It was just a Tuesday. The thought seemed to py on repeat as I drifted endlessly through nothing. A Tuesday. Arguably, the most boring day of the week. It doesn’t get the infamy of Mondays, Wednesdays are interesting by default as they’re the middle of the week, on Thursday everyone looks forward to Friday, Friday is beloved because for many it marks the beginning of the freedom of weekends, and Saturday and Sunday are interesting because they’re the weekend. Tuesday is boring. Tuesday is ignored. Tuesday is nothing. I guess that’s fitting, isn’t it? I mean, I am floating in nothing after all. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself, but it felt like nothing was all there ever was, is, and will be.

  Let me go back a few however-long-it’s-beens. The morning started as average as mornings get. I got up, brushed my teeth, ate, drank way too much coffee, and went to work. I work as a researcher for Tomorrow Now, a company that creates technology for animals. I only work on the lower-level biology research, so I don’t have the authority to know what exactly the company aims to do with this technology or why their motto is “Dando cuniculos arma est omnino non suspiciosum, et si nos ad iudicium ducas, te delebimus.” I was working on analyzing the genome of the common rabbit to reveal their hidden intelligence, while working with our engineering department to create a compatible link between neurons and complex circuitry. Of course, that was just the official job. On the side I liked to research dinosaurs with the goal to eventually create a complete map of the Isanosaurus genome based on well-preserved fossils and their closest evolutionary retives. Today, however, it quickly became clear that overconsumption of caffeine has consequences. I had to take an early break because I couldn’t concentrate and decided it was time for a walk.

  Luckily my b building was beside a forest trail leading up a mountain. It was a very average day. The weather was not too hot or too cold, but not quite perfect weather. It was a pleasant yet uneventful walk. The trees were green, the grass was grassy, and the sky was blue. Like I said, very average. I’d walked this trail many times (which may or may not have been due to overconsumption of caffeine), and today fresh air immediately cleared my mind. With the slight rustle of the trees and rushing of nearby stream it was easy to get lost in thought. As I walked I couldn’t shake a strange feeling that I was being watched. At the time I bmed it on it on the caffeine but as I floated in the nothing I’ve had an unknowable amount of time to ponder, and I’ve been forced to wonder if there was more to the strange feeling than an overactive brain. I’ve been doing a lot of pondering since getting trapped here, but I’m getting ahead of myself again.

  As I walked in the forest it began to rain. This was of course not on the weather forecast. I was aware of this discrepancy between predicted and real weather. One of my greatest accomplishments in my 25 years of life was creating a complex equation to predict when the weather forecast will be right. This equation was already 38.33% more accurate than the weather forecast and it had been an ongoing project to improve the accuracy. I didn’t know it would rain, but I did know that the predicted 10% chance of rain was wrong. I didn’t bother bringing an umbrel because my equation is very unspecific and the true likelihood of rain was anywhere from 10.001% to 100%. The rain went from mild drizzle to shower-level water quickly and I decided to seek shelter under some trees, but I couldn’t find one with dense enough leaves. I eventually came across a cave in the side of a cliff. I was initially hesitant to approach as the strange feeling was stronger as I got closer to the cave, but the rain was getting heavier. I rushed into the cave.

  As my eyes adjusted to the darker conditions I noticed some crystals with an ethereal glow. Something drew me in to these crystals, their crystal structure unlike anything I’d ever seen before. They somehow fshed in a nonsensical pattern, and when I leaned in to get a closer look I thought I heard otherworldly whispering. These whispers seemed familiar somehow. This made no sense because the noise they made was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It didn’t make audible noise, but it echoed endlessly through all matter on Earth. I didn’t know how long I stood there listening to the secret sounds of the crystals, but I was eventually able to look away. Attempting to draw the strange structure in my notebook was impossible since no matter how many lines and shading I added it never came close to the beauty of the real thing. At that point the cave was getting dark. Whether that was more dense rain clouds or the time of day I had no way of knowing. I wandered deeper into the cave, hoping to discover the origins of the crystals.

