Chapter 20 - Call of the Void
Two days later, I came back feeling bad about how I left. I had moments like these with Finn and Rebecca, but they were not… real? There was no proof that Lila was real either, but could I really invent a whole society with different bodies that looked human enough. Rebecca and Finn were both humans, at least at the start. I was not sure what Lila was.
The library was empty. I also looked through the garden, and scanned the outside with creationism, bright lights bursting in all directions of the dark. No matter how much light went into the endless, the only parts that illuminated were the invisible vines that allowed my creationism. I imagined that the vines were veins instead and let the light fill them to the brim. As the brightly glowing gas expanded further and further in that dark, I created an endless lift to push me outside the cluster so I could see how far it reached.
The further the panel of metal took me, the more contrast I saw of vines and darkness, until the gas reached the very ends of the vines grown so far. It looked like a tree of white canopies in the night of winter, with glowing contained to the otherwise-invisible vines. I figured I should stop the lift, but decided to let it continue. The orb of vines grew smaller, and smaller, until finally it was just a blip in the darkness, much like a star. It was not glowing, as the glow was contained in the vines, but rather existed as a spot of white on the otherwise black view.
This was not common reality darkness. I could see my hands as if they were lit by an impossible light, but the metal pole that was lifting the platform disappeared in the distance. I held my hand on the control to return back down, but did not switch to it. Instead I closed my eyes, and kept ascending into nothing. After a few more minutes, I could no longer see anything in the distance below the platform that resembled the bundle of vines. The eerie endless finally started setting in, and I decided to pause the lift, forgetting that the emptiness had no real gravity to it. With that, I was cast off from the metal surface with the speed of the lift.
Creationism could not help me now. I could not change anything about the situation I was in, but I could leave it. I imagined myself drifting away back to the device I was writing this on. Next, I entered anew, imagining myself in the library. I fully expected that to work, but I appeared again in the darkness without any orientation details. There was no air rushing past my ears, and no surface to stand on. I felt powerless again, but the box this time was myself.
With that thought, I retreated within myself, just beyond the skin, thinking there was some sort of protection over me. All that did was turn my time back until I was a teenager. I tried again, ending up a ten-year-old before I decided to stop trying. Instead, I curled up in a ball and closed my eyes. It felt scary, but knowing there was nothing out there that wanted to hurt me was calming. It was dark, and I was alone, but I had been this way before. I wondered if this was a better end.
Convinced that this was the best way to end the whole thing, I retreated into myself one more time. I was a three-year-old. Again. I was an infant, bundled up in the dark. With another look inward I was an embryo again, eyes no longer operational, or not yet. I felt it. One more time would erase me from that darkness. I hesitated. I regretted not apologizing to Lila for the hurt I caused her.
It was not the cold darkness of space, but it also was no warm gooey womb. I felt my body shiver. Was there even a point to staying there? All it held were memories of pain and a probability of more. I decided to look inward again, but felt a hand on my back before I could do so. It felt warm, human warm, but my eyes did not exist yet. Two hands cradled me, and I could feel them around me. I was so small. After a moment of cradling, I felt wetness and warmth all around me and secretly hoped it was Rebecca who found me in the darkness. Whoever it was, I felt safe.
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