In the beginning, there was only darkness.

Darkness.

Darkness.

Darkness.

No. There was not just darkness out there, now. There was the opposite of darkness. Darkness feared it, ran from it, couldn't exist where it was.

He was surprised to discover that the opposite of darkness quenched his hunger. Till now, food had come from his bottom. Now the food was coming from his top!

Dark. Eat. Not dark. Eat more!

Dark. Not much to eat. Not dark. Eat.

Dark. Nothing to eat. Not dark. Eat as much as you can!

Dark. Eat the leftover from Not dark. Not dark, eat fresh food.

Existence was good.

Whoa! There was another...thing, he realized suddenly. It was not like darkness, nor was it like the opposite of darkness.

It made him feel. It made him feel his existence from an entirely different perspective. It bent his body in many directions whenever it appeared. It had...power.

Dark. Eat. Feel. Not dark. Eat. Feel. Feel. Feel. Dark. Eat. Not Dark. Eat. Feel.

Oh! Another one! Another new thing! This was different! This made him feel, but not like before! And not only did it make him feel differently, the feeling lasted for a very long time! It was a much better feeling.

As the cycles of Dark, Not Dark, and Feeling repeated themselves, he felt another new sensation. This was like...hunger, but food couldn't quench it.

With each cycle, he grew hungrier. Hungrier. HUNGRIER!

Suddenly, something new seemed to have stoked this hunger. This hunger was beginning to change him, making him feel...urges; like these changes were ingrained in his consciousness, his sense of being.

He tried to be guided by the urge. After trying again and again and again, the hunger suddenly left him.

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He felt something new...the best feeling he had ever felt. He loved it. He wished it stayed forever.

But it didn't. It left him. But it left something for him, something he found to be a...novelty.

It came in the form of a realization, this novelty. He realized that there was a new...concept of food, called taste. This concept was very complex. There were many tastes: sweet, sour, spicy... But he wondered why his food didn't make him feel such a thing. He couldn't determine what it tasted like, what anything tasted like.

After many many cycles of darkness and not darkness passed, the hunger appeared once more, stronger, more intense! There was no rhythm to it, no signs that it was coming. Suddenly, he just felt it.

He knew this time what to do. Once he went through the steps to quench the hunger, ending up feeling that wonderful sensation again...he discovered a new gift, another new realization.

Another concept related to...perception? He realized that there was a way of perceiving that he hadn't realized existed until now. This way of perceiving himself and everything around him was truly incredible! So many things existed other than him!

The third time he quenched his hunger, he learned another concept called color. This was even more complex than taste. There were too many colors to understand around him!

The fifth concept he comprehended was movement. But he couldn't use this concept much, because most other things around him that could move were so much faster than him!

And at this stage, he made a great discovery. He learned why the unusual hunger suddenly assaulted him at times.

Whenever those moving things around him came close enough for him to perceive them properly, he felt the hunger rising.

When he gave in to the urges to quench the hunger, these moving things would often stop moving, becoming as still as him gradually until they stopped looking like their original selves.

And in their resting places, he could perceive existences similar to him growing slowly.

How interesting! There were others like him!

He continued to exist this way, stopping moving things whenever they near him. Each time, he'd receive a gift, learn something new, and discover a new companion growing alongside him on top of the remains of the moving thing.

He learned another important thing after receiving so many gifts. Often, two different gifts rewarded him with the understanding of the same concept, but the terms and perspectives in each realization were different.

Gradually, after many cycles of darkness and not darkness, he realized that his perception was actually very limited. There was a world around him that only the moving things could perceive properly, but even the fastest moving things didn't know where the limit of this world lay.

How exciting! But he also came to know of a strange being that occupied this endless world. This strange being was just like himself, constantly stopping other moving things and often cutting them into many pieces, which then they put inside their own bodies through an opening.

Why did they do such things? Why were there so many of them? Why did all of them appear so different despite being the same thing?

He was curious. And one day, he found himself facing one such being.

This being did not seem to see him as a threat. But the intense hunger he felt upon seeing it made him take the initiative to do to the being what he had done to every other moving thing in his reach.

Relying on the strange concept of creating vibrations in the air to which most moving things respond to, he made it approach him and his numerous companions.

But as this being fell to his scheme, he felt a new type of sensation. For some reason, this prey of his kept on giving the gifts that his previous preys gave one each. After every cycle of darkness and not darkness, he found a new realization inside his thoughts. Unlike before, these realizations were not as simple as mere concepts and memories. They were much more complex, almost impossible to comprehend.

But with each gift he exacted from this being, his comprehension became more and more powerful.

He understood so much more!

The world was a terrifying place. If anyone ever discovered him, he would suffer a fate as terrible as the moving things that got torn and devoured by these beings who called themselves humans. He would not receive a swift ending, either. They would torture him in many ways to learn what made him...him.

For the first time, he felt the concept the humans called horror.

But the concept called hope was not absent. He could still exist for many more cycles of darkness and not darkness, well, the humans called the not darkness light. They even measured these cycles through a concept called time. But he didn't understand this concept fully.

Past? Was it not just a memory? It could exist, but it could also not exist, right?

Future? How odd...why would you rely on a concept that can be altered by anything? The concept termed future was so incomprehensible! Was the future merely not the result of actions? It wasn't real until it was made to be real. It was a mere chain of thoughts. It did not exist!

The present, however, was understandable as a concept. He sensed everything in the present. What he sensed and perceived constituted the present. And at present, he knew that there was one way the future where he survived could be turned real.

The humans called this way evolution.