It's a trillion, trillion years from now, and I have long known that I would never meet you again. But there is a way to see you again - one that requires the ultimate sacrifice. I'll have to do something truly desperate. I will have to drop from time and space, on a wing and a prayer, from this, the last haven of light in the universe. Here I am, the last in a long lineage of a soul that has searched for yours since time immemorial, the last of us, the last of me. At the edge of this dead universe, there is one shining beacon of light still, the abode of the last traveler. Here you can find the oldest remaining structure, the Well of Infinity. It precedes the universe. It precedes all universes. It is a relic of the first firmament, that will forever be. If you were to find yourself close to its innermost edge, you could peer down it and see all that was and all that never was. If you were lucky, you could see something that would resonate with you deeply. If you were very lucky, you would see, and remember, and know. And if you were very stupid - or very brave - you could find yourself falling forever down the well until you forgot everything.
But very few find themselves here, only the most cursed souls endure this torment. A soul that is resolute and patient enough, though, might considerably come to formulate a plan. A soul that didn't have to see, because it has always remembered. It has always known. And this soul inhabits a body that has been mutated over untold millions years. I became massive - the largest supernova was to me as a grain of sand would have been to you. Clusters with billions of suns would be as a strand of hair. All this mass, though, is to my advantage.
I have to fall, and for an ungodly vast amount of time, that's what I'll do - fall through space and time. And for much of that time, time will not matter. The choice is made, the choice has always been made. I look down the well, and see all our lives. I see all that was and never was - all our daughters, all our sons, all our joys, all our sorrows. I see all our lives. I see, especially, the one moment where everything that could have been, can indeed come to be. By the time I reach you, I'll be nothing, less than nothing. But only by being that can I be something. Only by being nothing can I be hope. Can I be faith. And so I start my fall towards you.
As I fall, I will start to lose my mass. The acceleration will propel me further down the well, and as my mass decreases, I will get closer. I'm on my way. I fall. Visions flash past me, but I must focus. I fall. I am falling. I have been falling forever. I just started my fall. I've still not started my fall. It's everything. It's everything without a time. I fall. I'm on my way. I am untold billions of light years away from you, and far behind me I see the last light start to fade from view. My tears streak past faster than light, and where they fall they explode. My tears are becoming a sea. My tears are becoming a sea of stars. I'm on my way.
I am becoming less and less - that's good. It means I'm getting closer. I see us on a beach, in our distant past. Versions of ourselves looking at the night sky, our children in hand. It's hardest now, as memories assail me and test my fortitude. I see you struggling to find sleep, at a point later in your life, and my ghost hand reaches across and caresses your face. It would be so easy to stop now, to not go on. It would be the simplest of things to veer into obsolescence. I shrug these thoughts away, though time and time again they conspire against me. I'm getting closer, now. Closer. Closer. Can you feel me somehow? Not yet, I am still too distant.
The void gradually fills with stars, whole clusters of them. The largest of them would swim in my hand. But not for much longer. I am less, becoming less, becoming nothing. There - closer, closer, only fifteen million light years away now. A spiral galaxy, so like a pinwheel. I'm getting close. Look, look, ahead! The galaxy Andromeda, two million light years away, I can touch it with my fingertips. I'm so close.
A hundred thousand light years away, and I'm moving past the milky way. Ten thousand light years. One hundred light years, and no more than two thousand star systems now lie in my field of vision. I'm moving past the Pleiades, moving past Alpha Centauri, moving past Arcturus. One light year away and I finally see Sol. I'm less, my God, I am so much less. I am almost nothing. I am almost where I need to be. I am almost when I need to be.
A mere billion kilometers away from you, I fall past the massive orbit ring of Jupiter. I'm one million kilometers away now. Stars fill the sky. They're everywhere. So many. Had they always been here? I'm just outside the orbit of our moon. I see it. I start to see it. Down there, just a little bit further. One hundred thousand kilometers. Ten thousand kilometers. I'm on my way. One thousand kilometers. One hundred kilometers. I'm almost there, all but imperceptible. Just ten kilometers away and everything starts to come into focus. I see the outline of the city. I see the winding river as it flows. I see ants below me, scurrying about. No, not ants - people.
One thousand metres. One kilometer. Three thousand feet. I fell past eternity to reach this moment now. I fell down infinity to reach you, to finally reach you. I fall, and I see a rooftop of a familiar building, I fall through the cement and the masonry. One meter away. I'm smaller than an insect. So close, my love. I am so close. I can see you! One centimeter away from you, I'm less and less. I'm one hundred microns now, as I fall down your core. One tenth of a millimeter. I'm almost there. I'm falling past immense canals, larger than anything I had seen before. Canyons that are impossibly wide. As I fall down your brain, you suddenly think of me, though you couldn't quite pinpoint why. Ten microns, I fall down a blood vessel in your heart. One micron now. I'm almost done. I'm almost there. I'm almost home.
At point-one microns, or a thousand angstroms, I see what looks like a tangle of cords. At one hundred angstroms, I see that tangle becoming a twisting stairway of molecules. I'm so small now. Ten angstroms, down the molecular clusters. One angstrom, and I'm inside, inside a darkness so deep it looks as though I am back to where I started, but this is isn't darkness after all, it's life, it's teeming with life. At point-one angstroms I find myself hurtling towards a distant light. At point-zero-one, I see its core. Point zero-zero-one, I finally reach it, I finally reach your inmost light. I hear your frequency, I hear the song that your soul sings. Hear mine : this is the sound of my soul.
Trillions and trillions of years to reach you, so I could give you one thing : hope. Please let this work. Please let this work. I am bursting with light. Please let this work. I am exploding with love. Please let this work. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please. Please.
PLEA-
No comments:
Post a Comment