Phantom senses run through my very nerves, touches of the unborn universe, visions of patterns and darker-than-black shadows fill my periphery. The warmth within my body feels as if burning. The void of information, sending signals of unbelievable cold on my skin. Piercing screaches that echo in the only place that exists past my body, my mind. Shutting my eyes... no difference, but a pain from being unblinking since arriving from transportation.

The taste and feeling of swallowing my own saliva is all I can trust, though in a void beyond void. Within myself I know what's happening. Heart beating. Lungs breathing. Mouth swallowing.

Then Bang.

Envelopped by both a blinding light that made me want to close my already shut eyes. And hit by a force so severe and loud. Standing directly under ground zero as you feel both the bomb hitting you, and it's reaction. Would be putting it in utterly incomparable terms, but the closest, my overstimulated brain could muster.

A befuddling abstraction: life before the Big Bang.

Try this…

Imagine a silent void where neither time nor space exists. Nothing. No short-lived elementary particles. No waves of light.

Not. A. Single. Quark.

Struggling?

The very idea is absurd, to conceptualise nothingness, because nothingness in itself is self-contradictory. To think of nothing is to think of something.

Fine.

Perhaps you can stop thinking altogether. But no—that’s not right either. Absence of thought isn’t nothing. Your neurones still tick and fire, even in blissful slumber or the deepest states of unconsciousness.

And yet, I’m here to tell you that you’ve experienced nothingness before. Right before those two sets of deoxyribonucleic acid fizzled together in the miracle that is life. Remember that?

Of course you don’t—there’s no-thing to remember!

Confused?

Me too. Join me in this spiral of utter bamboozlement and discombobulation!

As I stepped onto my time travel panel, it suddenly started sparking and boomed with a flash of light and deep thunder like sound. As I opened my eyes, saw nothing. Nothing except total white. There’s no sound, not darkness, nothing to feel, smell taste, nothing. No gravity either. I just floated around aimlessly, no form of communication and even if I had a radio or phone, there’s no signal to bounce it off of. This sort of emptiness made me think of one thing, no universe. I realised that the fact there was nothing meant that my time travel panel has somehow malfunctioned and sent me to before the Big Bang. I was now outside the space time continuum. No time, not space, no nothing. No laws of physics either. I was able to separate myself into individual atoms and then form myself again, strange feeling but astonishing. As fun and amazing as this was, I was also trying to find a way to return to my normal universe. Finally after completely rewiring my time travel panel I managed to find a way to overload it and cause enough power to force it through the space time continuum and back home. Eventually it worked and threw me back into my own time and universe. After a while I looked back at how I got back and I found that my explosion back into my own time was the Big Bang and so the universe created me so I could create it and vice versa.

"We did it!" Jeremy said excitedly, stepping back from their brand new Time Caspule 3000™️ "we've accomplished time travel."

"You know where we need to go first, right?" Zach queried, "we need to go back in time to before the universe was created and find out once and for all if it was created by a God or gods, or if the atheists were right."

"You still believe in a supreme being?" Jack asked skeptically. "We created time travel. WE are supreme."

"I guess we'll figure that out 13.8 billion years ago, won't we?" Zach replied. Jeremy chuckled.

"You've been waiting to use that line since we started this project, haven't you?"

Zach grinned mischievously and said, "I've got more."

"We did it!" Jeremy exclaimed, "we achieved time travel."

"You know where we need to go first, right?" Zach asked, "We need to go back in time before the universe was created and find out once and for all if it was created by a God or gods, or if the atheists were right."

"You still believe in a supreme being?" Jack asked. "We made time travel. WE are supreme."

"I guess we'll figure that out 13.8 billion years ago, won't we?" Zach responded. Jeremy chuckled.

"You've been waiting to use that line since we started this project, haven't you?"

Zach grinned mischievously and said, "I've got more."

"They'll have to wait until after we're done solving the universes greatest mysteries." Said Jack impatiently, "Can we go already?"

"Calm down, Jack, we have all the time in the world," Zach replied. "The universe, actually"

"And yet you waste it with your stupid wordplay," Jack said, climbing into the Time Caspule 3000™️ "Are you coming, or am I leaving without you?"

"Shotgun!" Zach shouted excitedly, rushing in to sit next to Jack. Jeremy followed, closing the hatch behind himself.

"Let's go!" Said Zach enthusiastically, "Destination: right before the big bang!" Jack started the complicated launching process. The Time Caspule 3000™️ started to hum, loud and low.

"Here we go!" Jeremy said, pressing the launch button. Nothing happened.

"Why didn't anything happen?" Said Jack, frustrated. "All of the math checks out"

"Maybe if you made the launch button big and red like I told you, it would have worked." Zach said.

"No, I think I know what it is," Jeremy said, flipping a switch under the console, "It's the child safety lock doing it's job" he pressed the button again, and immediately all three of the blacked out.

They came to in a completely different room from the one they were in what felt like to them as just moments before. Zach awoke first and looked around.

"Woah, guys!" He shouted, "all of us were wrong." Jeremy stirred, followed by Jack.

"I guess we're not supreme." Jack said

"Don't touch anything until we think this through" said Jeremy. In front of them all in big lettering were the worst five words any of them have ever read.

       BEGIN THE SIMULATION?       
                    YES / NO

Bonus😁 I leaned back in my chair, chuckling to myself. They actually did it, I felt like a proud father. They actually created time travel. That's why I made them, of course, but I was kind of sad to see them go. Now that my objective is complete, I have no more use for this simulation.