  Not knowing how deep the cave was only added to the sense of excitement I felt. I had never gone this far into the forest and had never seen anything about a cave in this area on any tourist advertisements. I had never gone on anything remotely this adventurous before, the thrill of discovery suppressing the rational part of my brain telling me it was very stupid indeed to go into a dark cave with no backup and no equipment. The deeper I wandered, the stronger my strange feeling became. I felt I was getting close to something big, something powerful, something with the power of infinite knowledge, the power to change the course of humanity forever. The otherworldly crystals only cemented this idea in my mind. This is crazy! You’re a scientist, Rose. This isn’t one of those sci-fi novels! This is real life and the periotic table totally has elements that make cool fantasy crystals that glow and whisper sensical nonsense, I tried to tell myself as I ventured further into the cave. Any concept of time had already abandoned me in the powerful presence of the crystals. As I walked I began to notice denser clumps of crystals. Obviously this excited me and I began to walk faster, even breaking into a run as I saw the rgest crystal I had ever heard of in the distance. The light from the crystal lit the cave almost to the same extent as the fluorescent lights in my b, yet it was also unlike any lightbulb. The glow seemed to be pure energy. This light rejuvenated me more than pure caffeine ever could. I was mesmerized by the glow once again, the whispers also getting more intense. I was already sprinting, but I found the energy to run faster. This was my greatest mistake and perhaps the best thing that could have happened to me. I didn’t see the bottomless pit in my haste to get to the crystal. I fell into the nothing.

  ∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

  I didn’t know how long it took for me to realize the pit was bottomless. I must have screamed for at least 5 minutes judging by the state of my vocal cords. Upon the realization that I wan not doomed to death via becoming a pancake on the ground I attempted to assess my surroundings. However, I quickly realized that there were no surroundings and I was simply floating in endless darkness. I say “floating” instead of “falling” because there were no more directions. Gravity had ceased to have any influence on me or my internal systems. I tried to look up to where I had left the cave only to realize there was no up or any other direction. There was no light from the crystals. There was no light at all. It didn’t take long for time to lose all meaning. I was wearing a watch, but it seemed very confused by my predicament. The hands twitched clockwise, counterclockwise, and any other direction to the point where even that lost all meaning. The hour hand was faster than the minute hand and the second hand was just acting possessed. I say this as if I could see in this ck of light, but I couldn’t. Or maybe I could. Who cares? I just know. Just as I knew that I was well on my way to not being on Earth anymore. I was pretty sure I was beyond anything Earth could ever hope to comprehend. I was struck with the knowledge that I was on the precipice of greatness. I also hoped that greatness would come sooner rather than ter because this endless darkness was becoming endlessly boring.

  Eventually this new world took on a meaning of its own. Perhaps it always had meaning but I was too meaningless to see it. I started noticing different shades of darkness. There was still no light, but different parts of the nothing had different energetic qualities. This made about as much sense to me as the crystals. There was no expnation but that was okay because it cannot be understood. Of course, this did not stop my mind from being incredibly annoyed that this phenomenon was unknowable. I had always looked for the expnation to things. Everything that was had an answer. Every phenomenon could be expined using science and research. This was entirely different; I just knew the only certainty here is that there is no certainty. There was never a reason and there never would be. I knew this was a pce meant to make molecules themselves question the fundamental ws of physics. A pce of contradictions. It makes no sense and all the sense. Infinity is a quantifiable thing. A solid is a gas. A pnet is a mere speck. There is more that anyone could ever see, but there were some that could. I would never love gravity again. I was there for exactly π infinities and that was okay.

  After a while of pondering all existence I saw a strange glow in the distance. Interesting. I had forgotten glows exist. The thing slowly got closer to me until I could make out its shape. It was still difficult to make out in the dark since the thing had a bck glow, but it looked like a string of numbers. Did I forget to mention I could see bck glows now? Spending several infinities in a nothing that only has other shades of nothing will apparently do that to a human. As the numbers got closer I felt a strange unease taking over my body. It was almost as if the numbers wished only for unspeakable evil. I knew this made no sense but sense had lost all meaning. When they were close enough to touch me I could feel judged. It was as if the numbers were as surprised to see me as I was to see them. Again, I knew numbers did not have feelings and could not judge me but I couldn’t shake the feeling that whatever the numbers decided would change my destiny. They quivered. I momentarily knew they had decided I was too insignificant to care about before I passed out. The st thing I remember was the retreating form of the numbers as they drifted into the nothing…

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