Friday, December 17, 2021

Image and Likeness

Short Story
Image and Likeness

(Originally published in Triune, NEVER STOP NEVER QUIT, 2020)

I always thought of myself as a good man, although it is true my flaws were significant and my actions sometimes repugnant. When my body finally relinquished its time in your world, however, 72 people openly wept and 367 mourned my loss. One person gave no matter to the event. The remaining 7,834,622,801 souls alive knew nothing of my impact on salvation. In 126 years, my existence was completely forgotten, only to resurface when you asked that question—we were not prepared for this catechism.

I know your curiosity, for the same search guided my existence in form. I discovered all expressions our essence would share, collecting the knowledge in all questions of history and satisfying my senses with answers I could not yet fathom. I took my last breath when there would never be more to know. The moment I accumulated the richness of a world to come, everything vanished.

Darkness. Two thousand millennia…more. Infinite time expired before that first moment when your world’s existence began. Countless iterations of infinite possibilities of time and realities past before your single existence came to be, just as so many more sprang in the next instance. I chose not to burden you with the responsibility of eternal bliss. There was nothing that I could influence to change the outcome of your one true existence; you alone drove your fate; you alone made the decision to not seek guidance. I was not so.

You called out to proclaim to me that salvation is now upon us! In this first moment, you hear the guidance and calling of existence. It is not muted by, nor does it drown the variables of existence you only care to quantify as infinity. For as long as time exists, our creation is defined by this understanding.

I am comforted by the knowledge that you will guide me through those moments of my life, for I was not as strong as she will be.


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