"You still don't have proof that their model will work in real life" I thought to myself. But my engineers were on that right now. Besides, I am sure I made the simulation 100% realistic. I heard a knock on my door.

"Sir?" Came a muffled voice from outside, "It's ready." I took one more look at my computer screen before closing the program. Then I glanced at the picture on my desk, the thing that has kept me going through this 9-year long project. Jack, Jeremy, and Zach, the sons I lost too soon, smiled back at me.

"I'm coming to get you guys," I said "Don't you worry, daddy's coming"

Darkness is all there is.. All I know. All we hear. All they see. Light is a myth and it’s void is so tangible that we can feel the welcomed escape in our marrow. We wait for our eyes to burn from the unfamiliar glow. Escape from this unending pit of nothing. Dark is not a color, a shade.. when it has been one’s whole existence.. it is a state of being. The longing for light echos throughout eternity. The hope of it the only thing keeping our heads titled skyward.

All that we feel, hear, see.. is a morbid repetition of empty. For countless hours, an interminable string of unchanging seconds, reminding us contastantly of the light we lack.

But.. The persistent knowing formed in the corners of our unseen beings scream that sight is just around the bend. Light is hope is Life.

I think about this sometimes. When I try to trace my origins back Deep intro he recesses if my brain. I go back farther and farther, trying to find an anchor to connect to, So much so that I float up and out of myself. Out into the ether, up above the earth Into the stars. Just observing. Taking in the lives below me. Disconnected. But what about before this space? Before the great blue marble and the stars around me? Was it all light? Was it only darkness? Or maybe a time full of flexibility. The universe still forming itself. Swirling in an array or fun house mirrors. Just as a concept begins to take a familiar shape, it morphs into another vision.

Ding dong like a doorbell, A sudden jolt of music, It ends swift and lovely, And soon things begin

Slish splosh like a paint brush, Across a void of black, Little rocks become planets And just as soon break apart

Bash bang like rocks colliding, A new world is made, A chunk comes and thus comes the moon And life begins to splatter

Drip drop like asteroids bringing water, And life beginning to bloom, Soon things begin to shift And others to blow up

Blaze boom like the sun, That we orbit around, Like our own little circle That will never break apart

Where did life go wrong? On a personal level, the answer stares back at me in the mirror every morning as I get ready. But what about on a macro, universal level? I’m sure that it’s far too complicated to succinctly answer with any semblance of certainty. In fact, it’s an unanswerable question that has plagued humanity for eons. Why are any of us here, and why is suffering such an integral part of life?

When I think of how we came to be, I can’t help but imagine an infinite, enveloping darkness— an abundance of nothing, no one, and nowhere. But, miraculously, the universe came to be, and with it came life. I envy those who subscribe to religious beliefs, for it must be comforting to have a definitive answer to the “why” of it all. Those of us who overthink these things and feel the need to question the nature of everything are not so lucky. We can’t just glide through life without that ever-present, parasitic unknown stored in the back of our over-active brains. Purpose and intention elude us, yet we grasp for meaning in everything we do, inevitably being disappointed by our own lofty expectations.

Our whole universe Was in a hot dense state When nearly 14 billion years ago Expansion started, wait This isn’t the song I’m meant to sing But I’m contemplating life and everything The answer I know is 42 But I’ve been thinking that it might be you Because Amy Farrah Fowler Bernadette Rostenkowski Feels like everyone else is so happy I just want someone to hold Me when I’m feeling down I know I sound like a clown But i hope to be stuck with you Like the protons and the neutrons Not electrons on the outside Negatively charged Hating everything my whole life

Because when the earth cooled And the autotrophs drooled Neanderthal developed tools We built a wall Learning math science history Unraveling the mystery Of why I can’t tell you That I care

Although when our whole universe was in a hot dense state Then 14 billion years ago expansion started wait Sheldon Cooper found Amy Farrah Fowler And I can’t even get out of the shower Rajesh koothrapalli Hopeless romantic Finding my life oh so pedantic Not using ‘Ay’ or ‘yuh’ to sharpen my flow But into the cosmos I’ll gladly go Just in the hopes that I could know If she likes me back But the answer is no

I sat in the corner nook of the cafe and opened my laptop to Google. What did I even want to type?

“Coffee?” The waitress walked up to the table with a fresh pot of brew. I grabbed one of the empty mugs on the table and held it up for her.

“Thank you.” I said smelling the delightfully earthy scent of the liquid as she filled my cup.

A gloved hand extended the second cup toward her. I looked over quickly. I had sat here alone yet in the once empty seat before me appeared a cloaked figure.

I stared as she filled the stranger’s cup and left. Though it was morning, I couldn’t see his face under the hood. It was like infinite darkness.

The fact that the waitress that walked me in when I said table for one didn’t even bat an eyelash at his sudden appearance was also concerning to me.

He perched his cup between his fingers and gazed back at me.

“The question you want to ask cannot be answered on that contraption.” He blew the steam from his coffee and continued when I said nothing.

“I am unimaginably old. Older than you can fathom. I was even there before the Universe.”

I laughed at the idea. No one could live that long. Though the strange shit that has been happening to me recently had me hooked to his words.

“What do you mean?” I asked gripping my coffee tighter.

“Let me show you.”

The figure leaned forward and placed an icy hand on mine. In that instant, it felt like I was falling backwards at lightning speed. Like the feeling you get when you fall in a dream and wake up because the end of your fall is the cold hard ground. Except this wasn’t the ground it was complete and utter darkness. Darkness that dragged on for infinite miles save for one spot of light.