A technology executive returns home to the Midwest after leaving the corporate world. A pair of supernatural beings show him a vision of the New Earth, a pristine planet existing in a parallel Universe. They send him on a quest which will bring hi...
Atlas was relaxing on his couch one night when he slowly drifted off. His mind floated among the clouds, gliding over the landscape until he came upon a city below.
The hills of Los Antiville spread out before him as he descended into one of the neighborhoods. A perfectly-built cube stood among the vertical rowhouses and condominiums of the street.
Inside was a solitary man, which piqued Atlas's interest. Then, in the blink of an eye, he merged with the man. They melded into one.
Atlas could see through his eyes, and hear his thoughts.
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"I am fundamentally an idea...
"I existed before my physical incarnation...
"Before the universe subdivided once more into my material existence, I was an idea within the mind of the Creator."
That was what he thought, when looking back on his earliest moments.
Timothy sat in an empty room listening to solfeggio music. The blank interior walls of the timber-sided block were lit by a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling.
At that moment, his whole universe was that room. The time of his incarnation seemed so far away, like a world apart.
Now that Timothy was alone — all to himself, he assumed — he had the time to let his mind wander. He could think of anything he wanted, but his thoughts drifted back to the past.
He pondered upon his final day as a technology executive. He had left his office, packed his essential belongings into a suitcase and returned home to Los Antiville on an overnight flight.
All of his adulthood was left behind on that plane. And now Timothy was replaying those moments in his mind, like a repeating song.
Part of himself wished he had never gone into the tech world in the first place. "What if I had attended college somewhere else? What if I had made totally different decisions?"
These were questions that hung in the air around him.
Timothy was a young man, in age and appearance. A youthful face, he looked to be in his teens although he was almost thirty. His baggy clothes made him seem like an adolescent and he wore a purple cap that hung atop his curly, golden hair.
Timothy imagined if he could mentally place himself in any particular point in history — his history or anyone else's — and create a tangential reality, where would it be?
"What would be the purpose of that now?" he asked himself without speaking. "Would it be purely a mental exercise? Would it be an act of will?"
As he sat in the empty room with the single lightbulb blazing overhead, he thought about the reality that he was constructing. "I would rather learn from any given point and then move on," he told himself.
