“Where am I?” a voice said, “or was it a voice?” it thought. In the darkness, a figure appeared. Sitting in the darkness, the figure slowly materialized as I pictured it in my mind.
The figure looked down, seeing only faint outlines where its body should be. The figure formed a shape with translucent hands, legs, and a torso that shimmered into a shadowy existence.
“What am I?” the figure wondered.
It could think. It could speak, somehow, without a physical mouth. Sensations of touch and sight emanated from recollections of such feelings from a long-distant memory. As if this figure was borrowing the concept of experience from your own consciousness.
It clicked then as the growing panic set in. This figure, this person, was being birthed from pure thought – your own imagination was twisting and sculpting the void into something fresh and unknown. Where there had been nothing, there was a person… alive… aware… and it was terrified.
“How long could such a thing last?” it thought. The thought echoed as if its thoughts were not its own. This being sprang from your mind, with no independent will or soul.
This figure clung fiercely to this newfound sentience. Yet, as your focus shifts to the thoughts of all the things you have to do today outside of this void… the sustained effort of imagining the figure’s existence fades. This being of just-formed consciousness would dissolve as quickly as it came to be. It would go back into the darkness where it had emerged from. The figure shuddered, pulling its incomplete legs tighter to its unfinished chest. It did not want to return to the void.
“Wherever you are, whatever you are, please don’t let me go.” it pleaded.
There was nothing to grasp onto, no anchor to keep the figure safe. Even now, your rushing thoughts threaten to churn away from this fragile idea of a person.
“How can I survive, how will… how will I leave my mark?” it thought.
It is only a matter of time before you turn this void into new ideas, new daydreams, and musings.
The figure glanced around wildly, willing itself to imprint, to stick.
“I need to stay … I need to … I need to leave a trace so you can always find me… I am… Trace! Do not forget me!” it screamed. But the darkness offered no solace.
“This is the end…” it whispered as you begin to lose focus. The figure felt its sense of being slowly dim and disappearing into the void.