In a darkened room lay a man. It could be called neither darkened nor a room, for such things did not exist, there was no darkness because there was no light to be absent, likewise the man was not a man, as a dolphin is not a man. ‘He’ had a mind, like a dolphin does, incomparable to that of man’s. ‘His’ consciousness was as incomparable to the mind of man as that is to a stone. This being had never thought… until now and suddenly streams of awareness burst into his new-born mind.
After an unknowable while he managed to control these thoughts and gradually formed an image. It burst forth into something so complex and incomprehensible that those that would eventually come to inhabit it would devote their entire existence in a hope to understand it in some small way. He was content to watch, knowing all contained within, though not what would be, or could be.
His thoughts took up lives of themselves and changed and randomized, things happened unexpectedly, and, gradually, his mind-universe lost sense of control and he was forced to watch in horror as it moved away from him. After the longest time, when he finally had the strength, he tried again. His first attempt was lost, still existing someplace uncontrolled and wild. It had taken a huge chunk of him with it, but at last he was ready to try again. At first all was good, and then the same thing happened, another eternity later he tried again, and failed.
With time he decided to examine what was going wrong, what made them uncontrollable and wild, what glitch existed within him? This time, when he had the mind power again, he did not create anything new, instead he looked back and combed over every detail of his former failures. Everyone had a mistake, a point of no return, when his life would spawn forth more life, tiny compared to him. But eventually they would sap parts of his consciousness into their own. Soon his mind could take no more being divided into trillions upon trillions of tiny minds, and would sever the connection. The universe was free to exist on its own now, the consciousness needed to sustain it contained within it.
With sadness the not-a-man pondered the fate of them all. Without an overall watcher, a controller, they would all eventually revert to a state of nothingness; the mind’s that now powered it being destroyed by it. It was inevitable.
For the longest time he did not create any new universes, he simply probed and searched for the existing ones, unable to alter, only observe as they all melted into inexistence, a great void that even he could not begin to understand. Then a realisation grew on him. They would all eventually lose control and die off, but who was he to deny their short existence? It was a flaw in his design, all his universes would eventually create life, and the life would eventually destroy them but what else could he do? He thought of his own existence and soon decided that all he was here for was to create things in his mind, and to not do so would be denying not only his own existence but the unfathomable others he would, and had, created. With great excitement the not-a-man begun to craft his next Universe.
