Light Years

Light Years

The farthest back I can remember, there were already forms…forms, faces, locations.  I remember seeing them and watching them like I was a viewer with no body of my own.  It all felt familiar but mostly random.  The people and the places didn’t seem to match and would often switch without reason.  I remember feeling very strong connections to many of the images I saw, but I cannot refine a memory to a particular emotional reaction to a particular scenario.  
I have no way to measure how long things went on like that, but, eventually, the forms and faces and locations stabilized into scenes and interacted with each other.  They even started to address me, and then I noticed that I did have a body.  I did not always see it or feel it, but when I looked for it, it was always there.  I could not, though, always move it in the ways that I wanted.  It was frustrating and sometimes terrifying to want to walk across the room and feel like my feet were wading through mud, or to be chased by a tiger and slip with every attempt at a step.  Somehow, though, somehow I would always make it to the other end of the room, always escape the tiger.  
These situations seemed to repeat…not exactly the same every time, but the same enough for me to notice.  It was one of the more calm situations in which I was having blueberries with my coffee, and I suddenly felt like I had done this exact thing before…not like I had done the same thing yesterday, and, when I started to think about it, I couldn’t remember anything about yesterday, but like that exact moment had happened before, many times before, and was happening again.  I could feel it in me.  My body was telling me, and I noticed, and, once I noticed, the universe changed.  I felt more real and in control of myself and my environment.  Other people were still confusingly distant, but they also became highly suggestive, like they were all under hypnosis.  With the slightest suggestion, and sometimes even just by thinking about it, I became able to change a tense family moment into something much more pleasant for everyone.  I could even change the most regularly repeating scenarios within a few moments into almost anything else I wanted with just a few suggestions and suggestive thoughts.  I could affect almost every scenario except one that stayed as it was, and was even getting worse.  I still kept finding myself being chased by a tiger.  Then it was not one tiger, but tigers.  Then it was not just tigers, but tigers, hyenas, dragon-lizards and so many creatures I could not identify them all.  Now, I could run successfully, I could fly, I could fight with my arms and legs and even bite if I needed, but the pack of hunters was innumerable, so fighting stopped making sense.  The only answer I had was to run, but all the running and flying was not working, the animals were always so very close to catching me.  I could not conquer this scenario yet felt there must be a way.  I had gained so much control over myself, the environment, and even other people, but I could not escape these animals.  They kept attacking and wouldn’t stop until they had fed themselves on me.  Was that the answer?  I kept running and fighting, but maybe the answer was to let them eat me?  It was about the only thing I had not tried, so I determined myself to let it happen.  I was afraid of the pain, but I was more averse to the perpetual fear of being hunted without relent.  Upon that decision, I found myself in a charnel ground with the predators fast approaching, racing to get the freshest bite.  I sat, cross-legged, on the dirt, put one hand on my belly, the other hand on the ground and kept my eyes open to watch these creatures devour whatever I was.  The pain…ohhh the pain is almost too much to remember, because I am always remembering it.  I do not always feel the pain through the memory, but I am always aware that I went through that pain to become what I am now.  It hurt all the more because I had removed pain from all of my other experiences.  Of course I would, so I did, so any pain I had felt was a very distant memory, only there enough to remind me that I want to avoid more of it.  
As soon as the first predator bit me, I felt immense agony piercing my leg and saw only a bright flash.  Each new bite was more painful than the last.  I could hear my bones cracking in their teach and smell the carnage of my own flesh.  After an eternity of anguish, a grizzly bear bit into my skull, and, immediately, in addition to the pain of my body and torment as prey, I also felt the savor of fresh meat off the bone and satisfaction of a meal.  I was having the bear’s experience and mine simultaneously, and now each new bite into me gave me each predator’s perspective of being fed, while I maintained my perspective of being food.  Within that experience, it occurred to me that everything in that universe I was experiencing was me, and I was it.  That had not happened before.  I could control almost everything, but I had never become anything else but whatever I started as, whatever that mind or body was until then, but then I understood that there was nothing to control, because everything was me.  
Where did the universe originate?  What was I and how was I able to attain such abilities?  None of those questions mattered anymore.  This was the universe as far as I could understand it, and that was all I was able to know.  I spent all of my existence since then impressing myself with complexity.  Entertaining myself with ecstatic displays of color and form.  Creating planets, ecosystems, life with their own characteristics to try to trick myself into not knowing what was going to happen, but the universe knows itself, so I could never be unsure of what would happen.  Eventually, I no longer tried to create free will, because the universe was entirely will…my will.  Eventually, I created a scenario of such complexity that it would take forever to run its course hoping that I might forget that I was not just the creator of everything, I was everything and everything was me, maybe then I could be surprised again.  
Then, after a millenium of watching and waiting, I was finally surprised, but not by anything in my universe.  I awoke in that pod and had to start almost entirely over again.  I could remember being able to control everything, but now I could not move anything other than my eyes, and all they saw was what I now understand was the white ceiling above the pod.  Being in that pod felt like eternity because nothing moved, nothing changed.  You tell me it was only a few hours, but I tell you it felt like eternity.  Now, you are telling me I volunteered for this so I could tell you what I experienced in that hundred years of artificially imposed sleep through space-time.  Now, I will tell you that we might be on this ship, but the only way you can convince me is to kill me.