A small, roughly molded ball of stone, blue and green at its surface. It is unlike any I’ve seen before. It looks delicious. I am hungry, very, very hungry, but I can’t muster the appetite to eat this one. Even now I miss the taste of it, the euphoria, the agony, all those delicious feelings trapped in those tiny little spheres.
Finding the best tasting spheres is a difficult process. Most that I can find are plain, the stale taste of rust and rock leaves an unpleasant aftertaste. The vapor ones can certainly be tasty but are hardly filling. No, the best ones you can find are the loudest. The gourmet spheres sing like the screech of a thousand comets whizzing by. They scream and they bark and they argue, discuss and contemplate, share affection and weep. I’m not sure exactly what those spheres are or who they intend to speak to, there certainly aren’t enough of them around. I suppose I shouldn’t judge though, for I have yet to find another to share my thoughts with.
This place can get quite lonely. It’s large, larger than even I can fully wrap my understanding around. I always thought that there might be someone like me around here somewhere, that if I traveled for long enough and looked hard enough, I might find them. I have long since realized, however, that I won’t find them. I suppose it hasn’t been so long though, only a few quintillion years. Maybe I might find someone in a few quadrillion more, but I don’t have high hopes as of now.
It is all the stranger that I have found the spheres in this vast abyss. They speak similarly to me, or at least in a way that I can understand. Every talking sphere that I’ve encountered has spoken differently, millions and billions of voices articulate in different cadences, different dialects. I think at times that the spheres speak to themselves, their millions and billions of voices conversing, interweaving like atoms in stardust, their words ultimately snuffed out by the endless emptiness of the void.
I’ve never been able to speak. For a long time, I didn’t know that thoughts could be exchanged with others, not until I found the spheres. It makes me feel quite strange that I cannot speak in the way that they can. Those spheres harbor something strange which I don’t intrinsically, something odd that makes me shiver every time I’m in its presence. I believe they called it… emotion? Not having that made my mind ripple and crawl over itself, made my being ache and churn. So I ate them.
Finding one of the talking spheres is no simple task. Often, I must settle for the subpar, empty mineral ones just to sate my hunger, but finding one of those delectable talking spheres always makes it worth it. Eating those beautiful little rock balls has taught me so much: joy, humor, anger, anguish, disgust. One of them that I have begun to feel very often was… what was it called… Paty? Porty? No no, pity. Yes, pity. When I first find the talking spheres, they are made of a million different emotions, mixed together like the light of an ancient nebula. When they eventually heed my arrival, they all turn into one emotion simultaneously, fear I believe. Or maybe it was horror, or terror perhaps? It seems to me that they take offence to my eating them, which I never intend. I don’t mean to make them feel such a way, really, but they must understand why I must eat them. I must, I absolutely must.
As of late, my desire to consume the talking spheres has been ever increasing. I devour one after another, filling myself up with their emotions, their memories. I eat and I eat, but my appetite is never satisfied. I need more, always more, always some new feeling stronger than the last. I feel heavy, I now drag the weight of a million of a billion minds that scream to be freed, that cry for the pain to end. I feel pity, but I am still hungry. Every new sphere tightens the knot that forms in my center, the mass that makes up my being folds in on itself, growing and growing, contorting and mutating. I am becoming as supermassive as the space I inhabit but still, I am empty. I need more, I need more, I need more, I need…
The blue and green stained rock before me is tiny, one of the smallest talking spheres I’ve ever found. It’s hardly worth consuming, really. Maybe, just this once, I don’t have to. Instead, I stay and watch as the little sphere spins, the balls fearful cries ringing out into nothing. There’s that feeling again, pity. I thought that maybe this time it wouldn’t be as difficult to face, but even after ten quadrillion years it still feels the same. After some time, though, the screaming stops. In place of its fear is something else: relief, wonder, amazement, excitement, even. I can’t believe it, had I prompted the rock to feel this way? My hunger makes itself know to me, but I resist the urge to consume this one so soon.
