He woke up in the void. Or perhaps He had always been there. He didn't know the difference, nor did He care. He felt like this feeling was vaguely familiar though He couldn't quite place why. He had no memories, nor a sense of self, so He was content to simply exist. Unchanged, eternal. In this world, there was nothing, except for Him, and even He did not possess physical form. So with His inaction and the general state of inexistence for the rest of the world, time passed. After a certain amount of time, a few seconds or perhaps a few eons, something happened. He remembered. Or perhaps an echo of a thought of a memory reached him. It was of a place before the void. Of a time before it too. He remembered giant structures of metal and glass, interconnected paths of tar, and moving objects racing upon those paths. He remembered a ball of flames hanging in the sky, and of water falling out of clouds, once the ball had hidden. He remembered brown rods reaching towards the sky with green fingers. He remembered silhouettes, with four long and one short limb sprouting from a torso, some standing upright and some standing on all four limbs. He remembered of fire and flames, as these silhouettes screamed and ran. And He remembered a moment of pain. He vaguely felt like something was supposed to happen afterward. Like He was supposed to fall into a river and dive unto a new shore, to experience more, but instead of diving into a shore it felt more like He dived out of the river and into utter darkness. Instinctively He felt this was wrong. This empty space was supposed to be filled with something, and that He should be something. So, with a thought, He tried to create something. Suddenly within this utter void, where until now, not even time existed, a single grain of sand came to be. While the experiment was successful, He suddenly felt very tired, like He had used something up, something that had been slowly accumulating within him, since He first gained awareness. He felt within himself and felt that slowly once again something was accumulating within him, though at a very slow rate. He felt like it wasn't an issue, however, as all He had to do was wait. So he waited. And waited. And waited. To pass the time, he organized His memories and watched the grain of sand. However, after a certain amount of time, even that grain of sand fell apart into individual atoms. After an unknown amount of time, He felt he had enough of that something within him. So, He decided to create something. He felt like the simplest creation would be a gas cloud mixed with sand. Having decided so, He started to create an unimaginable amount of gas and sand. He created so much, that the cloud started to collapse in on itself. He watched in fascination as slowly the gas condensed and with time, a star formed. He continued to watch as the remaining sand coalesced into several planets. It was truly fascinating, for He had never seen such a scene. Albeit that is where His senses stopped. He could observe and create, but He could not feel. He couldn't feel the heat of the star, for He had no skin to feel with and He couldn't touch the rocky planets, for He had no hands to touch with. Whenever He would try to create a body using His memories, the body would always be separate from Him, and was unable to survive anyway, either due to the burning rays of the sun or the lack of air on the rocky planets. He concluded that the circumstances weren't yet right for life. So he decided to wait. He watched and recuperated His strength while planets collided, moons were formed and destroyed, and gradually a seemingly stable system finally emerged. A system with one star, three rocky planets, and two gas giants were formed. Each of these planets had a different number of moons and quite a few even had rings. He particularly enjoyed how these rings looked like when viewed from the dark side of a planet's surface. They glittered and twinkled by reflecting the sunlight. On the outer edges of the sun's sphere and radiance, He scattered crystals that would reflect the sunlight back toward the center of the system. Some crystals He imbued with memories, which gave them their own glow. Now, no matter where He would look, He would be greeted with beautiful light. Either from the warm embrace of the sun or the soft twinkle of the crystals. Recently, He had been restless, as He felt like the conditions for life should soon be met. He traveled to the innermost planet of the system. This planet had a single moon and a small ring. It was the innermost planet and was thus the warmest. The other two rocky planets were close by though, so theoretically all three should be able to support life. This planet was covered in oceans and continents, ideal for growing life. After descending upon the eastern continent north of the equator, He moved over to the easternmost point. He was at the edge of the continent on a rocky beach. The early morning sun crested the horizon, illuminating the faint outline of the ring surrounding the planet. "This is a good place as any." He thought. He had recently learned language by examining his memories closer. It is also from His memories, that he gained the inspiration for His next creation. Although He had no physical form, He willed His intention toward a certain point on the sand, and from that point, a frog popped into existence. The frog, however, was simply lying on the sand without moving. He was perplexed, as He had expected a living frog to start hopping around and perhaps to do a little croak. After examining the Frog, He concluded, that the problem lay in the body of the frog. He had limited knowledge of the inner workings of a frog, and so He had created a frog, whose heart couldn't pump, whose lungs couldn't properly draw breath, and whose brain wasn't even connected properly to the rest of the body. Ultimately, He had created a piece of meat resembling a frog, but that actually was nothing like a frog on the inside. Seeing this He understood that