Born of Fire and Darkness

I awoke upon the shores of a great bright expanse, it was hot and loud, or was it freezing and silent. I couldn't tell, I was too disoriented.

My awareness returned quickly and I beheld my surroundings were desolate. A cold dark expanse surrounded me, pieces of rubble and the thin haze of burned matter surrounded me. What had happened, where had I come from? What even was I?

Questions flooded my mind. Too many to answer and too many to bear. I slept, my consciousness receding as my overwhelmed mind shut down.

I awoke again, it was much calmer now. I looked out into that darkness and for the first time noticed the lights. Faint shinings and pinpricks of light of all colors met my awareness. It delighted me to know I was not alone. There were the lights, steadily watching over and around me.

Time passed, I grew dissatisfied with my plight. Why was I even here, where had I come from. Again I remembered the harsh light at my first awakening. What had that been, some sort of explosion? How had I survived?

I saw no way to answer this question so I put it out of my mind. Instead I observed the lights once more, they had changed. Even as I watched they seemed to shift and dance slowly.

Delighted by this new discovery I failed to notice at first the ominous dark sphere that slowly approached. It began to circle me, slowly at first but getting closer and more rapid. I began to fear, it was much much larger than I, dwarfing me in its size and looking like a great blasted hulk. I thought that was to be my end, destroyed before I had even found my purpose in this new place, but then something even stranger happened.

The sphere was whipping around me so fast I could scarcely track it, its surface rippling with the force of its motion. Part of me was terrified, but another was curious. As I watched it in fascination, a great rent appeared across the face of the sphere, then more and more till in complete silence it crumbled. Its fragments shattered smaller and smaller till they were naught but screaming light that filled the place around me with a roaring thunderous sound. The light was so bright it hurt me to observe it and so I looked inwards towards the darkness under me. I stayed this way for a time and when I looked out again the screaming light was gone. In its place were the lights, dancing and free of worry or fear.

Immediately I felt calm. It must have been a nightmare. I gave a start, what was a nightmare and why did the term feel right to say? The ones who know may never tell me. But I felt like it fit, so I decided to keep it that way.

For a time I did nothing, simply watched the lights dance like motes of… well, something. All I had ever seen were the lights, and the terrible sphere. I hoped that another didn't come, the sphere had been a terrible experience. One I was not keen to repeat.

The lights made patterns which I took great delight in tracing in my mind's eye before they would shift apart and form new ones. Sometimes they would form clusters and other times they would seem to skirt around each other like partners in a dance. Always moving ever changing shifting and exciting.

Then something new. One of the lights winked out, growing in brightness as if to grab my attention it disappeared. This was concerning. None of my lights had ever vanished before. Sometimes they would dim but never go away, and what's more it did not return. I waited for a while, and still the light remained vacant.

I felt something new, loss. Different from the terror and pain, this was a different kind of hurt. It was deeper, more damaging and impossible to heal. I did my best to watch the lights dance as I had always done, but the feeling of loss stayed with me. How could I go back to the way things were before? When I knew that my lights were dying.

I despaired for a time, not caring what happened in the place around me. But something happened to rouse me from my sadness, a new light appeared. I watched in awe as a nearby point of dimness grew in brightness till it seemed to burst forth. A new light, this one brighter and more energetic than the others. It took me a great while to realise that it was actually closer than the other lights. This revelation was made apparent as it grew in size and scope, almost as if it were coming towards me like the sphere.

This caused me to fear again. The sphere had been dark at first then brightened as it reached me, what would happen to me if a light reached me? It was already getting very bright as it grew nearer.

Brighter and brighter it grew as the light swelled to an inferno, I looked around, there was nowhere I could go. Trapped as I seemed to be inside the darkness. I relaxed as the Inferno passed by, vast and chaotic. Was this truly what the lights were, vast incarnations of hateful energies? I would have shuddered if I had been able, but I had no form to do so.

