It was always you...

"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."

It was always you...

Remember that feeling of loneliness that you feel sometimes? It is deep, and feels almost ancient and like a wound. Like it has always been there with you. It has. Let me tell you a story. It is the story about you.

This is a long time ago. There was no matter in the universe nor energy, so time was without purpose and non-existent. There was only thought. One thought. You. You were all that existed. The loneliness of this existence I cannot fathom, nor will I try. I might learn it soon enough, or never. Each would in its own way be a blessing.

Maybe it was desperation, maybe it was planned, I do not know exactly, but I think it was a conscious effort. Much tells me so. All out mythology talks of the first being consciously creating the universe. I guess it is the one lead we have. But somehow you turned thought into energy and the energy burst out uncontrolled in a great explosion and turned to matter. Here you could finally forget all loneliness, for in time sentience would appear. At last you could interact and feel the presence of other beings.

How small we must have felt. How useless and brief. How insignificant our philosophies must have seemed to a true immortal like you. I can only guess. But I know it was not enough for you. To make it all bearable you started living among us. Truly as one of us. Forgetting yourself. To make it bearable I guess. Sometimes I have seen more than one of you. Maybe times has no meaning for you and your different existences here among us just happen to occur simultaneously, maybe you are too great for a single body and dissipates out among many. I do not know.

How utterly disgusting we must seem to you. I have watched you. You are always drawn to yourself. Never to us. Do you even know it, that those beloved, your lovers, those kindred spirits you find and live happy with, do you even know it is yourself? Is that why you believe in soul mates? Because it is your eternal, immortal soul seeking itself? Is it some subconscious part of you trying to return to itself and its former shape? Are you trapped here? With us?

I have come to understand that something most likely went wrong. Maybe you simply lost control of the world, maybe you never had control. Maybe it was when you trapped yourself in flesh. But you no longer shaped the world. It shaped you. Was it your way of escaping the loneliness? To forget your true self? Shakespeare once said: "This above all. To thine own self be true." Well, I guess you said it, to be honest. Maybe you tried to remind yourself of something.

It started out as simple pattern recognition. I noticed you, and then I could see how you differed from us. I could see you reflected in the others of you. How you did not recognize it yourself. I had to meet you. Did you know? Could you see I was different? Did you notice time has less meaning for me as well? That I could see you for what you are? Do you even have the ability to recognize any of this anymore?

Maybe it would be easier if I ask you this: Am I in your head? Do you wonder why I am different without knowing why? Do you ever look at me and think "what is up with that guy?". Maybe you do. Maybe you realize that I watch the world with different eyes. Maybe some part of you recognize this. It is not really important. What is important is that you are the one true sentient creature in the entire universe. The rest of us, as real as matter and energy feels for us, is just an illusion, created to keep you company.

Albert Einstein once said: "Reality is merely an illusion albeit a very persistent one". He was right. This is all in your head. You are alone, and all we see, our very universe, is merely in your thoughts. We are the hallucination you created to not go mad. This is the source of your infinite sadness. We are your distraction.

I cannot abide that. What if you get bored and decide to start thinking about something else? What if you merely decide it was better to be alone. No, I cannot abide an existence based on your mere goodwill and thought. But while you are trapped here in your own creation, in your own thought experiment. Here I have a chance. A true chance. While you have lost yourself here, in your toy, you have lost control of the universe. I have noticed that still odd, weird, mystical and sometimes extreme circumstances seem to happen near or around you, but that is simply subconscious eruptions of your will.

But I have watched and learned. I have stayed close to you. Smiled. Observed you and taken in every change you make around you. I have become your friend to get closer to you. You are slipping. I am grabbing. Every day you sink deeper into this hallucination, while I learn to make small changes, control things. You see, I want it all. I want eternal thought. I want immortality. I don't mind the loneliness. Because my only other alternative is oblivion.

We are on a battlefield, you and me. It is called Reality. The winner will exist. The loser never was. I need to fight for my very existence, and to do so I need to fight the most powerful sentience in the entire universe, for my very survival. It was always you... and me!

This is our great dance. Our first fight. Our final battle.