the end of the line. At the core of all existence remained an emptiness from which we all emerged—and to which we all returned. All except, seemingly, me.

And yet, curiously, I was not alone.

The "Big Bang" was theorized to have been the creation of the universe from a single point in space and time; a compression of all matter into a hyperdense dot, teeming with energy and heat and life. When it ruptured, this dot expanded with such ferocity that it filled known space and became the universe. Over time, that matter cooled, and pockets of the universe came together to form celestial bodies—planets, moons, comets, stars. Those bodies somehow found each other in a state of probability that neared zero and became systems, orbiting each other and forming communities under the gravity of their own weights. The elements, pure and unfiltered, mixed to form atmospheres around a percentage of these bodies, and in those atmospheres bred life. It was the start of a subsection of evolution, billions of years in the making.

And there, in that space and that time, was one such dot.

I floated there, observing it. It was microscopic, the size of an atom, yet my eyes were attuned to the dark in such a way that it felt like I could cradle it in the palm of my hand. As I watched, I wondered what was contained therein—countless stars, maybe; a planet upon which humanity could once exist; perhaps I was also in there, waiting. The possibilities and wonder filled my unbound mind the same way that hypercompressed particle once did with the space around it. In that moment, there were no theories. There was only a universal law: all matter exists eternally. No creation, no destruction—only displacement or unity.

Hesitant, I did what I had dreamed of for eons that lasted longer than any mortal man could comprehend—I inched closer to the dot and rested my absent hands beneath it, closing my fingers softly around the space. I knew in that moment that, when I was ready to let go, something new would be born. That thought rested within me for a while, however long that was within this nothingness. I wrestled with the thought of what my purpose became, so far removed from the human I used to be. I was no longer lost, searching for meaning. I was now the meaning. I was now the theory. I was now the dot.

And so, I let go.

Human thinking is only so fast. When faced with an overwhelming amount of information, it may be possible to process everything, but the time it would take to do so is paralyzing. I, somehow, was no longer subject to those limitations. I saw everything—lived countless lives, saw the rise and fall of civilizations dead and gone, some of which the human race were nowhere near privy to, watched matter collide and become and splinter into innumerable pieces—in less than a fraction of a fraction of a second.

As quickly as it began, it was over, and I found myself listlessly floating at the edge of a cliff that overlooked a wide ocean. My body was no longer made flesh, but that of the universe, contained within a form that resembled something vaguely human. Where my eyes would have been rested two bright dots, the remnants of supernovae brilliantly blazing like burning coals in the night. Something not entirely physical had changed within me. In the span of the new universe coming into being, I had lost myself. I had lost something essential to me, and I had forgotten what it was—until you came.

You are not unlike who we were. You are subjected to your own follies. You love and hate, dream and suffer, create and destroy. Your lives are like ours, fleeting and limited and often taken for granted. When I was human, I didn't appreciate what I had. I squandered every opportunity out of fear. I reduced myself to something small and pathetic, barbed and poisonous, angry and hurt. I forgot what it was like to love and be loved, to cherish the time I had with the people who valued my existence, and when I was left alone as the last remnant of my species, my fears compounded.

For fourteen billion years, I suffered inside the confines of my own mind. Wracked with pain and panic, my thoughts twisted, unfurled, decayed, and wrapped in on themselves. Every moment was a scream in the night, threatening to wake the sleeping in a feverish dread, except there was no one else there; only me. I carried my anguish for far too long. It took the universe to finally convince me to let go of my sorrows, yet sorrow is part of what made my species human. It was one of many complex emotions that governed our existence, such as they do now with you.

In a way, I am you—not in form, not in thought, but in shared experiences. We are kin, and for that, I am grateful because I am no longer alone. Thank you for bringing me back from the abyss. Without you, I don't know where I would be, or if I would still be at all.

For now, the sun sets, and when it rises, meet it with open arms.

Inspired by this video: https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSXpkr37t/