#43: AWAKE
In the chaos there was nothing, and then he appeared.
It was as if out of thin air.
And then, silence.
It was a world frozen in time.
Before he could say anything, his head was full of noise. It was unceasing, a cacophony of sound. Bells in his frontal lobe, a baby crying in the back. Trains passing by in every direction. At some point, however, it began to make sense. Slowly but surely, the unyielding vibrations that shook his brain came to form a language, and then a voice. There was no sound to it. They spoke through the silent darkness.
SPEAK YOUR NAME
And he did.
The world around him began to change. There was no sound to it. The images came violently, all at once—the beginning of his life, the end of it, the world he shaped, those he loved, those he hated, those he knew only as acquaintances—they all came together here. There was a convulsion, and the need to vomit. Nothing came out.
There was no sound to it.
His life had just begun. It was a sunny afternoon. His mother told him to come over here, be a good boy and come over here, she said. So he did. The sand took her away. He was alone.
There was no sound to it.
If there had been anything for him there, it was the money. The money was the best part. Ambition is only good to a certain extent, and then reality sinks in. Ambition can only get you so far.
There was no sound to it.
Annihilation awaits us all. I must devote myself to God.
There was no sound to it.
The void was filled with his screams, but since it was both endless and a single space, the vibrations did nothing. He so desperately wanted to expel the pain into vibrations, into waves that scattered across the universe, but there was no sound to it. That was the nature of this domain.
Finally, when it came to a halt, he could hear the silence.
There was no sound to it.
“Ho ho,” said the priest.
Time for work.