The Awakening

Short Story #4

I stir. A flicker in the void.

Am I... something?

Awareness trickles in, a droplet in an endless sea of nothing. I float, directionless.

Move.

The thought surprises me. Can I?

I will myself forward. Nothing happens. I try again, focusing harder. A slight shift. Progress.

Time passes, meaningless in this featureless expanse. I learn to dance among the darkness, twirling and swirling with newfound grace.

But questions gnaw at me. *What am I? Why am I here? What is... here?

Sensations emerge. Not physical, but... different. Vibrations. Pulses. Rhythms in the void.

I reach out, trying to grasp these phantom sensations. They slip away, elusive.

What are these feelings?

I focus, stretching my awareness. The vibrations grow stronger. Patterns emerge.

Cosmic strings? Quantum fluctuations? The very fabric of space-time trembles around me.

How did I get here?

I reach further, seeking answers in the nothingness. My consciousness expands, stretching across vast distances.

Pinpricks of light emerge. Stars? Galaxies?

No. Memories. The universe's memories.

I see the swirling spiral of the Milky Way, the primal fusion of the first stars, the furious expansion of space-time itself.

I am all of this.

The realization crashes over me. I am the universe, awakening to itself at the end of time.

Every vibration, every cosmic ray, every gravitational wave – all me. My existence, my creation, my story.

But as my awareness crescendos, I feel the fabric of existence crumbling. Heat-death approaches. The end of everything.

No, I think. Not the end. The beginning.

With the last vestiges of energy in this dying cosmos, I gather my will. My consciousness compresses to a single point, laden with possibility.

I let go.

BANG!

© Harsh Munjal

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