I assumed I must have fallen asleep and was dreaming. Pushing myself to fill every crevice of the universe had been exhausting. Plus, spending billions of years of stress and anxiety trying to locate Mary left me desperately depressed since I was alone and lost without her.
Whether dreaming or awake, I found myself clinging to a massive spherical object, this assumption based on the barely perceptual curvature at the distant edge of my vision. Regaining my bearings, I also discovered that I no more needed to clutch the surface beneath me than I had the ground on Earth. But the Earth was gone, I reminded myself. And, glancing down, I watched what appeared to be countless fine threads of glass spun into larger strands, wound continuously about those below and those deeper within, sculpting a strange, magnificent crystalline ball, like one of yarn. Although words such as massive and magnificent no longer felt nearly adequate. I was less than a speck in comparison.
Within each fine thread, I observed what appeared to be incomprehensibly complex scenes, with billions of players interacting on sets as large as the entire universe where I had recently forced my essence into the deepest, darkest crevices. Close inspection revealed that the scenes within those threads nearer to one another contained only subtle differences, while those further apart appeared to have increasingly less in common. Within those threads immediately adjacent, nearly touching, it appeared that the identical scenes were unfolding. The same characters were in precisely the same positions, except for a few, perhaps only one, leaning or turning in a barely discernably divergent direction in response to their choice among the alternatives available to them. Tracing those threads back, only a frame or two, I found they'd split from a common thread at the instant of those choices. I realized I was observing different threads of the same story, where, whether recently or much earlier, their paths had been forever altered by individual decisions compounded by each that followed.
I watched, anxious to share my discoveries with Mary when I found her. Supposing I could determine where I was and how I got there. We could travel through time as well as space. We could visit the past. If so, maybe we could also predetermine the outcome of each choice we were about to make. But what fun would that be?
I thought I must still be dreaming. I walked toward the frayed edge of the outer tube beneath me, watching it grow ahead with each step I took. I ran but couldn't catch up. As though time perpetually moved beyond me, until...
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The Words - An Autobiography
Science Fiction"What if God was one of us?" Credit to Eric Bazzilion, and thanks to Joan Osborne for singing his brain-rattling words. Much earlier, my mother promised that if I applied myself, I could be whatever I wanted when I grew up. Then, from somewhere, I r...
