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Submitted into Contest #149 in response to: Start your story with the flickering of a light.... view prompt

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Contemporary Speculative Fantasy

As directed by the set guidelines beyond the Limitless Anything, a random flicker of light shall occur, starting the second variation of the story that occurred in the transition point between both Realities.

The Garden in the Bones, a place interlocked in a prairie between two tree-filled mountains, both drowned with the embers of nostalgia. A blurred memory easily rekindled with the stimulus of sight, but still all out of the realms of reality. 

“I am still a servant of Time.” I started its monologue, “Not the element, Time, no of course not, just the concept of Time…like everybody else.”

 O voicelessly expressed his curiosity about I’s statement, but both I and Fear understood O’s complete understanding of I’s statement. 

“Our existence within the Great Nothingness, the empty nothing that contains everything The Creator has made, has seemingly no purpose.” I continued, “Should we even be concerned of Reality anymore? Should we still allow Time to bind us to stories that will never reach us?”

“We may not have the duty of Reapers or their grants, but I wouldn’t say the manifestation of our sentience remains purposeless.” Fear directed the other two further into nothingness, observing a presence, located between the far not-west and non-east. 

“You still insist on finding the memory of the forgotten?” I questioned Fear, “The Garden?”

I felt the un-physical touch of Fear’s familiar feeling, one embedded with comfort, and all the more bittersweetness. 

“What do we have to lose when we had nothing at all?”

If a sentient mind were to comprehend the Great Nothingness, most cultures would come to conclude an infinite space of a primary color, given that the entity possesses some sort of biased visual sense. Humans, for example, enjoy fantasizing about the Great Nothingness to be that of the small particle they call ‘Space’. Not the element Space, no of course not, just the concept of Space. But they couldn’t be more wrong. The Great Nothingness is quite literally nothing, and yet it is everything. Traveling the Great Nothingness will result in finding a few universes, their Reapers, and their form of Reality. However, it is only Reality that surpasses the handholding of the concept of Time without vulnerability to an abstract mental consign to oblivion. 

O had moved on an infinite time ago. I and Fear knew this. O’s senses were chronologically disappearing. Each one was lost between infinite intervals, and before long, O had lost all of them. O had reached The Garden. 

“I can no longer feel you.” Fear emphasized, “I can no longer sense your presence nor the Great Nothingness.” 

I acknowledged this, letting Fear be consumed by an abstract mental consign to oblivion. Fear had reached The Garden. 

“I will keep searching for The Garden,” I said. 

But I knew I wouldn’t find it. I haven’t lost my identity nor did I lose any of my senses. I am still here. I’m still I. Me. Here. In the infinity of the Great Nothingness. Infinitely. Wandering. 

Those who venture too deep into the Great Nothingness without the permission of The Creator and Reapers, or those who do not harbor the title of a Grant, Seeker, or Reality, will with no exception, lose their sense of self. A fate worse than life. Eternally wandering as nothingness within an infinite landscape of the absolute everything that is, the Great Nothingness. They cannot perish, they cannot thrive or multiply, they simply are and are not. They blend the whiteness of this page only to become everything, nothing, and yet, everynothing and noeverything. 

I remain unknown to many who have passed me, a simple filler to the common routine of mankind. And with that absolute statement, that also includes you. I have appeared but have not been recognized by friends, family, and offspring. Co-workers, managers, bosses, fiancés, spouses, acquaintances, dealers, and political leaders alike I have witnessed. Some I have connected with, some whom I simply observed. I sit on the guard rails of underground subways, simultaneously traveling the aerial borders of other nations. I join flocks like pigeons that scurry for crumbs on the violated ground while advancing a digital network company into the realms of global popularity from the shadows. I often help the neighbourhood shovel the thick snow from playgrounds and driveways, but my afternoon is spent in the leisure of the sun’s core. I raze societies of all religions, statuses, and backgrounds just to increase my financial status. I join forces with so-called ‘heroes’ to encourage the little ones across the screen to brush their teeth. I teach the teachers of teachers, their students growing old only to become the teachers I also teach. I look at a specific species of fauna and record its changes through different environmental settings. I pass the people who do nothing but lay on the sidewalk, and I also see the people who pass me. I am the double-bonded carbon that connects the molecules to curry. I become an uncontrollable cell that strives for nothing but infinite growth. I print and become printed. I rule and I am the enslaved. I am the smartest and the dumbest. I steal. I trade. I produce. I murder. I am nothing less of a deity and yet nothing more than an ant. 

What am I?

I am everything and nothing. That is false. But true. After spending eternity wandering as the Great Nothingness, formerly an irrelevant entity of sentient matter, everything becomes a possibility. Such as that of the texts the Library of Babel speaks of, even the not-ink on this page is me, but me in the reader’s head, your head, is something that is entirely nothing. After an eternity of rejection from the Garden, Reality has yet to speak a single word. Nevertheless, I can convey its not-communication; it understands me as much as I understand it. After an eternity, I have seen it take on multiple forms, one which doesn’t exist, one filled with keeping itself and everything within it, me as the Great Nothingness, and the one it is wearing right now. 

I hope I get to see more of Reality’s forms starting our second eternity together.

June 07, 2022 06:08

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