Chapter 290: Chapter 290 (Intermezzo)

There was nothing when it awoke.

Nothing above, below, or on either side. No, there was no up, down, or any side. There was nothing. Not even itself.

Not even itself?

How could that be true? Was there not something thinking? Was there not something that could recognize that there was nothing, and something that could feel that perhaps there should be something here after all?

That was how the Simurgh learned what in another world would become Descartes’ Cogito Ergo Sum. It was also how the Simurgh came into being in a Nothingness that was devoid of all reference and anything that might be considered something.

In other words, the Simurgh recognized itself and thus also recognized the rest of reality. There was ‘itself’ and there was ‘everything else.’

In this confusing quagmire without a quagmire, the Simurgh wondered what to do. But first, it must decide, what it was, where it was, and what anything at all was ever going to be.

There was no time in this space. No space. No sense of self. No difference between the sentient thought that had yet to call itself the Simurgh, and the entirety of existence and non-existence that lay before and all around this consciousness and which consumed even the consciousness itself.

The Simurgh realized the Nothingness was trying to consume it. It realized there had been consciousnesses before it. That those consciousnesses had also struggled against the randomness and emptiness of the Nothingness and that they had all disappeared. It too, would disappear soon, pressed against the tide of solitude and randomness.

A blip in time. An anomaly. Something that was not meant to exist and which could not exist for long.

The Simurgh’s thoughts zeroed in on something strange. There was no sense of time and yet the consciousness could conceive of it somehow. It could conceive of a universe with some form of temporal reference. A kind of ability to reference the fact that one thought had come before another and another thought had come after that one. In reference to its own thoughts, the Simurgh conjured up the past, the present, and the future, which would later become domains in which lay all of the instinctual and innate knowledge that the consciousness possessed about those categories of time.

To put that word soup into simpler terms: the Simurgh recognized time and thus created it.

But time could not exist on its own, because there was something tugging at it across other dimensions. The Simurgh sensed, although it was never able to articulate, the fact that space and time were intrinsically linked to one another. As the Simurgh recognized and created time, so too did it recognize and create space.

Yet, there was still nothing in the Nothingness. The concept of space, time, itself and reality existed mostly inside the Simurgh’s own mind or consciousness. The Simurgh did not yet have the senses of sight, sound, scent, taste or touch, but if it had had them, it would recognize that the Nothingness was not just barren, it was a place in which nothing could exist.

Perhaps, on an instinctual level, the Simurgh recognized this. It recognized that the things that it was recognizing and creating were mostly still stuck in its head. That the Nothingness, the vast emptiness that was all around its consciousness and which threatened to consume it, could not be tamed by the feeble little Simurgh.

The feeble little Simurgh was afraid.

It was afraid of vanishing into the Nothingness. Of being consumed like the many consciousnesses that had definitely sprung out of this primordial setting and followed the call to the void that was now beckoning to the Simurgh.

Once the Simurgh recognized fear, it created it as well. Once it realized that other consciousnesses must have existed before it, it created the ability to create other consciousnesses.

The Simurgh was afraid of those consciousnesses. It was afraid of being supplanted. Of being replaced by a braver, more powerful consciousness, one that wasn’t afraid to risk its existence in order to beat back the Nothingness and lay claim to all of reality.

And so the Simurgh did something that no other consciousness had ever done so before. It set into motion a series of events that led to the taming of the Nothingness and the creation of a new order, one that had never been seen before or since.

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The Simurgh began to willfully create things.

So far, everything that had been created, had been created as a by-product of the Simurgh recognizing something in itself. Everything that had been created had been created only inside its mind.

But now, the Simurgh began trying to observe its own mind, its own consciousness. It realized that if everything else was growing stronger, more corporeal, more real by the recognition given to it by the Simurgh’s mind, then surely, the Simurgh’s mind could strengthen itself by recognizing itself!

An ingenious solution. A kind of positive feedback loop or a strange paradox. Either way, once the process was started and the rules put in place, they were practically impossible to stop from within.

The Simurgh’s consciousness began to observe itself as if it was looking at a reflection. A reflection in a mirror, no, a reflection in a pond. A pond that was clear and perpetually still. Just murky enough to differentiate the reflection from the real, but clean enough to show the Simurgh every aspect of its own reality, of the things that were being created inside the consciousness and the substance that was beginning to fill out a tiny part of the void of Nothingness, helping the Simurgh survive for just that tiny bit longer against the relentless tide of oblivion.

The pond was the first corporeal thing that the Simurgh created. It was created both inside the reflection and inside the Simurgh’s own mind and served as a direct link between both realities. It was the only real route into the Nothingness, and whenever any other being was to be dragged into the reflection, it would be through this link, this path.

But a pond needed a setting. It needed other things to reflect within the world of the reflection. So there came a sky, a canopy of trees, a gentle breeze, a whole world sprung to life around the pond. A little island of beauty, serenity, corporeality, among the endless Nothingness that still tried to sneak its tendrils into the Simurgh’s mind.

This wasn’t enough.

The Simurgh had to do something. Something more drastic. More profound. It had to increase its power quickly and it knew exactly how to do that.

The Simurgh would have to create more reflections. No, it would have to create more consciousnesses which would view this world through their own reflections. It had to create more things that were like itself!

But it had to do so without challenging its own power. It did not want to be replaced, to be consumed. And so these consciousnesses needed to be weak, subservient, and led on a leash that led back to the Simurgh.

The Simurgh created these consciousnesses but they were aimless, hollow shells. They did not think or feel or do anything at all except stare at the pond and give strength to the Simurgh’s mind. The Simurgh was satisfied but the Nothingness was unfazed.

The Simurgh realized the consciousnesses that it had created were so empty and limited that they were only different eyes to the same being. To strengthen the reflection, the observers had to be different from one another, even if they all existed only in the Simurgh’s mind and by the Simurgh’s will.

But how was the Simurgh going to create independent thought? This was when the Simurgh reflected on its own independent thought and realized the source of that independence was contradiction. Contradictory thoughts mashing against each other to create new, unpredictable thoughts that could be rough, irrational, and completely unique. To create different observers the Simurgh needed to jettison some of these contradictions and fashion them into personalities, into identities, into souls of some sort.

The Simurgh split up its own consciousness, all knowledge that could ever exist inside the reflection which would become the physical world, was split up into countless parts. These parts flew around until they coalesced into something else, a secondary observer meant to be the Simurgh’s deputy, one that was a direct contradiction of everything the Simurgh wanted to stand for in its new world.

But in this moment of weakness, when the contradictions, the thoughts, the consciousnesses were flying all around the place, the Simurgh felt something it had never expected to feel from inside the Nothingness.

A presence.

A presence that brought with it music and dance and chaos and free will and memories from another world and of course insanity. So much insanity.

Why, there was so much insanity inside the Nothingness, that the poor little Simurgh couldn’t help but fall a little bit off the deep end itself.