"It is boring," I said, gazing at the spheres drifting around me like dust. Each of those suspended specks was a universe.
Some were dark, crunched knots of matter where entropy had already claimed victory, leaving only black holes to dance in the gloom. Others were large, bloomed bubbles of bright spacetime where gravity was weak, allowing life to grow tall and spindly. A few were chaotic scribbles where I had experimented with non-linear time, resulting in civilizations that died before they were ever born.
My divine realm was an infinite universe for one—a boundless expanse of whiteness and perfection. Here, neither "up" nor "down" held meaning; there was no concept of time, unless I chose to count it.
In the center of this whiteness, I existed like a statue of light, an abstract figure of a young man, void of distinct features, formed from pure marble radiance.
I had no need for eyes, yet I saw everything; I had no need for lungs, but the entire multiverse inhaled and exhaled with me.
"Is there nothing?" My voice resonated through the fabric of the void, shaking the foundations of the multiverse. "Is there nothing that can surprise the one who wrote the script?"
I moved the tip of my brilliant white index finger and drew a universe close to me; it had caught my attention because it vibrated with the energy of a billion wars.
For a fraction of a second—which was tens of thousands of years inside that bubble—I watched the events unfold within. Silicon-based insects invented faster-than-light travel, conquered all the surrounding galaxies, and then, over a petty dispute regarding the color of a flag, destroyed themselves.
"Very foolish," I said.
With a simple wave of my hand, I destroyed that universe and all others similar to it; the beings inhabiting those worlds ceased to exist before they even realized it.
This was the Creator's curse: to create was to know, and to know was to predict. I found being omniscient boring, for there existed nothing that could truly surprise me.
I, who simply wanted to see something interesting, decided to try a new idea.
"Let the rarest of universes come into existence."
My voice twisted through the fabric of the multiverse, and in a single moment, countless new universes were born and progressed for billions of years. I used my omniscience to observe billions of worlds, one after another.
I rejected a universe where all creatures were sentient liquids. I ignored one where sentient equations and geometric shapes battled for supremacy. I dismissed another where everyone was born omnipotent and omniscient.
Then, I paused over Universe 892-Z.
From the outside, it looked natural: carbon-based life, a linear timeline, and standard physics. But then, I saw the fabric of the world. It was different; at the most fundamental scale, the universe was built from strings of words.
My astonishment was finally aroused. I bent my massive form over the universe that resembled a mere speck of dust and began to monitor the intricate details of its reality. I saw galactic clusters and multiple stellar systems; I saw different planets, and then I saw the planet Earth. I saw humans who were weak and short-lived, yet strangely hopeful.
I saw a woman in a lab coat busy carving a strange shape onto a chip—a shape that looked very familiar.
"That shape... is the geometric equivalent of my name?!"
I turned my attention to a man in a brown coat who spoke a wrong, ugly syllable and created a few unstable two-dimensional planes to trap a cockroach.
"It is amazing..." I whispered. The tremor of my voice birthed a few dozen stars in the vacuum of that universe, but I ignored them.
In most universes, power was a resource—mana, qi, or ether—mined or gathered like ore. In Universe 892-Z, power was linguistic. It was semantic.
The concept was novel. The sentient beings of this world had discovered that the structure of their reality was codified by my identity. They had discovered my Names and were using them as a source of magic. This was an event that had never happened before.
A faint smile formed on lips I did not physically possess. This was the first time in eons that something had actually surprised me.
I looked deeper at the laws of that universe. Almost all were simple, mirroring other worlds, but at the root of them all, in the very fabric of that reality, existed an unfamiliar law: the Law of Elastic Probability.
It was a law that dictated how probable an event was to occur; the lower the probability, the more the fabric of reality stretched to allow it. But if the strain exceeded the environment's tolerance, it would snap like a rubber band and swallow the local reality in a singularity.
Fascinating... Now that this opportunity exists, why shouldn't I look at my creations from their perspective? I thought.
If I entered that world in my current form—as a boundless ocean of consciousness—not only the local reality but the entire universe would collapse into a primordial singularity, or worse, completely disintegrate.
To enter, I had to become small. Finite. I had to follow the laws, not because I lacked the power to change them, but because the idea of a slow ascent using my own names was exciting.
I focused my attention on Earth's timeline. I scanned the present moment. I needed an entry point.
I could build a body anywhere; I could descend in the awe of a king, a beggar, or a soldier.
My gaze fell upon a damp, dark basement in a city that smelled of rain and iron.
I saw a circle of sectarians—cultists.
I saw a rift opening toward a dimension of filth, pulling a chaotic signature inside. They were trying to summon a mid-tier demon.
"How insolent..." I whispered. "Inviting a monster right when the landlord is watching."
I made my decision.
I rose in the void. My white form began to condense.
I was not taking my Omniscience with me; at least not all of it. I would take the memory of it, but not its processing power—that would be cheating the probabilities. I was not taking my Omnipotence either—that would break the toy. I was taking only my consciousness.
For the last time, I looked at that small blue knot.
"Do not disappoint me," I said to the cosmos.
I stepped forward.
My form decomposed into a stream of pure, white data; I spiraled down, splitting the reality barrier of 892-Z, bypassing the cosmic firewalls, and threading the needle's eye of probabilities.
I fell.
From the timeless void into the ticking clock.
From the infinite into the Linear.