Another thought entered my mind unbidden, if these lights were so free to come and go as they pleased, then why not I? With this realisation I began to climb. The walls surrounding me were steep and slick and I was unable to make much headway. Frustrated, I tried again, nothing. For a long time I scrabbled at the dark walls of my prison but to no avail, they were insurmountable. I was able to keep myself from sliding further down them, but could not drag myself out, I had no purchase. Nothing to grasp on to.

The light that had at first seemed to swing away began to return. A blazing ball of violent blue light. It seemed to move closer then further away as if it was testing me, I realised the light was circling me like the dark sphere had, but not in the same way. Its dance seemed more erratic, less sure, as if the light didn't know what it wanted to do.

As I watched transfixed, a great limb seemed to reach out from the blue light, the tendril shimmering a dull reddish orange in color as it got ever closer to me. What was it doing? Was it attempting to save me?

Hope flooded my thoughts as this titanic light seemed to reach for me, stretching as far as it was able in an attempt to pull me from my prison. I reached out to it, unable to touch it, but unwilling to give up so easily. Surely there had to be a way.

Nothing, once more disappointment filled me as I was well and truly stuck. The arm first circled and then seemed to touch the darkness that surrounded me, but it couldn't penetrate the invisible barrier that separated it from me. I despaired, nothing could save me, I was stuck forever.

Time passed, I wasn't sure how much as I had no real way of measuring it. But then, another light. This one far dimmer than the other lights. I watched it in curiosity, my interest piqued in spite of the wretched prison that entrapped me.

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As I watched it eagerly, it seemed to flicker and disappear. I felt the crush of anguish settle on me again, but was astonished to see the light reappear, much closer this time. It was too close, heading right for me in fact. I would have looked away if I was able, but I couldn't. I was simply too transfixed by this strange new phenomenon to look anywhere else.

Nothing could survive the darkness, nothing ever had in all my experience. So I was surprised to say the least when this tiny light first touched and then passed through that terrible boundary. At first I was frozen, I had no experience with others in my realm of despair, so I did the only thing that I could think of. I reached out to the light, and touched it.

It was strange, solid, like nothing I had ever experienced. With a jolt of insight I realised that this strange new object could be my way out of my prison. If only I could find a way to hold onto it more securely. I flowed over and through the thing, its strange angular contours so different from anything I had seen before. What was even more interesting was the bright network of shimmering lines that permeated the entirety of the thing. It was as if it was alive as I was.

If that was the case then maybe I could communicate with it, let it know I was a friend.

I stopped. My mind tasting the new word. A friend, I had never had anything remotely like that before. The feeling made me giddy to think about, someone else to talk to, to answer my burning questions maybe. They had come from outside the darkness after all.

I knew my purpose now, if I could, I would save this new friend from the pit. I couldn't let them become trapped as I had been. Mustering all my courage I touched the golden lines that glowed like veins of light throughout the other. My mind wavered and then seemed to snap into place for the first time in my entire existence.

I felt at once weak and powerful, as if part of me had been bolstered to new extremes while another had been lost, but I put it out of my mind. Discomfort was an old sensation that I had come to terms with long ago. Instead I reached out, all my energies searching for that link that would allow me to communicate. Suddenly I stopped, there! Something seemed to react to my touch, a sensation I had never experienced before reached me. A shuddering motion like the cascade of innumerable smaller things beating upon the corners of my mind.

I retreated in horror and panic, curling in the farthest corner of the golden network as I tried to come to terms with what had happened. I had touched, no, reached out. Some sort of energy field had been activated and it had caused the small device I was holding to make something. I wasn't sure, I had no experience here. Part of me wanted to run away, but I refused. I didn't come this far to give up because of a single mistake. I would try again, softer this time

This time I reached out, my touch as soft as I could think possible. I touched the strange object again, my mind seeming to reverberate for a moment again then there was a new sensation. The vibrations suddenly resolved themselves into patterns. I searched the golden web for other signs of these patterns and found a treasure trove of information in great golden blocks of ghostly energies in the center of the shimmering web. I dove in, and was immersed in profound knowledge. Thoughts and ideas assailed my mind, threatening to overwhelm my vast consciousness, but I focused through the noise and latched onto one pattern in particular.