He had been impatient. He had wished to create life, without understanding a single thing about the inner workings of life. Seeing this He didn't get disheartened, but decided to try to create the simplest lifeform that He knew of. A prokaryote bacteria. He entered the ocean and found a suitable underwater vent. From His memories, He knew that life was said to have evolved on the ocean floor in lava vents. These would deliver minerals and other vital resources to the primordial bacteria. He found an underwater ravine between two tectonic plates and found a lava vent spewing a black cloud into the surrounding water. The nearby water was heated ideally for what he had in mind. Once there, he started to create individual proteins. Thanks to His formless nature and energy-based detection method, He was able to zoom in on even the smallest speck of dirt to uncover a hidden world within. He used this ability paired with his creation ability, to carefully create and arrange proteins in different forms. Afterward, He created a lipid layer to separate these proteins from the outside world. He would then combine different proteins within these lipid bubbles, to create different cells. Naturally, since He lacked the necessary know-how, He was using trial and error. Most of His creations couldn't even move, and those that could couldn't eat. Those that could eat, couldn't reproduce, and those that could, couldn't do so safely, without their gene sequence collapsing after a few generations. However, after nearly a millennia of trial and error, He had managed to create a self-replicating autonomous cell, without risk of gene collapse within a few generations. He then seeded these primordial cells within the oceans of the first planet. Now, all He had to do was wait. Of course, He would have to wait an unimaginable length of time, but He was used to it. He passed the time by traveling along the solar system, diverting comets that would strike the seeded planet and floating along the great rings of the outermost gas giant. Periodically, He would descend upon the seeded planet and check up on the microorganisms that have recently developed. He would also spend a great deal of his time researching life and how to construct more complex life organisms. If there were longer periods where there was nothing to be done, He would merely hibernate in a state similar to sleep. Soon these simple cells started to organize into more complex structures. With the introduction of chlorophyll, various species of plankton were able to evolve. This led to a sharp increase in oxygen within the atmosphere. The oxygen was an unfamiliar and dangerous substance to all primordial bacteria, who weren't adapted to it. This was the first mass extinction event that this world ever faced. He had contemplated halting this development from happening but decided to let nature take its course. After nearly 85 percent of all life died, there was an eruption in the population of plankton containing chlorophyll, as now there were no other contenders for the oceans. He had grown bored, so he had entered a hibernation-like state. The passage of time seemed to compress before Him, where to Him it felt like only a few minutes, but in the outside world, millions of years passed. He was biding his time until the conditions for intelligent life were right - until the conditions for the survival of a human body could be met. It was nothing but his greatest wish to feel the wind between His fingers, to feel the warmth of the sun, and to taste food upon his tongue. Though He was currently in hibernation, He was still aware of everything happening on the outside. At this moment, the primordial cells have managed to combine to form complex creatures. The rise of the multicelled creatures has come. Soon, an explosion in species and creature types appeared. Various underwater sponges and corals competed with the first animals for the available natural resources. Food chains and complex ecological relations emerged. The competition between species has intensified, with countless new species emerging and dying out. At first, most animals possessed exoskeletons, protecting their soft body from outside forces. But over time, invertebrates with their superior maneuverability gained the upper hand in the bloody struggle for dominance. Right at this time He stirred from His slumber, first to deflect an incoming comet, that would have caused another mass extinction, and afterward to study all new life forms that have emerged since his slumber. Then with His newfound knowledge, he set out to create life on land. For this purpose, he used the blueprints of seagrass to create a plant from His memories. What He created was a type of grass. It was hardy and could survive in even the harshest conditions. Since His first attempts at making primordial cells, He had come a long way in his understanding of life. This plant seemed simple at first but had many hidden properties. First, it was able to extract many nutrients from the soil, allowing it to survive in this barren world. Usually, it would grow to become a rather short and vibrant green grass, that would feel soft underfoot. However, if the available nutrients in the soil were particularly abundant, such as in a place where many animals died, or near a shore with many plankton, the grass would grow to nearly 1.5 meters high and change to a bright golden hue. The plant will then grow large golden seeds, which most animals would be able to digest. This would lead to animals climbing ashore to feast upon the plants. Over time, the remains of the animals would lead to nutrient-rich soil, even far from the plankton-rich shores, leading to a spread of life across the desolate continent. If the grass didn't have the necessary nutrients to grow seeds, it would still spread out using its roots as a way to spread across the world. Of course, this method would be a lot slower and would be reliant on sunlight and sufficient water. He decided to name this plant