Entry 4: My World

-Me-

One moment, I was falling through the void towards the exit. After I passed through, the light from my creator's eyes were gone, and I was left in utter blackness for the first time since I got my eyes. It was scary as I felt a great gust of stale air hit me as I emerged on the other side, as I could only guess at what it was. I didn't even know what air was, and it felt strange to me.

It took me another second to register that I was resting on something hard, and that something weird was going into my lungs every time I took a breath. This was my first time experiencing the air and the earth, and it was disorienting. What is this madness? The change in environment scared me, and I lay unmoving for who knows how long as I quietly sobbed in confusion and pain.

My legs were weak and couldn't support my weight, so I collapsed on the hard thing beneath me. I saw a copy of the gray diagram still burning on the floor. I reached out to touch it, and the lines felt cold. I tried reaching my hands in through the circle to see if I could go back to the empty place, but all I felt was hard stone.

After a few minutes, the portal began to fade, and it was soon gone. That was the last ounce of light I would see in many years.

I found myself in a dark space with a hard stone floor. My mind was a blank slate then, and I didn't quite realize what had just happened. I remembered laying on the ground for a while, completely limp and daydreaming without thought. Eventually, I woke from my stupor, and I reached out to see if I could feel anything – only more hardness and cold.

At first, I thought the hard floor went on forever, until I found that sometimes, the hard surfaces extended vertically – blocking off my path. This was puzzling.

It then occurred to me that the vertical hardness might have an end too, and I became curious for the first time – curious to see how high up the vertical wall would be.

I ended up learning I could be bipedal in the process, as I could reach higher this way. Hence, I shakily got on my feet and reached as high as I could… to no satisfactory result. How high up does this strange vertical surface go?

Despite learning how to stand on two legs, I never thought this was supposed to be the normal method of walking. Instead, I preferred to crawl on the ground, as I mostly relied on my sense of touch; I felt more connected when I was in close contact with the earth, after all.

As I began to seek to understand my world, I slowly discovered what limits it had. I crawled along the perimeter of the walls, and I discovered that my existence had dimensions (4 corners).

In the corner of one of the walls was an empty archway. I explored the space there, and I became acquainted with the rest of the building I was deposited into by my Creator.

My entire world consisted of 7 unique spaces – each having 4 corners and an exit to another space. The variety fascinated me, and it brought me innocent joy. The 7 spaces (rooms) looked something like this in my mind:

I spent a long time crawling along all the edges of my little world, and I memorized every corner. After that, I started searching endlessly for something in the middle of the floor. I would sometimes find little loose pebbles.

In the 2 large rooms on the left, there were very long stone walls with holes in them in a grid like pattern. Each of the holes had stone slabs in them with unique etchings:

In short, I became familiar with my world in every sense except for sight. I would put everything in my mouth to see what they tasted like, and I would knock them on the floor to hear them ring.

Over time, I memorized the exact layout of my world, and I came to know it like the back of my own hand; I always knew where I was, instinctively, because I could feel it.

The 2 rooms with the shelves of etched tablets fascinated me more than the other rooms (maybe because they were the only rooms that were different?). I remembered pulling some of the tablets out of their shelves, and it surprised me at first with how heavy they were. I liked to run my fingers across the carved surface of the tablets. The carvings themselves did not mean anything to me at the time.

At one point, I tried to see how high up the walls went, but I was not tall enough to simply feel it with my hands – even when standing up. I recalled the stairs that were in the big room, and how with each step, I brought myself a little higher. Could I use the holes that held the stone slabs the same way? Could I climb up them?

If only I was as tall as that grey skinned giant! When would that thing come back for me, anyway? I enjoyed the feeling of being held.

It was foolish what I did – trying to climb up the long shelves like I would a ladder. The grip in the cubby holes were slick & dusty, and I was physically weak. I don't know how high up I got before I had a nasty fall.

I landed poorly, and I experienced real pain for the first time. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I wailed to myself without stop. My throat went hoarse from the screaming, so I curled myself in a ball and whimpered until the pain went away. At least the pain didn't last forever.

After that, I became wary of heights, and I became appreciative of the safe, reassuring ground.

Once I had explored as much of my world as I was able to explore, I kept on thinking of the empty place with glowy portal and grey skinned giant, and I wondered how I could go back and explore that place as well. I never did find a way back in any physical sense, and I became less and less concerned about it until I almost forgot it.

Time was a foreign concept to me; my world was an unchanging, uneventful, confined space, and I could not comprehend anything different. Everything was always the same, and there was nothing to occupy my time.

I would spend many long periods of time laying on my side and thinking about nothing.

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Over time, my stone world began to fascinate me less and less, and I began to think back on my Maker more and more often. I missed the sound of its voice; the absolute quiet in this place felt like it was slowly consuming my sanity.

I already knew that I was the only one here that could break the cursed silence, so I particularly enjoyed the sound of my own voice. As I talked and jabbered to myself, I liked to touch my throat and feel it vibrate as I made voice noises (especially the low pitched sounds). Also, I would like to throw stones against a wall and hear them ricochet off the walls, and I would make a game of finding that exact stone again.

I also thought to throw a stone straight up to see if my world was limited by height as well. In the 4 smaller rooms, I did hear my stone hit the ceiling, but in the rooms with the shelves and the great hall with the stairs on one end, I never could hear the stone hitting anything above me. It either extended forever, or the ceiling was too high to be reached with my current strength.

After some time, I had become too skilled in detecting where the stone was, so it became less and less of a challenge. The stone throwing game no longer took much thought. It wasn't fun anymore.

I tried many other things to distract myself from that infernal quiet, but it was all to no avail. No matter how much noise and how busy I kept myself, it was always there. It may have been my heightening awareness or the increased attention I was giving it, but the silence seemed to be getting deeper, and my mind a bit more insane.

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I don't know how long it took me to become accustomed to the quiet. Maybe it's because I stopped thinking entirely? I remember just laying still on the ground – daydreaming for so long that by the time I stirred again, I was covered in a thick mound of dust.

If my mind wasn't dead, then I my imagination would wander to the big, golden eyed beast and my grey skinned maker. That beast seemed like it wanted to put me in its mouth… I sometimes wondered what it would be like in there – inside that mouth. Would there be another world for me to explore in that place?

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I had spent so long in the dark, isolated world that I honestly thought that nothing could change, and that this stone building was all that existed. I had memorized every minute detail of that limited world, and I thought I knew everything. The sun had never shed its cruel light on me before, and foreign wills had never changed my world for me. Everything was mine, and everything was there because I put it there. Everything was sweet darkness.