My world turns upside down, and I’m thrown into the most profound ego death possible.
I didn’t think it was possible to see the essence of who I am so thoroughly stripped away and pulled apart. Yet, I watch in utter horror as the core of my identity is split in half. My body falls to the ground in a violent seizure—but my thoughts, my self-awareness, float somewhere outside of my body.
No. My soul is not just passively floating, but beingpulledaway. Dragged from the body that it desperately wants to cling to.Needsto cling to. My two halves belong together more than my lungs need oxygen.
The air becomes warbled, distorted, losing its physical qualities.
Light is sucked into a vortex, quickly ceasing to exist.
Even gravity fails me, and I begin to fall through some vacuum of reality. Twisting, turning, falling both fast and slow… When I finally land, it’s like time is slowed around me, rather than me hitting any distinct stopping point.
A slowly shrinking window hovers in the air, separating two distinct realities, each existing at the same time. If I don’t focus on it, it does not even appear to be present—but it is, and I get a strong feeling it’s very important that I do not forget it is there.
One side of the window holds the physical world, existing in somebizarre, dream-like state, just out of my reach. The other, the one I’m present in, is a mockery of deep space. I’ve been caught in a void, existing without existing in a state of pitch blackNothingness.Here, there is no matter, no sound, no light. It is as if even the stars have not yet been created.
Until one is born from the bleak night.
The cocoon of darkness quakes, rippling at its invisible seams. I have the strongest urge to flee, to return to the safety of my body, but I’m not even a thing to move. No material, form, or shape confines me. I am merely one with the nothingness.
Out of the void, a great cosmic dust bursts into life.
It moves like a ghost of inverse shadow, creeping its bright white tendrils out of a hole in the darkness, consuming everything it touches. The light is so strong, so starkly opposed to the void I exist in, I might as well be staring into the sun.
And it burns. It burns so bad, it’s as if my whole body is being roasted over a fire and doused in acid.
But it makes me realize that Iamsomething.
The pain sets my boundaries, showing me where I begin and end. I have no body, but every miserable sensation is the equivalent of a nerve ending on fire. And I wonder… What am I now?
Is this the feeling of being destroyed?
Or is it the feeling of being created?
Even if I can no longer see my window, I know it’s there. Somehow, somewhere, I am still alive. My memories of life may feel far away, and I may have to fight for coherent thoughts, but I know this is not death. It can’t be. I’m somewhere in the Between. Like the line between a light and its shadow, I exist on the fringes, fighting to define my own fragile existence.
Vaguely, I can feel the strength of my body, too, slowly sapping away. Sappingtowardsme, to where I exist now, across the great divide. It’s the most miserably wrong, foreboding feeling—like all of my life’s essence is seeping into my soul. It’s feeding me energy, and I know it won’t stop until it drains all that I have left.
This is the final push, I realize. The one to prepare my soul for its departure to the great beyond. I am standing on the edge of a true and final death.
I can feel the choice like a tangible thing, challenging my will to live. The void is peaceful, quiet, and still. The light, however, is not. It is the source of my agony.
No, it isthe gatekeeper.
The only one I’ve ever had to contend with, both literally and in ways I’ve never quite understood. I should have recognized it sooner.
“You,” I hiss towards it, projecting the words more like a thought than a sound. “You!”
The star doesn’t speak, but it does respond.
The wispy tendrils draw back, sucking into their hole in the void. Collapsing, morphing, and rebuilding until, finally, its searing light settles on a spherical shape.
A wave of foreign intention reaches out to touch me.
Copy,it demands.
I can’t spare any time to think about the absurdity of it all. I act immediately, imagining my body as it is in the physical world, starting with the smallest muscle. From the tips of my toes to the top of my head, I shape my boundaries into something familiar to me.
Like an image in a dream, my form becomes loosely defined, vague in areas of unimportance. I focus on moving a hand, and my mind fills in the gaps for the rest of my body. My nails scrape against matter that isn’t there, and my muscles strain with imagined coordination.
