The old one.

Act 1

He had been alive for so long he'd forgotten more than most species would ever know in their entire existence. He couldn't even recall how old he was himself, and he didn't care either.

He had been alone for as long as he could remember too, and couldn't say for sure if he'd ever not been alone. There had to have been a time when he had had company he supposed.

Hey, why don't you check out my sponsors? They're awesome and their content is fascinating!

Didn't he once have a family or at least parents?

He couldn't recall, and he didn't care about that either. All he knew was that he was searching and that he had been searching for... how long had it been since he'd come across something that had interested him, anyway? He couldn't recall. Neither could he recall what it had been the last time that he had been interested in something.

But there had to be something somewhere, right?

So he slipped into another quantum dimensional plane and entered yet another Universe in the hope that this reality would yield something that would be interesting enough for him to capture his attention. He severely doubted it when his consciousness became aware of everything in the Universe he was in now. In many ways, it resembled so many other universes he'd been to and had found nothing to capture his attention. A bit of matter, scattered all over the place, and some bright energy linked to it to the point of them being interchangeable. Most of this universe was, like many others, mostly made up of the kind of matter and energy without substance and had only one property of itself on the same dimensional plane as the other matter and energy.

It did not look promising.

The bright energy and the matter were mostly distributed haphazardly throughout this universe with large areas almost empty and lumps of it scattered about. Those lumps all individually moved away from all the other lumps and he noticed they did so with an increasing velocity. That made him blink, and take a closer look. Ah, the lumps didn't increase in speed. The fabric of this reality's space was expanding at an accelerating rate. In the millionth of a second it took him to blink and look closer he'd seen that everything in this universe was moving away from a single point which made him search his memory. Had he ever encountered such an oddly behaving Universe before? He couldn't recall with any certainty.

For a thousandth of a millisecond, he felt a flicker of excitement as he dared to allow himself to wonder, just for the slightest of moments, if this might be a universe that could pique his interest. Even that simple flicker of excitement he felt at the prospect of something was enough to make him giddy with joy.

It had been at least...

eons and eons ago when he had last felt anything like that.

He decided at that moment. If something was interesting about this Universe, or in it, he was going to take great care to make the finding of it, and experience it, take as long as he could and make it last as long as he could.

He knew that if the universe turned out to be uninteresting and yielded nothing worthy of his attention he'd be depressed for another eternity but it was a risk he was willing to take.

He focussed himself on this one single quantum plane on which this reality existed and then physically into this one universe, and then he even phased out of most of the dimensional planes in which the majority of this Universe did not exist.

He then willed himself into a form with which he could interact with the different forms of matter and energy in this Universe and only then allowed his perception to open again.

His mind reeled with the experience.

If nothing else that experience alone was the most interesting he'd experienced in as long as he could remember.

It even took him a millionth of a second to understand what it was he was perceiving.

Linear time, in some way connected to the space in this universe, expanding outward from a single point.

Linear time with a direction forward and backward, and the space and time even had a beginning.

A place and time beyond which both did not exist. Or at least, beyond which it had not existed, he corrected himself, deciding to immerse himself even more into experiencing the reality of this Universe.

For an eon or two,

which here could be measured and quantified in a way he'd not even considered until then, he simply amused himself by observing that single place and time at which the space and the time of this universe exploded into this reality's existence.

In the scale of things, as he experienced it, that was quite a big bang that accompanied that event.

He then decided to observe closely the chain of events that unfolded after that big expansion and marveled at the oddity that everything in this Universe was bound by linear time and not only that, everything only went in one direction in that linear time.

Everything went forward through time, vastly increasing the differentiation between cause and effect.

An actual strictly adhered to causality,

he decided after he'd observed the first few eons of this universe's existence in its odd linear way.

He then decided that he wanted to take in more of this universe in greater detail and to become an energy form very similar to that existing in this Universe and to observe the various odd ways in which the energies and matter in this universe existed. He had noticed that matter in this universe developed, linearly, into many different forms, and that those forms interacted with each other, the energy forms in this universe, and indeed with this universe's space and time in many different ways.

He also noted that energy and force existing in the 6th and 9th-dimensional planes had an effect on space-time and matter in the dimensional handicapped universe

He knew of course that in most universes where energy and matter existed, they influenced each other and interacted with each other there very often also existed forms of life.

Lifeforms which, as far as he could remember (which, he had to admit, was less than he was comfortable admitting to), began in some form of matter, converting other matter into energy to sustain matter. Something like that he was sure.

These forms of life mostly wound up as sentient energy forms and some even succeeded in achieving becoming what they had been for the past couple of billion years; non-corporeal multidimensional extra reality multidimensional neurally cohesive entities.

Entities exist as pure energy, except with consciousness. But as far as he knew none of the forms of life he had ever encountered or had knowledge of existed in the constraint of linear time. At least, not that he could remember.

He decided that, even if just to make this experience last as long as it could, he should investigate if life existed in this universe and if it did he'd go for the full experience and exist as one of those life forms himself for a while.

A nanosecond later

He knew all forms of life that existed in this realities Universe and he was, surprising not in the least to himself, astonished.

Never before, as far as he could remember, had he encountered so many different kinds of life in so many different forms simultaneously existing in the same reality and universe.

Life in this realities Universe ran the gambit from triple atom replication to non-corporeal lifeforms able to traverse the multi-verse and across dimensions. None were as sophisticated as he was but some, like those calling themselves and most everything else "Q", we're pretty close.

And of course, almost all of them are handicapped in their existence and evolution by the constraints of this universe's linear time.

It took him nearly three nano-seconds to decide which life-form he'd exist as for a while, but he did eventually, And a nano-second later he had taken the form of a life-form that called itself "Human".

He had chosen a matter-based form of life, carbon-based, which was so young they'd not even spread beyond their galaxy of origin!

How marvelously clueless and blissfully ignorant their minds were! He had not ever felt such joy and happiness, or at least not that he could remember!

Most euphoria-inducing

was when he realized he was existing and experiencing the passage of linear time. He could not tell what was to come and could do nothing to affect anything that had become the past.

What had happened in the past affected the moment he existed in, and what happened at the moment he existed would affect what would be in what was to come!

What an unimaginable way of existing these lifeforms had! Their entire existence was dominated and shaped by the linear passage of time and the order of cause and effect, which they called "causality".

Even communication was shaped by the linear passage of time. One could only communicate with others that existed in the now, and much of the communication proceeded in a back and forth manner. One life form communicated something and then another one communicated in return, its communication was based on what the first one had communicated before.

To Be Continued!

Please let me know if you like me to continue this story!

Thank you for reading this.

Stay safe and stay happy.

@AnonSunamun