Project: Ashes 001

 Nothing

Pure existence is a strange thing. The entity not quite conscious, yet able to feel existed.
It didn’t know it yet.
It was just there and felt… nothing at all. There wasn’t the pull of gravity, nor did it feel the presence of its organs, the pulsing of blood. It wasn’t hot or cold.
Later, this moment would remain vividly in its memory as this was the first impressions that had left an imprint on its mind. It would also be something that was incredibly hard to explain. They would search for words to explain a time and a place where space didn’t exist and time if it flowed at all left no traces at all.
However the others she tried to convey her thoughts to, the ones who were as old as her, would all nod. They understood. They had been “there” too.

For now it, it had no concept of her herness just yet, felt its exitence on its most basic level. Which in a strange way set off a chain of thoughts, that stirred its mind along the long path towards conscious thought.
It discovered that it existed, deep down in its core, it know it was. It felt good. This space (?) was, safe (?) and resting was good. Why?
It stirred. But it felt wrong. She… now it had happned, without noticing “it” had become “she”, and stirring she felt should feel… different.
It was dark and quiet.
She tried opening her eyes. But there was no body to command.

“?”, she thought.
Everything around her felt safe, but utterly wrong.
The darkness was not an absence of light it was an absence of everything. She had no eyes to open. There wasn’t a body that could have held those eyes. She wasn’t suspended in anything. She floated because there was only her. Nothing else. Not even space.

“?!” she almost panicked. But didn’t which filled her with an abstract apprehension. Again her body failed her, by not existing. Thus her “shock” didn’t feel like anything. There was no skin for her to grow hairs from that could now stand on end. There was also no heart anywhere that could start to beat faster. Nor lungs with which to breath more quickly.

All of this “…is really weird.”, she thought. Having no eyes they did not grow wide in shock, as she discovered her voice. Her consciousness passed another peak. “Is this a dream?” she asked herself. She remembered dreams. She knew that there were two worlds. The “real” world and the “dream world”. Right now the difference seemed deeply illogical to her, for how could there be two realites, but one of them actually real and the other one just… an illusion? She also remembered / knew all along, that she always spent some time in the one world and some time in the other. One always following the other. She also seemed to remember that sometimes her mind, got trapped in the dreamworld. It happened to almost everyone… Everyone? There were other people in the real world… But no in the dream world, there she would always go alone… but the dream world was filled with people, often copies of the people she left behind in the real world… “What?”, she failed to say aloud.
She remembered the concept of insanity. But for some reason this twin realities thing was considered normal.
Where was she… a yes nowhere… and probably in the border-marshes between the alleged “real” world and the dream world. Sometime you could get stuck there. When the mind woke before her body did.

But… she had no body. There wasn’t even a space for her body to be in. It was just her, existing and knowing without context more and more things.
She should be in bed if she was sleeping… or on a sofa? Or if she had alooot to drink then maybe she was lying in the garden, between the bushes, in front of her house… Yeah hopefully not that… also that happened like once… during her young wild years. Which had been… not as long ago as she’d like to admit.
For a moment she felled vaguely ashamed, but then was distracted by the fact, that she knew things like what a party was, or getting drunk, she even remembered what having a head was like especially because it could lead to forms of pain that mad her wish to not have one.
“Well at least that’s sorted then…” she thought. Without a head? She knew that wasn’t possible. Also… houses, people lived there, parties, people went there. She remembered people. Those were others, like her but not like her. Friends, many, many, so many individuals that existed but she didn’t think or care about and enemies. Enemies where the worst. “Like…” and there was the problem, enemies like… who? Her presence knew that it should now be feeling something. The enemy thought was connected to a very small select group of other entities. But she didn’t remember any of them. Or any of her friends… Or her family. Another concept that came naturally to her but was as bewildering as the wakings world/sleeping world thing. Family was a peculiar mix of friends, enemies and a small but not insignificant number of people in a category she called “ah, yes… them… meh…”. No names. No faces. Nothing.

“Am I dead?”, she asked herself. Again, the reflex of fear, leading to nothing.
Something wasn’t quite right here though.
O.K. something was even less quite right  than everything else. She knew “If I’m here, I’m not dead. I survived…”
She felt a sense of intense relief and joy, which startled her disembodied mind so much, that it lost this corporal sense almost immediately again. Was that her body? No… if she was here, her body was gone.

Everything is gone.

That was a fundamental truth which overwhelmed her.

It was such an intense realisation, that as a reflex she stopped. She had stopped everything, apart from existing.
“Oh…”, it dawned on her when her consciousness dared to move again. Her mind split into two patterns. One that wondered about the concept of time. How long had she been still? Where ever she was if time existed, there was no way to measure it. Utterly fascinating.
Her other shard, was cautious but had the impulse to put the puzzle pieces together.
A third shard manifested, just appearing a noting, that she used to love to solve mysteries, puzzles, understand complex systems.
The second shard observed, that she was here, that she felt safe and that she was absolutely not dead.
A forth shard, a close friend of the seconds, appeared to point out that believing not to be dead didn’t mean anything. Shard two the Investigator and shard four the Sceptic started a lively debate about the definition of life and death.
Until the third shard the Observer reappeared to point out that they were drifting away. The Sceptic was told to go away and let the Investigator do its job.
 The Sceptic didn’t want to leave, as “taking shit for granted” as she put it was the perfect way to believe all manners of false bullshit.
The first shard the Philosopher was a bit sad to let her thoughts about the nature of time go, but took it upon itself to take care of the Sceptic so that the Investigator could continue doing its job.

