In A Sec

As David Horton lay asleep in his bed, wrapped comfortably in his favorite quilt in his house on the north side of Lebanon Tennessee, he dreamed a peculiar dream.

In his dream he was in a place somewhere between reality and the infinite swirling dark void that spawned all dreams, and in front of him, just past his reach, was a glowing orange ball the size of a lemon. He had had the same dream many times, and each time he could feel the immense importance of the ball, but could not through any effort get himself any closer to reaching it.

On this night, as he strained in the milky nether outside of space and time, he felt himself tip forward and he grasped the ball firmly in his hand.

The time was 1:04 a.m. and 11 seconds. The quartz crystal in the electronic alarm clock on his night stand would oscillate 32768 times before a second would register. It had oscillated 573 times now.

David rose up through the ceiling, through his roof, over the town of Lebanon, and then the state of Tennessee, and then the country of The United States, and then the whole globe. He didn’t just rise. He grew larger as he rose, and able to look at all below him at once, until finally, he could see all of the globe at one time.

At 10,715 oscillations, David became God.

David saw his own life, from his birth to his death. He saw every birthday, every time he laughed, every time he cried. He saw all of the girlfriends he had leading up to his wife. He saw all of the friends come and go in his life. He saw his jobs, his vacations, and his time in the army.

At 10,716 oscillations, he saw then what it was like to be born as his wife. He saw her whole life before him, more clearly than we see our own. He was able to look at any point in the past, in the future, in the present, from any point of view, and see it with perfect clarity.

At 10,717 oscillations, David saw the lives of every person that was currently alive. He watched the full lives of teachers, engineers, the military, and children who would grow up to do all of the jobs he had heard of and some he didn’t know yet.

At 10,729 oscillations, David saw all of the lives of everyone who had ever lived. He saw all of the cruelty of man, and all of the compassion. He saw all of human history, from the first critter crawling down a tree, all the way to the present.

He floated higher, further away from the planet, and then the sun, until he could see the whole solar system, and then the whole galaxy.

At 10,943 oscillations, David saw all of the lives of everyone who would ever live. He saw people take to space, once their planet ran out of resources. He saw the Andromeda collide with the Milky Way, and how human’s managed to survive that. He was the lives of everyone that ever was and ever would be for millions of years until there were no more people left to live.

At 11,367 oscillations, David knew that seeing wasn’t enough. He wanted to experience too. He experienced all that had ever happened. He was born rich, and poor. He was born to a loving mother and father. He was ripped out of his mother’s womb by terrorists who hated who he might become, and he ripped a baby out of its mother’s womb for the crimes it hadn’t committed yet. He did all that humans had done, seen all they had seen, and felt all that they felt.

At 13,717 oscillations, David went beyond people and was every animal, every plant, every rock and mineral on Earth and on every planet that people would ever visit. He was every zebra, every lion, every bee, every blade of grass, every rock, every tree.

He kept floating beyond all galaxies until he was looking at the whole universe.

At 13,718 oscillations, David saw every atom and molecule in the universe and their whole existence through all of time. He saw every detail of the whole life of all of the universe until its end. He felt himself in every atom, and saw himself in every atom that he encountered.

At 14,719 oscillations, David was all of the imagined lives of everyone who appeared in the head of someone. He lived through every character of every book, movie, video game, and T.V. show. He was every character that anyone thought up even for a second in their imagination, even if it was then discarded. He was all of the people’s dreams, their day dreams, their nightmares, everything.

At 16,421 oscillations, David grew bored.

He changed the Universe then, one rule at a time, and then watched how that would affect everything. He changed gravity a little bit. He then changed another rule. He made magic real. He made a different magic real. He made monsters real. He tried a different number of planets in our solar system. He made everyone as smart as Stephen Hawking, then. He kept changing, until he had changed an infinite amount more until he saw every Universe that could ever be.

At 17,858 oscillations, David grew even more bored. He had seen everything that had ever been, would ever be, and could ever be.

He then did the only thing else he could think of.

David split himself into a trillion, trillion pieces and put a small piece into a rock, and animal, a person. At the end of their lives, the piece would return with their experiences and David would experience them again for the first time. A little piece of David floated into him and he floated down, towards the Milky Way, towards our solar system, towards Earth, towards The United States, towards Tennessee, towards his small house and finally to his bed.

At 1:04 a.m. and 12 seconds David rolled over.