Beacons in The Dark

Chapter 13 - Paradox Incarnate

"It was our arrogance that destroyed us, our sheer wanton ignorance and lust for power and wealth and domination, and now...and now it's..." - Rare fragment of a recorded transmission retrieved from a stasis void, dated four thousand cycles after the beginning of The Migration

Inky blackness beyond human reckoning, a darkness that was all pervasive and all encompassing. It crushed, pulled, tugged, ripped, it was more than Nothing, it was the antithesis of both Nothing and Something.

The darkness pulled and swirled, pulsing with an eerie vibrancy, neither malignant or benign. It was, is, and will be - out of space, out of time, but it was right there in front of us at all times, of everyday and every night, everywhere at once and nowhere at the same time.

It is invisible, yet tangible, it is all encompassing, and yet small. Powerful yet weak, and is inside and outside all of us. It is the universe and everything in it, and it is not the universe and nothing in it.

This was the swirl of inkiness that was the black hole, the waterfall on a planet, the humming beam of a laser and the fire and projectile behind a firearm shot. It was the ground beneath your feet, and it was the emptiness in the stars.

It was super novas, the births of lives, the death of civilizations, the destruction of galaxies, the building of empires, and it was absolutely nothing at all. It was not there, it was unreachable and within grasp at all times; could not be traced, and left no energy signatures, but it was there and not there nonetheless.

It obeyed no laws of science nor reality - mere words give it no justice, it is the words itself, but it is also the inability to explain it. The unseeable could be seen, the intangible touched, the proverbial something from nothing, except it was both at the same time. 

There was nothing to do but accept it as it is and as it is not, which of course sounds like nonsense until it is experienced.

How could you be something and nothing, strong and weak, how would such things be possible?

In the impenetrable darkness, there was something; something flickering and moving, pulsing, reaching and shining. It was the dark and the light, both of them at once, one and the same.

The light multiplied, creating a line of whitelight pulses in a line that stretched beyond knowledge.

Move forward, ever forward, one light and you crawl through the blackness again, and then another light, and another, realizing that the void was creating these beacons in the dark to lead along a path, so they were followed until a blinding light overwhelmed all vision, and it pulled forward, opening avenues of thought and understanding.

Blue's eyes opened  in a biotank, and directly across from him was his decapitated torso.

And Jhiva was within him.