“So where was I?” the Investigator thought, opening its mind to the Endless Sea, the Endless Sea had no voice, it just knew things, felt them, connected them, analysed them and whenever there was a need for something “She” knew, the Endless Sea would manifest it to the shard who needed her help. The Investigator were old friends and a good team.
The Endless Sea showed the investigator a lot of empty vessels. These should contain specific information. But the Sea had lost them, she was endless after all…

“The… horrible thing…!” the investigator said and the Endless Sea manifested.
There had been something incredibly dangerous and sinister and there had been “the Plan”, another empty vessel, bright and shining.

“So the plan worked…” the Investigator said.

“Yeah”, she said breaking in two so that she could talk the situation through with someone else. The Investigatrix said, “We seem to be alive; don’t even start…”, she said casting a sharp look at the Sceptic who kept mumbling in the background. “Which means the Plan what ever it was worked.”
The Endless Sea showed them, that this fit into the way the Plan was formed. It showed them a path that the plan had to follow and they were at the beginning of it.

“So the plan hasn’t been completed?”, the Investigator said.

“Hardly,” said the Investigatrix, “as you can see over there,” she pointed at the Sceptic, just waiting to be able to enter the fray again, “this isn’t really what I would consider survival.”

“I and we.”, said the Philosopher. “I was not alone. And all of us is I.”
The other three looked at the philosopher, confused.
The Endless Sea moved showing them a strange mirror, they all saw themselves and saw that they all were I.

    “Wait, so all of this is me…?” said the Investigatrix.

“I am, I. All of these are just my voices.”, said the Sceptic, who when she confirmed something removed and doubt. And the Endless Sea washed over them letting them know that this was true.

    “So we here, is me.”, said the Investigator. “But there are others, out there… we all worked on the plan. And it worked.”

“Partially,” said the Investigatrix, “we remain sentient,” the Sceptic liked that wording and smiled, “so that part worked. But we need to return. If we can’t return, this might be what… that other one the… glorious idiot…”, the Endless Sea showed them a vague shape and the knowledge of another person, close, a friend, a partner and always annoying but in a delicious way?

Another shard, the Seductress appeared for a second and smiled. The others stood for a second in awe, then sent her back to where ever she had come from. She gave them all a knowing look, went away yet lingered on.

“So the glorious idiot,” the Investigator said, clearing her throat. “We need him… er… we need to return and prove him wrong?”

“In a way,” said the Investigatrix who was back on track, “he said that one of the ‘What’s the worst thing that could happen’ scenarios would be, that we escape the cataclysm” that sounded way better than ‘the horrible thing’, “but are then lost beyond time and space.”

“Oh!”, said the Philosopher, looking around the nothingness, it was in. Not quite easy. As it was now both inside her own mind with all the other shards that was her and also in the not-place that was beyond space and time. “Fascinating. It is so incredibly simple once you are here…”

“…but try to explain that to anyone has not experienced this.”, the investigator finished her thought. “It is literally impossible to describe. I know now what it feels like that there is no space… but… all concepts I have can’t describe it.”
The Endless Sea disagreed. It showed her “beyond time and space”. The Endless Sea didn’t really have a personalty like the shards, but somehow the Investigator felt, that the Sea was a bit smug, for she understood this not-place perfectly even as it eluded the abilites of the Shards to describe it.

“Hey!”, the Investigatrix said, “We can contemplate all this later. I’m pretty sure that it is imperative that we return. We will have other people that we can talk this through with once we are back. Or if we fail, we will stay here and will have all of eternity to consider it.”

“Or to find out if there can be an eternity in a place where time doesn’t exist.”, said the Philosopher.

“Or try to find a way to show that time doesn’t exist or if it it is just me who, without having something to measure it with, who doesn’t know that time is passing.”, said the sceptic.

“Can time exist if you can’t measure it?”, asked the Philosopher.

“Good point,” said the Sceptic, “while we take it for granted, it is axiomatic in nature and it looks suspiciously like a purely abstract construct.”

“Enugh of that.”, a new shard appeared, the Boss, who got things done, “Time to follow the plan. What do we need to do now?”
The Accountant one of the Boss’s most loyal lieutenants appeared beside her, “according to the Plan”, the Endless Sea showed them the next steps, “we need to focus on our return, for that we need to focus our being back into reality.”

“And hoe do we do that?” asked the Boss.

“I’ll take care of it.”, the Professional said. “You all need to shut up,  and follow my lead.”

“Alright, your’re the boss.”, said the Boss.

The shard, Silly Potato giggled at this joke.

The professional didn’t even notice, she dove with both arms deep into the Endless Sea pulling out the strings that lay submerged within her, connecting her to herself and her self to the world.
Once she felt all the strings in her fingers, she started to pull. Herself together. And back into the Universe.