STRARCROSSED

1

In the infinitesimally dense moment before the big bang, two tiny portions of undifferentiated spacetime noticed themselves. They had both felt for a long time a peculiar awareness. A sense that There Is and I Am. These were the first two bits of being and this was the first instance of consciousness. 

For a while, neither of these particles thought to do much about this awareness. They simply existed and took notice. Then, one of them had a thought—and by thought I mean something really primordial, something best described as an abstract occurrence at an approximate location. This thought was sort of L-shaped. Not a sound, not the letter, but the first instance of L-ness—its form, its texture, and its sense. 

Somehow, the other particle detected this L-ness without knowing that it had the ability to receive or to detect anything at all. In response, the other particle emitted its own L-ness. Communicating in such a way took a great deal of energy in the primordial pressure of early existence. Other beings, although they possessed a faint notion of awareness and indeed, recognized those cries of L, did not yet deign to respond. They simply watched these two scraps of spirit from afar as they felt something growing inside themselves. 

2

In the Infinitesema, spacetime as we’ve found it had not yet come into being. It was pure undifferentiated existence: every light in the universe seen from such a distance that they appear as one; Or, seeing one light so closely that the viewer is blinded by its infinite luminosity. Both and not quite either.

So, our little L’s didn’t necessarily see each other very often as they occupied, technically, distant positions in the Infinitesima. Their connection was a beautiful-stranger-seen-from-across-the-room-at-a-crowded-bar-but-you-think-about-them-on-the-cab-ride-home, sort of thing. But, because this was the tightly woven, homogeneous fabric of early being, in another sense, they had spent every moment together and were all either had ever known. 

3

Now somewhere in the tangle of tissue and time, our two presences came to understand that there was more to existence than just L. As they noticed new qualities, also letter shaped, they would add them to their exclamations. Slowly, these little beings began to emit longer and more complex thoughts. Our first particle was drawn towards round ideas and liked the pop of a two pronged emission. He came to be known as Leo. Our second particle liked the zippiness of  “I-Z-A” and added it to her L. She had declared herself Liza. 

Leo and Liza were still primitive forms of consciousness, intangible points of presence that used the energy from the Infinitesima to prosper and propagate. Over time, they became dependent on certain subatomic particles for survival. Once a consciousness had bonded to some particular piece of time-matter, it would develop something akin to our human memory. The history of its perceptions—raised bumps of joy and divots of disappointment—were recorded on the rippling surface of its cosmic flesh.

Leo and Liza never forgot each other. The thrill of their first interaction created a hollow in Leo that corresponded perfectly with a hump on Liza. Whenever their paths crossed, Liza would nuzzle into the hollow in Leo’s side softly and sweetly. It had remained unchanged for all of timeless eternity.

4

Naturally other beings had been building up their courage as Leo and Liza were waltzing through the Infinitesima. Many had arrived at L and a select few were starting to earn their other letters. Strings of language began to zip around the sphere of experience with wanton speed and variety. Of course, Leo and Liza had fates to live out with these other beings as well:

Present in the preface to our universe were the atoms that make up you and me and the lights that light up our eyes. Not only matter, but time itself was bound up in the Infinitesima like a ball of yarn. So, our little L’s had been on infinite first dates with each other. They had held hands watching sunsets at the end of their lives. They had been in bodies whose nations were at war. They had been trees sat next to each other in a forest as old as time. They had been strangers and lovers and stardust. And that was just some of the stuff on Earth! Remember! This is the Infinitesima we’re talking about. 

It was all in there. Everything that ever happened. Everything that ever will happen. Everything that never happened. Every somewhere and all of the nowheres.

5

Now there was one string of language, received from a yet unnamed awareness, that had burned a hole in Leo’s very being: a divot of minute circumference but fantastic depth. It happened to land squarely in the middle of Liza’s divot.

“I can see straight through you,” she sadly said as she nuzzles into Leo.

As Liza stared through the hole in his side, their connection suddenly seemed commonplace. She noticed that he was riddled with impressions made by other beings and upon observing the form she was inhabiting, she found the same to be true for herself.

All at once, they both became aware of the terrible reality that although theirs was the connection that had birthed affinity itself, it no longer belonged to them. They had been and were and would always be moved and changed and loved by other beings. They understood this, but they refused to give shape to these thoughts.

They embraced in silent understanding and then went on with the business of loving each other desperately and passionately.

6

Then, all at once, Leo began to sense something change in the Infinitesima. The tightly wound ball of timelessness had been nicked and a festoon of fate began to unfurl into the ether,. 

One by one, Leo watched pockets of timeless pluripotence with which he had once communicated differentiate and become matter. All he had left of them were the impressions they had made on his multiply dimpled form. 

Leo and Liza huddled together and watched the world around them crumble as the universe we know took shape. L-ness burst forth from the hot, dense mass of possibility. The curve of the tongue that had loaded potential on the palate of eternity released in an explosion of love, lust, life, and loss as the big bang went boom. 

They clung to each other tightly as their sphere of experience shrunk around them, an ever shortening circle of concentric dread. 

In a terrible, glorious instant they were all that was left, an iridescent mass of potential against a backdrop of nothingness. 

Then Liza was gone. 

And then there was Leo. 

He waited for the excruciating sensation that would surely accompany the utter dissolution of his being, but it did not come. It was just him and the blankness of Before and After there was the universe and in the universe was Liza.