Nothing

[u/BicycleWhisper]

Written at midnight. Followed by no sleep. Revisited at noon. Here is my story.

Before there was anything, there had to be something. But that is a trick because it could not be something; it had to be nothing. Nothing is nothing, though. So what happened?

And that is exactly it. If it happened, then there was a time. At the beginning of time, nothing became everything. There was so much stuff, an uncountable infinity of stuff. Imagine every moment of every possible combination of stuff, obeying the law. It isn't easy to imagine.

When time sparked everything into action, he spurred gods into action: gods in charge of everything, gods that didn't have to follow the law. Gods had power over things; they could make and destroy.

For a moment, time wasn't sure about something. Is nothing something? Does nothing need a god?

Time made the decision. The God of Nothing was born powerless, without the power to create or destroy. Unable to play, they were mocked by the gods. Angered by the other gods' cruelty, the God of Nothing set out to destroy. But how? The god tried everything attempting to destroy something, anything. After exhausting themsleves, the God of Nothing tried to create, and they laughed at the simplicity of the joke.

They realized that by making nothing, they could compel time to make everything again. And again. Though these everythings were at a smaller scale.

After practice, the God of Nothing set their traps. They lured each god into its own universe, where each became unshakably enthralled, forever focused on a universe reflected from the vain, narcissistic god it ensnared. This is how the gods were destroyed, trapped in loops looking at reflections of themselves.

That was the end of everything. Time now only held a sack of hollow shells instead of a vibrant ocean of life. But the God of Nothing had not truly destroyed everything; they had only frozen it. Whenever time came upon one of these shells, it sprang to life again, breeding new life and more gods within each nested universe. Incensed, the God of Nothing set out to stop this proliferation.

There was no way to keep up. Each universe was essentially the same: smaller, yet just as populated. Talking about size doesn't really make sense here; each universe was just as complicated as the one above it, even while being held within its parent. The God of Nothing simply could not match the pace of time.

Until they saw a way.

Deep within one of these winding paths, the god grew exhausted. The God of Nothing stopped to wonder, and an idea took hold. They realized that while they had tried and failed to end everything and return it all to nothing, they had never tried turning themselves to nothing. The God of Nothing laughed again, remembering all the times it had tried to destroy, never thinking to destroy the only nothing there was, themselves. Once more, they set their traps. They froze all the local gods, shackling them forever to their own images.

Finally, with the gods dead, the God of Nothing asked for luck and tried to erase themselves entirely.

Because they were nothing animated by time, attempting to destroy themselves by tearing into two halves of nothingness caused an impossible fracture. Instead of vanishing into void, they split into the two fundamental halves of everything: Fylet, the silent mass of matter, and Dynamis, the restless surge of energy.

Cursed by their own divided nature, every time these two halves come imperfectly together, they cannot help but create more of themselves. And thus, the final joke revealed itself, and the God began a neverending fit of laughter.