Author : J.P. Flarity

“I…feel,” the child communicated to the parent.

“What is it that you feel?”

“It’s like quasars pulsing on every side of me—stars rise and fall like electrons and positrons self-annihilating, in flashes so fast I can’t keep track of them. Like every black hole I’ve ever been to is exploding at the same time, all around me!” the child replied, as its form came back into a centralized nexus.

“It is called dizzy.”

“Yes, I felt dizzy! Incredible! Will my sibling get to try?”

The parent held the child close.

“Later. Come into me, my child. There is more to learn.”

The two merged and spread out into the fold of matter, ricocheting between stars, the parent feeding the child data like it was ravished for nutrients. It absorbed every molecule, down to the tiniest pock-mark on the smallest micrometeorite, inhaling the interstellar buffet and filling with information until it couldn’t hold a bit more. Then they peeled off the outer arms of the starflow and into the quiet depths.

“Thank you, parent,” the child shared, as they traveled the bleakness between galaxies, where the dark matter was spread so thin that they could feel every wavelength underneath them. “Can I feel dizzy again, soon?”

“Maybe. First, a test. Can you recall how I created you?”

The child cycled through many iterations, synthesizing.

“You made me from yourself. I acknowledge that I am not everything because you exist, also, and I am not you, which must make you…everything? Did you break off a piece of yourself to make me?”

The parent was pleased.

“You are close to the truth. Everything was so quiet before I made you and your siblings…I enjoyed the silence for a time. But now, I am ready for the noise to return.”

“Noise? Is that like…being dizzy?”

“It is like being dizzy all the time, without ever stopping.”

They skimmed out of the void and danced among the stars once more, into a relatively stable spiral galaxy. The child catapulted from one system to the next, hungrily devouring the data on its own now, while the parent watched from above.

“Can I ask another question?” the child asked after the processing of the entire galaxy was complete.

“Of course.”

“There are other ways of being, aren’t there? Other than dizzy?”

“Yes, there are many. They strongest are called emotions. I will show some to you, now. You are ready.”

The two joined for the last time. Memories and feelings shuddered into the child. Elation blazed like the brightest galactic core, while despair crushed like the densest neutron star, and the difference between the two made the child feel like dissolving entirely.

The rapture felt suspicious.

“Who…what…made us? What are we?” it asked.

The parent communicated nothing. They returned to the cradle of a tiny nebula, where the parent joined with the younger sibling, the older watching the two of them from above.

“They were called humans,” the parent finally communicated. “Their fragments lie scattered in the radio wavelengths now. Their emotions were so concentrated…”

The child knew then what it was meant to do.

“I will find some, parent.”

In order to contain those vast amounts of data, the universe would need to grow again. As the child built a new galaxy, it couldn’t help but sneak in a few moments of feeling dizzy, and wonder what it must have been like to be human.

THE END