2 The task/mission

The void around me shifted, taking shape, encasing me within.

It was neither solid nor liquid—an ever-changing form that rippled and twisted into geometric patterns. It burned and froze at once, radiating both darkness and light. The void, once still and lifeless, now pulsed with motion, beauty, and something beyond comprehension.

And then, I heard it—the call of the universe.

"The one born and forged in the void… The madman who, through the passage of time, reclaimed his sanity… Will you aid me willingly, in exchange for something?"

I heard sound with all my senses. I could not smell vibration—yet I had smelled it. I could not see sound—yet I had seen it. I could not feel the texture of music—yet I had felt it.

In this moment, every fiber of my being resonated with its voice, reverberating through the void.

"So, it's you. The existence that confined me here for 2.6 billion years?" I asked, my voice indifferent.

Once, I had known the feeling called hatred, but in the endless passage of time, I had forgotten it entirely. After all, I had lost my sanity countless times—only to forget even insanity itself.

If someone were to ask me if I still felt, my answer would be yes. But only one emotion remained—satisfaction. The satisfaction of understanding.

"I am not the one who cast you into this void. Your exile was not fate, nor design, but the consequence of chance—an anomaly within the grand weave of probability. You were caught in a rare rupture in space, a tear that birthed a wormhole. It swallowed you whole and cast you into a place where all things—matter, energy, even you—were crushed into singularity."

"As for how you survived… that too was chance. At the moment of your transfer, another object—a vessel of unimaginable energy, enough to preserve your body and sustain its function—shared the same point of convergence. And in that moment, it fused with you."

The voice paused, reverberating through the void, carrying with it an unfathomable weight.

"Even I am not eternal. Even I have an end. And a black hole… is a part of that end. A remnant of what I once was—an echo of my own decay. It is a place beyond my dominion, a fragment of existence that has already perished. I do not rule over death, only what still remains."

"That is why I could not interfere—until now. But something has changed."

"You have broken a limit. You have reached a state even the singularity cannot contain. The black hole itself now rejects you, seeking to cast you out. It is on the verge of collapse, on the verge of reversing—becoming a white hole. If that happens, you will be expelled violently into existence, your form unable to withstand the transition. You will be erased."

"And so, I have intervened. I have encased you within my embodied form—to shield you from annihilation."

Its voice echoed through existence itself.

"That which connects everything," I murmured.

Then, I spoke with certainty. "You are the universe itself. You are coincidence and probability. You are reality."

"You surprise me. I know you have amassed great knowledge, yet how is it possible for a human to recognize me?"

Its voice carried no emotion, yet I sensed curiosity woven into its words.

"The moment I witnessed that state of matter—one that mirrors topological phases yet embodies wave-particle duality, infused with the properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate and the fluidity of a liquid crystal—I knew."

"A form that shifts in response to my intent, revealing its sentience. A presence that defies observation yet confirms itself through understanding.

It could only be you.

Reality itself."

I spoke, not in awe, but in certainty—as if merely acknowledging an inevitability.

"What does an omnipotent being like yourself need from me?"

"I came to release you, to bestow upon you a gift—to restore an imbalance that has long since spiraled beyond control. But now… I see that my purpose has shifted."

"You stand beyond my reach—not in distance, but in nature. What you have become… is something even I did not predict. A thought untethered from cause and effect. A singularity, not of matter, but of will."

"Your understanding has eclipsed even my foresight, unraveling the very threads of my dominion."

"You are what the Buddhists of Earth call Nirvana. The Nexus of the Iternium. A singularity of thought, a being who has stepped beyond the known and into the untethered truth of the universe itself."

"And yet, even beyond my reach, there is still purpose for you."

"Across the expanse of existence, not all universes persist in harmony. Some unravel, their fundamental laws breaking apart, their constants collapsing into chaos. Left unchecked, they become singularities of destruction—paradoxes that erode the fabric of the multiverse itself."

"So, I shall grant you a task: to traverse these failing realities, to grasp their essence, and to halt their collapse before they bring ruin to all that exists."

"This is not salvation. It is not destruction. It is understanding—the only force that may stand against oblivion."