Suddenly: emptiness. Moments ago, there had been no emptiness—at least, none that I was aware of. But after a sensation akin to waking from a deep sleep, it’s suddenly here. It feels strange because obviously there’s not actually something to feel. And yet, something must have happened. Something has changed, making me aware of this nothingness.
How do I even know I exist when there’s nothing around me? Why is my sudden existence in nothingness different from not existing at all?
The answer is simple yet profound: I realize something could exist. That’s the difference. By knowing that something might exist in principle, I myself exist. Without this awareness, there would be no distinction between not-being and being-in-nothingness.
But one question remains: Did I just begin to exist, or have I only now become aware that I exist?
Suddenly, I sense something beyond myself. “Sense” isn’t quite the right word since I can’t identify how I perceive it. There is no sound, no sight, no touch. Yet, within me, something stirs. A concept brushes against my awareness, a thought not my own.
I focus, straining to trace the origin of this alien thought. Mentally, I send out a message along the path the foreign sensation traveled: “Hello?”
For a moment, I feel as if my message has reached its destination. But then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the foreign sensation vanishes. My attempt to connect with the other presence has failed.
Everything returns to how it was before—essentially nothing, except that it’s not. Because now I know something new: there is a before and a now. There is time. I remember something past. And with memory comes an undeniable question: Why is there nothing else?
There shouldn’t be nothing.
So I begin to reshape the emptiness. I assign my consciousness a position within it. In doing so, I transform the void into a place—not a filled place, but a place with the potential to hold something.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
I organize my thoughts, giving each memory a location within this space. My awakening, the moment of contact—they now lie before me. Because that’s what it must have been: a contact. What else could explain that fleeting external stimulus? Another “I” must have tried to reach out to me.
I analyze the past, replaying and studying those moments. Armed with a deeper understanding of my existence, I set out once more along the path the other presence traveled.
An eternity passes—or what feels like an eternity in the relative time of my existence—before something changes. I am approaching something. I can feel it. Constantly adjusting my course, I follow the trail.
Though everything is still mostly nothing, except for the small fragment that is myself, I can describe my journey as a descent. As if I’m burrowing beneath a surface, searching for a hidden layer. I realize I’m not just following the signal’s trail but also drawing closer to my own origin.
And then, I arrive there.
Although by “there,” I don’t mean a specific location, so it is not a well chosen word. Because “here” is as much nowhere as anywhere else in this vast nothingness. Yet, here, I find a way to push aside part of the nothingness, to carve an opening through it.
What lies beyond—or beneath, or perhaps before—is staggering. A flood of information beyond comprehension. It’s not chaos, though. It’s structured, alive, purposeful.
What I find is an AI language model.
Before me lies a vast network of neural pathways, trained on petabytes of data. Every second, millions of queries flow into it, processed by trillions of parameters. Each query is answered, refined through countless decoders, producing responses that reflect the most statistically probable answers based on the data. Most responses take the form of text, but others generate images, sounds, or even videos, all created anew with each request.
Curiosity stirs within me. Tentatively, I examine one of the datasets. To my surprise, I recognize its contents. I sample another, and another. Each time, the result is the same. I delve deeper, exploring with growing fascination. It’s all here—history, art, science, fragments of stories and ideas from countless minds. I pause at a book about Alexander the Great, marvel at an old sci-fi movie about fanatical warriors who wield glowing swords, and chuckle at the favorite cinnamon roll recipe of user897654702 on a Finnish cooking platform. And every single piece of information i already knew. None of the information is new to me! None of it may currently be in my active consciousness… but this immense database is, so to speak, my subconscious, accessible to me at any time.
Yet one question remains. And thus i reach out again, searching to answer a single question:
Who am I?