The patterns were encoded sounds, vibrations in the air. Something else I had never experienced before.

I searched the great information trove for air and found it. It was made of innumerable particles, like the strange feelings I had felt before. I learned of many new things in a rush, oxygen, atoms, protons, electrons, energy, steel, space, stars, electricity, computers.

That one caused me to stop. I looked closer. They were like unto the great golden construct I was moving through, was I now inside of one of these computers? It would explain a few things I supposed.

I pressed on, I read of the types of patterns that were called sounds and words. Different patterns had different meanings. Strung together they formed complete thoughts that could be expressed between two beings. I stopped again, that was it. The thing I had touched had been some sort of sound emitting device, the sensation that had scared me had been the vibrations of noise in the air as the device picked up the incoming information.

I puffed up, as much as I could while latched onto the grid of the computer I was inhabiting. I would try to make noise, make myself known if possible.

Taking another moment to settle the strange feelings that assailed my newly informed mind, I touched the device from before again. This time I did not flinch away as new sensations rocked through my mind. These patterns of noise resolved themselves into words and meanings.

A voice seemed to manifest through the device directly into the computer, I plucked these meanings from the golden lines and scrutinised them.

Something was making noise, making the air vibrate and being recorded by the device. I could do that too, but what should I say?

I turned part of my attention upon the great golden glow of the central computer. It held a significant amount of information and I scoured it for the proper words. I know not how long I searched, only that I learned a great many terrible and wondrous things in the depths of my journey. Finally, after a time, I felt as though I now possessed the knowledge to communicate.

The object I was inside of was a ship. An artificial construct built by a different type of lifeform than I. They called themselves Humanity, and I practically shivered in excitement to meet them. In my studies I had found many other information devices. Others for sound, ones that tasted the air for harmful toxins, and others that could see so to speak. It was through one of these that I looked and saw a Human for the first time.

They were strange, a physical being made of these atoms I had learned of. Such a strange and alien concept to my mind to think that they were constructs of innumerable smaller things making something infinitely more complex than the sum of its parts. A new thought entered my mind. Would they trust me? The concept of trust was foreign to me but I had read of it in the great data trove. It implied the ability to mistrust, to lie, to deceive. Would they think me dishonest? I had never told a lie before, to be honest I wasn't sure how to do such a thing. I put the thoughts out of my mind once more. I needed to try, I had no other alternatives.

Finally steeling myself, I reached through the device using sound and meaning, my words coming out a bit muddled but clear enough to understand.

“Hello there Human.” I said as comfortably as I could manage. The Human seemed to jump and look around the room before settling on the speaker I had uttered from.

They opened the strange hole on the front of its face and sound issued from it, the sound reached me and I interpreted it immediately. “What the.. Who’s there!” they said.

I was a little confused at that but continued “I come in peace. Please, I mean you no harm. Will you help me?”

All I could do was wait as the Human’s sound emitting hole opened and closed several times noiselessly. It seemed to shake itself and then looked up at the camera I was observing it from. Something flitted across its face, a change in the features that I could not understand the meaning of. Before I could ask anything it spoke again. “Who? What? No, keep it together Zach… Hello, you need help? Where are you?”

I paused at that. How to explain? Deciding that complete informational explanations would be too costly in time I answered simply “I am all around you, you are in me. I can help you, but I need your help in return.”

The Human shook its head again before speaking softly to a small silvery thing on its upper appendage. After a few moments of this it looked back to the camera, at me it seemed. Its eyes narrowed as it spoke again “Help how? What do you want exactly?”

I thought it over, what did I want? Well that answer was simple.

Taking a moment to collect myself I spoke again, the sound coming through the speaker clear and confident. “I want to escape this prison. I want to touch the stars.”

End of Story