AND GOD SLUMBERED

And the Truthseekers, having travelled the age of a civilisation, finally came upon the end of all things.

The people had millennia of questions to pose to the universe itself, but should they only be permitted to utter one word, they were to ask: “Why?”

They had journeyed from the Stellar Lattice, charted unknown nebulae and sailed across the boundless Zero-Void, but at last, they had found her, nestled in the quiet heart of the universe. There lay the resting truth, the being that had created everything.

They marvelled at her hair of cascading galactic filament, at her great arms of once swirling superclusters, but could not comprehend her essence of matter beyond matter, of space within space.

They approached with haste, eager to wake her and finally unravel every existential enigma.

At first, a single star illuminated. It spun and pulsed until the galaxy whirled alive once more. Soon cluster upon cluster was reawakened until, at last, her universe-piercing eyes opened and stared into the lives and minds, the pasts and futures, of every traveller on that vessel.

And she smiled.

She spoke to them, not in words, but in a quiet realisation that had lain dormant within them, only now awoken.

“Do not be afraid,” the great being said, but the travellers were afraid because they could not speak. They need not speak for she already knew their question and in the instant she awoke, their one word, “why?” was answered:

She wished to know all things, but to truly know a thing she had to become it. Though immense, she was not yet all that was and now she sought to bring everything into her.

And so, she was to consume all things.

And so, she was to destroy all things.

Thus, she yawned and stretched and grew. She destroyed the Truthseekers, she destroyed the universe they knew and she destroyed all the life they knew within it. And once she had enveloped all that was, she at last, happily returned to slumber and so too all things did sleep once more.

ANAX

[To read part one, click here. To read part two, click here.]