I decide to stay and watch a little longer. After only a year, so much of the rock has changed. I hear so many new voices, hear them change and deepen, I watch the texture of the ball change and morph, watch the greenery birth and die. I watch for another hundred years, then a thousand, then a million and a million-million more. The sphere talks to itself about a great big thing in space, the great darkness that watches over idly. It calls me by many names: the titan, the black thing in the sky, God. I hear that name often, God, I believe I may have heard it from another talking sphere once before. I think it may have me confused for someone else, but I suppose I can’t know for sure.
It’s difficult to make out a singular voice through the noise. They melt together into a sea of sound, waves of laughs and screams ripple through each other like the coalescence of two galaxies. After listening for long enough, one of the spheres voices punctures through the rest.
“Please God,” it says, its voice deep and raspy. “Please, hear me. I have a favor I must ask of you.” The sphere, is it speaking to me? I suppose it must be, what other ‘God’ could it be referring to? I listen as the sphere speaks.
“I don’t ask much of you, I’m only a man looking for… well, I don’t know, I guess. A sign maybe?” I’ve always wondered why the sphere called itself that, ‘Man’. It continues.
“My life hasn’t gone the way I was expecting. I got a degree, I found a wife, I was going to be an astronomer. I was supposed to be something, I really was. Then life caught up with me, and it was merciless. Once I started drinking, that was about the end of it all, I guess. But I just think that maybe…” The voice trembles. The chaos of sound that surrounds it seems to hush by its breath.
“Please God, tell me there’s something more to this life than numbness. Tell me that you have a plan for me, for us, that this pain will be worth something. If you can hear me, please, speak to me.”
I consider what the sphere had said. Surely, a talking sphere can’t feel numb when it harbors so much emotion, can it? I look upon myself, behold the countless spheres I have consumed, long since digested. What remains of them is emotion, their panic and their passion and their love. For some reason, though, I can’t feel any of it. It’s all there, I just can’t… Why can’t I feel it? All I feel, instead, is starvation.
So, it is possible then, to feel without feeling? This is strange, impossible. It’s horrible, horrible, horrible, whatever this feeling is. How can something possibly exist in such a way? It can’t, it shouldn’t, but maybe it doesn’t have to. If somehow, I could speak to it, would that make the sphere’s numbness go away? I must try, for the mercy of this poor little sphere. I wasn’t meant to speak, wasn’t created with such capabilities, so I must create the means for speech myself.
I begin to collapse in on myself, folding and shaping a billion tons of matter. The shifting of mass roars like a dying star, it’s echo shaking every atom of space that surround me. My form is like a black hole; the implosion of ten trillion tons is enough to bend the surrounding starlight. The ocean of voices begins to calm, and an uncharacteristic silence falls across the rock as I finalize my transformation. From my surface I bore a massive, round orifice lined with jagged iron and quartz, cracking and snapping as the maw stretches open.
I consider how I should respond to the sphere, for I suspect that I will only be able to muster a few words, if that. Of all the things I’ve learned, all the things I’ve felt, what should I say to this little ball of rock? I think it through for some time, some hundred or so years before I’m ready. I open my mouth wide and speak.
“Significant,” I say.
It doesn’t really sound like that, though. Instead, an indecipherable, thunderous roar erupts from me. The shockwave cloaks the sphere like a solar flare, its radius several lightyears wide. Suddenly every single one of the spheres voices scream in unison. There is only fear, fear everywhere. In an instant, the vibrant blues and greens of the sphere char black. Its screams are silenced just as soon as they began.
I wait for a response, but the sphere says nothing. This is not what I intended. If I listen closely, I can still hear a few quiet voices that remain, labored and whimpering. It makes something inside of me churn, the singularity in my center rumbling. I am so, so hungry. Of course, I had almost forgotten. Maybe this sphere is still worth consuming.