This was the birthplace of all things, absolute "zero," the source of origins, the beginning of creation. It contained all that was known and unknown, chaos and order, possibility and impossibility, reason and irrationality, existence and nonexistence...
This place was also called the void.
It was born within the void.
It did not know how it had appeared. From the moment of its birth, it had drifted through the void in a daze, aimless, acting purely on instinct.
Until one moment, it suddenly gained self-awareness and perceived its own existence. By then, it had no idea how long it had been since it first appeared in the void.
Perhaps an instant, perhaps hundreds of millions of years.
There was no concept of laws within the void. Time was likewise part of the laws; laws were fundamentally the "conditions of operation" within a universe and could not exist independently in the void.
Perhaps I am unique, it thought.
It did not know what it should do, nor what it could do.
So it continued drifting through the vast and boundless void, just as it had at the beginning.
It had no concept of boredom. It had been that way since its birth, merely continuing its former existence.
The void was not pure nothingness.
All manner of bizarre scenes changed without cease. Dark Void Energy collided, giving birth to countless tangled and chaotic fragments of information, only for them to vanish into the depths of the Void Tide in the blink of an eye.
It did not know what those fleeting things truly were, nor what meaning their existence held. They were merely "information residue" produced within the void.
It simply watched in silence.
This continued for a very, very long time.
Until one moment, it suddenly noticed that the empty, chaotic