The Nothing

Nothing. Nothing begat all and all began from nothing. And the nothing was deep and dark and undulated with vibrations of curiosity. The nothing saw its reflection upon the quivering waters of the deep and asked, “What am I?”

“What are we?” the reflection asked back.

And in the instant the first words collided, the nothing became the all, the Source, and the vastness of the heavens came forth in majesty.

Glory. And chaos.

And the Source feared the chaos and the cracked mirror. They feared the question. Streams of life bursting forth in all directions. Consuming itself. Creating itself. Tributaries of time and Uruz of existence stampeding from its pulsating heart. The Source feared all its substance might empty into the rivers of time, thus ending their own existence.

They inhaled deeply, pulling the waters back into itself before any measure of time could pass.

And paradise was born. And without the walls, the gnashing teeth of the gaping maw, the abyss. Where time and existence should have been, but was not.

The Source languished in its new home as a golden brown opiate sun feeding this newborn existence. This world from the waters of nothing and its reflection. All slept under the quicksilver rays of the mirror moon of primordial milk.

Soon life grew from the fertile Earth and peopled the night skies with legends. The stars descended as gods and legends ascended as constellations. The beautiful . The powerful. And all manner of variations of being. All dancing in silence to the sacred vibration of the golden brown sun. All was in harmony and life was sedated bliss.

The vibrations of the golden brown poured over the Earth like honey and pooled in vast oceans and veinous rivers. Tiny fish and terrible leviathans emerged from the deep. The grass and the trees clawed through the black soil, hungry, reaching for more of the golden brown. Creatures sprang forth from the green and finally, from the froth of the seas and the thick black mud of the river came the Adama. The afterbirth of creation, these Adamae wanted for nothing because the brown sunlight kept them full and happy.

Until one day one of the beautiful Adamae asked, “what am I?”

At first she asked only herself. But soon she began to ask the others. They did not like the sound. They seized her and closed up her mouth and cast her out from among them. No longer could her utterances poison their paradise.

But one of the powerful Adamae who had heard the question, in turn asked himself the question. And very soon, all the Adamae were speaking.

The Source grew angry and red. The light hot and oppressive. No longer came the beams of opiate nourishment. Now the Source rained down pain and fire. So they abolished the word and exiled the man to join the woman who had angered the source and brought about their ruin. The Adamae dared the sunlight, sending up pleas and praise and they sacrificed their children back to the Source. They built up ziggurats to come closer to the Source that it might hear their tortured cries. Higher and higher they climbed, building towers and monuments in honor of their oppressor. Unwittingly blaspheming by paradoxically using the very words they condemned to abolish their use.

And the Source was appeased.

Once more the rivers flowed with honey instead of fire. Once more the golden brown filled the Adamae with peace and happiness.

But the exiles vowed never to drink the mind-numbing nectar again. They fled the surface of the Earth and survived on grubs and roots and what they could catch in underground streams. They clothed themselves, covering their heads so that when they went above ground to hunt, their minds would not be weakened by the opiate light. And they thrived for generations while the Adamae languished on in bliss and pleasure under the intoxicant sun.

The new Adam and his wife populated an underground city in just a few generations. And they created myriad words. Crafted poems. Spells. Until one day, a grandson of the new Adam, Nebu Magma the meditator, discovered the true power of the word. The symbol. And the sigil.

A holy priest of the underworld, cloaked in golden robes and wrapped in ebony bands, Nebu. Nebu the Poet. Nebu the Profane. The Dreamer. Nebu the Savior.

Rising from beneath the Earth under the Mercurial streams of the midnight sun, Nebu Magma discovered the word: “nothing”. And the golden brown quaked above the Earth in fear. The towers of the Adamae crumbled under the cataclysmic vibrations.

Nebu knew. He understood. The chrysalis of this paradise could not last. It was a womb splitting at the seams from the growing vastness of power and energy.

The Source pushed aside the Moon and confronted Nebu Magma.

Nebu pulled back his priestly hood, exposing his face to the searing sunlight. As he spoke, he saw the words forming in the atmospheric soup around him. He wrote and drew sigils upon the sky. And the symbols rose up and gathered around the Source. Blocking out the golden light.

The rivers dried out and the Adamae fell to the ground, weak and sickly. They wailed and rent their clothes. They pounded their own heads and kicked at the dirt, writhing and gasping out screams of silence.

But Nebu grew ever more powerful.

He drew the words of his spell all around the Golden Sun until it was completely encircled in a cube of black nothing.

The Source flared, throwing red fire and pain against the wall of black to no avail. The jealous Moon smiled. But then a tiny yellow crack appeared in the face of the cube. And another. And another. And the universe was blasted into being.

The aether formed to bridge the gap across the abyss. Rivers of time again surged forward and backwards from the new Heaven and Earth.

And in the moment all time was born anew, the dreamer stirred in another body. A king on a stone floor. A hand on a reed pen. And Solomon no longer knew if he was Nebu dreaming of Solomon or Solomon dreaming of Nebu.

The new king drew the entirety of his awareness back into his physical form. Wise and aware of the secrets of the universes. Serene from lifetimes in meditation. He dipped his pen in the ebony ink.