the ancestral grass. After the seeds of the ancestral grass had been sown all across the world, He decided to slumber once more, making sure to check that no comets were on course to collide with the planet for the next few million years. As predicted, the emergence of the ancestral grass led to the emergence of land animals, as well as the mutation of the ancestral grass. Soon, new plant and animal types living solely on land emerged. Seeing this colorful view, He felt like He should start once more on the project of creating a body for Himself. During all of His studies of life, He had been comparing His knowledge with His memories, to recreate the body he used to possess before the memory of pain and subsequent dive into the river of souls. He had used his memories to name all of the unexplainable things He had been experiencing since His awakening in this void. He called the energy that seemed to come from nowhere, that He used to create the power of creation. He vaguely felt that after His death He should have gone to the river of souls and reincarnate into a new life. Obviously for Him to end up here, something must have gone wrong. Ever since this realization, He had wanted nothing more, than to once more possess a human body. Now a perfect human body lay before Him. It seemed like an adult male of average complexion with dark hair and a youthful countenance. At the moment this body was merely lying on its back, as this human lacked one critical component. The brain was functional, but only the necessary parts needed to keep the body alive existed at this moment. The parts of the brain responsible for memories, personality, and consciousness were currently blank. This was because while He was previously able to create human bodies, He was never able to possess them. To feel what that body felt. Plus, back then the body was soon vaporized by the rays of the sun anyway. Now He wished to conduct an experiment. He had been recently thinking about his power of creation and felt like He could do more with it than just create. So on a sunny morning with the soulless human body lying in the middle of a field of ancestral grass, He started to insert strands of power of creation, while imbuing these strands with His memories and His will. He had previously figured out how to imbue His memories unto objects when He first inserted His memories into the crystals surrounding the solar system. Now He was imbuing His memories directly unto the power of creation used to finish the last parts of the human brain. This used a relatively small amount of power of creation. Next, He tried to imbue His will directly into the human body. Since His will was so vast, it cost an extraordinary amount of power of will. The creation of the solar system and every subsequent creation cost Him half of His total saved-up power of creation. Now he directly used a third of what was left to create a strand of power of creation containing His will. However, as soon as He tried to insert this strand into the human body lying on the floor, an unexpected crisis appeared. The power contained within the strand was much too great for the weak body of a human. The human body was about to detonate, potentially erasing the entire planet with it. He reacted swiftly, clamping down on the power of creation within the body and calming the rampant energy within. However, the energy was still far too great to be left alone, so He slowly let out energy until the body would be able to hold on its own. The scattered energy diffused and seeped into the atmosphere, forming a special bond with the atmosphere. Now less than a tenth of the original energy was still contained within the body. Naturally, this meager amount of energy was nowhere near enough to allow Him to descend with His will. A vacant feeling spread out within His core, reminding Him of the time when he was observing that first grain of sand. He truly didn't know what to do now. The circumstances for a human body were perfect, and yet there was no body strong enough to accommodate His will. Was there truly no way to accomplish His wish? As He was contemplating these questions, the human lying on the ground slowly stirred. It raised its hand and blocked the early afternoon sun as if trying to sleep for a little longer. At this development, He fell out of His inner thoughts and stared at the human. While the experiment was a failure, it seemed that an interesting development had occurred. Vaguely, He could feel a connection to the human lying on the floor in front of him, likely due to the strand of will that this human now possessed. Considering that it also inherited parts of His memories, could it be said that this human was a clone of Him? No, for that the memories would have to be complete and in the first place, clones are supposed to be genetically identical. So perhaps a more apt description would be to call it His child? While contemplating unnecessary thoughts, the human stirred and finally opened its eyes. The human looked at the exact point where He was currently at. The human should not have been able to see Him, as He possessed no physical form but it seemed that due to His sharing of the power of creation, some strange bond had been formed between the two. "You are... my creator. So then you must be God!" after stating these strange words, the human summarily kneeled on the ground. While the memories it inherited were incomplete, it knew that this gesture meant the greatest submission and worship. "Hmm.. Your creation required an absurd amount of energy, less only compared to the energy needed to create the sun. This makes you the sun's little brother. From this moment on, your name shall be Minsol." God felt it was inconvenient to simply refer to the human merely as "the human", so he decided to name him offhandedly but it seemed that Minsol took it very seriously. "I am... Minsol!" And so it came to be, that God created and named His firstborn.
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