Singularity

Singularity

Perhaps the most disquieting aspect of reality is that there are creatures who exist beyond known scientific reality whose magnitudes and geometries are beyond our wildest comprehension. Fortunately, they are largely indifferent to the comings and goings of creatures like us and their movements are on timescales of such vast scope and scale that to blink an eye or to complete a thought is to last the lifetimes of universes. But sometimes, these entities narrow their focus and when they do, they have the capacity to control the most minute functions of our reality as easily as we manipulate our limbs or fingertips.

Singularity, this is what she calls herself, with the infinite magnitude of her form, her every thought birthing and annihilating realities with clockwork regularity. She looks at a speck of dust, drifting through an endless abyss, held aloft in a ray of shimmering light. On this world, she sees him, he is so small, so fragile, and yet he risks his finite existence on this world to pull another to safety. John, his name is John Reach, a soldier in a jungle. She looks upon him intently and smiles, which causes the bullets to miss him. An enemy soldier moves in to attack him from behind. “No.” she thinks to herself. A gust of wind blows a plume of smoke into his face, distracting him just long enough for John to grab his sidearm and fire.

Watching over him, she finds contentment in seeing him reunited with his friends upon his return home. She laughs to herself when he engages in the mundane activities of his life, events which are each unique and special when compared to the endless solitude of her own existence. All she wants is for him to be happy, she flexes her limbs and imposes her will upon the forces of reality, causality, and probability to produce a life for him in which he is happy. He marries a wonderful woman, Edith and has a wonderful son, Jacob who makes his father proud. She watches as he extends his happiness to others through civic works and charitable acts and when those few misfortunes that do befall him, she makes sure that they are events that only reinforce that he is living the best life he possibly can.

But all it takes is a moment, she senses something passing by her domain, another entity like herself, and she regards its fleeting presence warily. But once she returns her focus to John, she is shocked to discover the ruins of her good intentions. John is now an elderly man, alone in an empty house spending his days in his own solitude as he awaits his own end. The thoughts ripple through her immeasurable consciousness, “Why?” Looking back through the seconds of his life, she realized it was her own doing, she had blocked every negative consequence of his every thought and action. Without her damming the river of karma, he was awash in all the miseries she had shielded him from.

John’s son had gone on to found a business, but without her influence, he committed financial crimes that put him in prison. John’s wife, mad from grief, had slit her wrists in the bathtub and John was unable to get to her. His car had been struck by a drunk driver and he spent months drifting between life and death and even more time recovering from his injuries.

Tears fill her eyes, each droplet containing multitudes of swarming, ravenous… …Things which disappear as quickly as they appear. Her sadness is overwhelming, she barely notices the fusion reactions of the nearby star, growing exponentially as they prepare to unleash a cloud of radiation which nothing could survive. “I can fix it. I can make him happy.” She thinks to herself, as the massive storm of cosmic energy engulfs the planet and consumes the world in a fiery cataclysm.

Pulling herself from her sadness, she realizes only too late what she has done, “I must protect him.” She sees the remnants of the man she loves, dust amidst the solar winds and draws upon them. Assembling every piece of him, the molecules forming flesh, blood, bone, and the bioelectric energies which comprise his consciousness and meshes them back together into him. She even reassembles his clothing around him to maintain his modesty. “Now. Come to me.” She encases him in a small pocket of his native reality and draws him from the world, from the universe and into the infinite expanse beyond the boundaries of space and time.

John awakens and takes a breath before sitting upright and looking around. What he sees nearly causes his mind to collapse, “W-What?” Beneath him is a porous mesh extending endlessly in every direction, arcs of golden electricity larger than galaxies streak across the vast membrane which is crawling with endless multitudes of creatures that writhe and claw ceaselessly across it. The man looks up to see the sky is filled with a gelatinous ocean also covered in strange, translucent entities who stare down at him. A billion billion eyes and the viscous sea above him drink in every detail of John’s face, he trembles and weeps to himself, “I’m in hell! Why? What did I do wrong?”

Seeing he is scared, she vibrates the molecules within his bubble into replicating a facsimile of his wife, Edith’s voice. The voice surrounds John and penetrates him to the core of his being, and he looks up into the sky.

“Do not fear, I am here to protect you.” She speaks.

John looks around, “Who are you? What is this place?”

She responds, “I am Singularity, I am in love with you and I have brought you here to be with me. You are safe here.”

John shakes his head, “You’re in love with me? You don’t even know me!”

She responds, “I have watched you for many years, I saved you from that wretched battlefield and wanted to make you happy. So I manipulated events throughout your life to make you happy.”

John runs his hands through his hair, “Why do you sound like Edith?”

She speaks, “I turned back the clock, found a couple and ensured the right sperm and egg met, I oversaw every stage of her development and controlled every moment of her life to ensure she met you. Her car breaks down, she enters a bar, I alter the pitch of the soundwaves from her heels on the floor to draw your attention. I make sure the perfect song is playing on the jukebox and I make the snowfall heavy, so you are with her. She buys you a drink and when she passes you the glass, your hands touch.”

John begins to tremble, he stares up at her wordlessly as she continues, “She was what I would be if I could be human.”

John can barely bring himself to ask, “Why?”

The voice is cracking, “I have watched your tiny life unfold before me, but I cannot be near you, I can’t even speak to you in my true voice without shredding you into atoms. I could never be with you, or hold you close. I could never live with you, laugh with you, cry with you or kiss you.”

She continues, “But here, in the palm of my hand, under my watchful gaze, you are safe from everything. You will never age, get sick or die.”

John lays down and pulls himself into a ball, trembling at the insane scenario he now finds himself in. Singularity senses his pain and tries her best to soothe him, “I will make you happy. I will sing for you.”

Suddenly, the writhing monsters snap to attention, and several of the creatures begin to orbit around the man, each holding a bizarre musical instrument. Guided by her will, they play their instruments and begin to play the love song that had guided John to his beloved wife. But John is not happy, he begins clutching his head in agony as Singularity fruitlessly tries to please him.

She is unaware of her immense timeframe, each note of the song drags on for eons, as John is trapped as the captive audience for an immeasurably powerful creature from beyond existence.

All he can do is scream.