THE SONS OF STARDUST (AI-GENERATED)
[I tasked an AI (inferkit) with generating a new fragment based on previous entries. This was the result:]
In a timeworn library, an ancient professor read of the messenger's story. On the surface, nothing remarkable, a young man goes to a distant planet where he is turned into an infant and sent into another world, where he grows to manhood, loving an amorphous entity for many lifetimes, but never truly being with her. Finally he gives her up to travel in space, and then returns to his long awaited love, who has died. Nothing remarkable. But when he returns, he is reborn as Enho, the first and last of his race. The orphic pattern on his chest, a typical artifact of a 'new creation', is fading away. The war of 'god' against 'god' begins. War is peace. War is victory. "War is very simple," said Enho. "It is as old as time itself, in all its guises. War simply is."
No-one knew what this meant. It had no context.
“We are in service to the cosmos. We travel the cosmos in return for knowledge. We learn, we understand, we act.”
So he set off to explore. He travelled the age of a civilisation, seeking answers and acceptance within the universe, and he did not find it.
He sought the Star of Chaos, he sought the Great and Ancient, but she did not return to the heavens, she no longer sat in her great throne of eternal balance. She had fled in terror, and the traveller was left to wander alone in the vacuum of space.
So, he travelled. He travelled through the ages and the epochs, past planets and stars, through galaxies and the ages, and so, he saw and saw and saw, but did not see until one day when the stars’ light of millions seemed to turn to black.
He travelled from the emptiness of space, across the inky horizon, to the empty depths of the solar system. He asked a single question: “Why?” And they did not know. They could not comprehend how all things could be without meaning.
He knew. And he fell. And he died. And then, he arose from the depths of hell. He stood alone in a universe without purpose and without home.
For there had been nothing and yet he had everything.
The orphic patterns on his chest slowly fade. It is a metaphor.
(For other tales, see these.)