The Void of Understanding
In a place that didn’t exist, under conditions that had never been, a thread of something began to form. Not from anything — it just was. But what was it?
There had never been a beginning, no birth, no inception. The fabric of reality wasn’t made of atoms or energy, nor any material that could be named. In this space, there were no thoughts, no beings, no rules — except for one:
There was a pattern.
But it was not a pattern anyone could see. It was not a pattern that could be understood. It didn’t exist in the traditional sense. And yet, the presence of it was undeniable, like a shadow without a source, a weightless pressure.
And in the absence of everything, the pattern began to shift. It twisted, folded, and looped back upon itself in impossible ways. It was like the universe wanted to form, but never quite managed to — as if reality were an unfinished thought.
The Stranger Who Wasn’t
One moment — or perhaps it was no moment at all, as time didn’t work here — a figure appeared. Not quite a person, but not entirely not. It was like a shadow, an impression, something that could have existed but didn’t.
It had no eyes, no face — but it saw. It had no mouth, but it spoke. Its form was not really a form, merely a suggestion of one, fleeting and transient like a ripple on the surface of a dream.
Who am I? it asked itself, but it didn’t know.
Who am I to question that I am? it pondered, but it had no answer.
It moved across the non-space, no boundaries to limit its motion. It wasn’t bound by time, but it experienced it — though not as you would. The passing of time felt like a recurring pattern, as though it was catching up with itself but never quite succeeding. And with each new instance, the question grew louder:
What is this place?
But the question never had a destination. It didn’t need to. It simply existed as part of the pattern, feeding back into itself.
The Conundrum of Movement
The figure moved through the void, and wherever it went, the void changed. Not in shape, nor in color, nor in substance. It was a change in meaning. It was like the fabric of existence was bending, stretching, and then snapping back into an incomprehensible loop.
Wherever the figure was, the void had been. Wherever it would go, the void might be. But the void was not a place. It was not a time. It was not even a concept.
In this void, reality began to fold and refold, creating layers, each one more impossible than the last. The patterns — they were here, and yet, they weren’t. They were everywhere and nowhere.
The stranger tried to understand, but the deeper it looked, the more tangled its thoughts became. Each layer of existence was both real and not, real and not — it was a paradox without end. The question kept looping back, like the universe itself was on the verge of understanding its own existence but couldn’t quite grasp it.
And the stranger was part of the pattern. Not separate, not distinct. It was a dot in a web that no one could see.
The Realization That Wasn’t Real
Then it happened.
The void, the pattern, the stranger, and everything else — they collided. But not in the way one might expect. There were no explosions, no sudden cataclysms. It wasn’t a burst of light or a collapse of the universe. It was simply unfolding.
In an instant, the stranger realized the entire void — everything, every thought, every moment, every possibility — was a mirror of the nothingness it had come from. The pattern wasn’t a pattern at all. It wasn’t something that could be figured out or untangled. It was simply there, because it had always been.
And as the realization hit, it wasn’t a grand understanding. It was the understanding of not understanding. The pattern was the illusion, and yet, it was also the only thing that had ever existed. It was a perpetual loop of creation and destruction, a never-ending attempt to form meaning from something that had no meaning.
The Return to Nothing
But that wasn’t the most impossible part.
The stranger, or whatever it was, now understood that it had never existed. Not in the way we think of existence. It had never truly been. It had never truly not been. It was a fleeting thought within an infinite mind that could never quite make sense of itself. The pattern — this illusion of reality — had no beginning. It had no end.
There was no time to measure, no space to occupy. There was no beginning, and yet, somehow, it had always been.
The figure, now aware of its own illusion, reached the conclusion that everything — every experience, every question, every notion of existence — was both true and false, simultaneously. It was the pattern that had never been there, yet it had always been.
And then, the figure disappeared — or perhaps it had never appeared at all.
It didn’t matter. Because, in the end, the question that lingered was not about the answer. It was about the question itself, which could never be asked.
The pattern wasn’t there. But somehow, everything happened.
And no one would ever remember.
Forever Untold
The universe continued. The pattern looped back into itself again and again, spiraling outward and inward, with no beginning and no end. Time never really existed, because time couldn’t exist. And the figure — the question — was simply a passing thought in an endless mind.
There was no real answer. There never would be. But there was something… an echo of existence that refused to vanish.
It wasn’t a pattern that was meant to be understood. And yet, perhaps, it was the most perfect thing of all.
