บท 1: 1.A Gray and grizzled old man
On his deathbed, Wang Feng lovingly gazed at his loved ones surrounding him, having lived a full life. Even his final moments were full of joy and love as he wiped a single tear off his daughter's cheek with his tired, wrinkled hand. With his last breath, his arm fell, and to his surprise, death was not the end. He found himself existing as a dim ball of energy, similar to the legend of Gilgamesh when Enkidu was gravely ill, staring into pitch darkness for an endless stretch of time.
Recognizing the impending danger of ego death, Wang Feng recited his life story to himself at first, but such retelling had less of an effect as endless time that rolled by. He conjured up an algorithm that grows ever more complex the more you solve it to stave off the risk of going blank. However, there was no reference point to anything near him, and there was nothing to compare sizes with, so he didn't know if he was as big as a sun or smaller than a pea. There were no repeating motions, so the passage of time was not discernible, and there was no gravity to determine the weight or real light to discern if he was existing in the middle of vast nothingness or a place the size of a room.
Like everything in the universe, the human mind was a subject of entropy too. Without an outside world giving the mind limitations to ground itself, the mind was only able to reference itself. Wang Feng's mind needed something never-ending and non-repeating to stave off the risk of going blank. He imagined a world, where he roleplayed from the smallest worm to the mightiest lion, becoming a bird self and eating his worm self, and later, being caught by a snake self who squeezed him without mercy until he imagined getting his hollow bones broken, and his imaginary life came to an end. The snake self later fell victim to the elements, leaving nothing but bones, and maggot selves bore themselves out of the snake self's carcass, which morphed into fly selves to bother Wang Feng's other selves.
At this point, Wang Feng was unfathomably old, but he never lost his sense of real self. Every now and then, he would stop what he was thinking and start philosophizing. As a science-minded person, he changed his hypothesis when confronted with a conflicting situation, accepting that he himself existed and has died, and thus, there was an afterlife. Avoiding his obvious biases about the afterlife, he didn't refer to his state as "spirit" or "soul," but instead, as "the untethered self," referring to the body's absence, an integral part of a person. Since he had no brain, he didn't know how he was thinking or what was responsible for the act, and what fuel thinking consumed. He felt more like a machine than a man, and he theorized that either this untethered self contains immense energy that could fuel his thinking for an indefinite amount of time, or he was siphoning some invisible force ambient in the environment.
However, the subconscious, also a part of Wang Feng's mind, resurfaced very often, tormenting him with hallucinations of a rock under a lush green tree that he could never get rid of, no matter how hard he tried. Whenever Wang Feng managed to rip himself from this mental torment, he would put his mind to a task immediately, thinking about something all the time, which was better than getting tormented by his own waking dreams.
People always construct themselves upon a self-image, and Wang Feng fancied himself a man of logic. However, his current situation had him praying for a miracle.
He would sometimes abuse himself for abandoning the things that make him himself in a moment of weakness. He would decide not to do it again, but eventually, times of emotional instability would come again and he would once more beg for supernatural and mythological beings to save him. No one would come to save him, and he would then abuse himself again, thus forming a loop.
Every thought became stale, and thinking became a chore.
The amount of time that passed doubled, tripled, and quadrupled.
Hell continued.
During an unexpected moment, another speck of light emerged. Wang Feng felt like it was the greatest thing that had happened to him. For a hundred years, he adored, loved, hated, ridiculed, fantasized about, called out for, and yearned for his neighboring light. Fifty years later, another speck emerged. Twenty-five years later, there was another. Thirteen years later, a group of ten lights joined in. Another hundred dropped in five years later. Soon enough, appearances started to become a common occurrence.
After a while, the lights from these specks formed a river. It was the most majestic sight he had ever seen. It came from the vast nothingness behind him, stretched all the way to the vast nothingness in front of him, swaying and splitting along the way. And he was a part of this grand thing, as a single speck that helped defy the cruel void.
"River of forgetfulness," Wang Feng murmured.
If he had truly let himself go, he might have forgotten everything. "It seems the real Meng Po soup was the unending flow of time."
Wang Feng didn't dare to assume. He was well aware that he didn't know anything. He was just spewing whatever came to mind.
With the other sparks accompanying him, he was not so hopeless anymore. Existing was once again joyful. As his spark followed the river, he felt elation knowing that events were unfolding, which was marginally better than nothing happening.
Everything aside, the view was amazing. Maybe, just maybe, these other sparks were other people, and all their fates clustered within this giant superstructure made entirely of light or something light adjacent, at least.
He was moving along the vast river, passing by landmarks made by the river itself, getting faster and faster. Soon enough, it all became a blur.
Then suddenly, darkness.
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