Asymptote
Trying to measure the distance to the edge of the universe
Trying to measure the distance to the edge of the universe is like observing the length of an asymptote for the first time. Initially, your soul is filled with a considerable amount of hope that for a period of time, it seems you’re just buoyant enough to ignore a nagging feeling at the back of your head that insists that you’ll never reach the end – a buoyancy that deflates as each Plank Length or Megaparsec you count wrings your soul dry from hope, until your soul, the very essence of the capacity for a vivid and radiant existence, is drained and withered. You lay lifeless. Awake but not alive. A coma, a limbo.
You barely exist.
It is in this emptiness that your nagging feeling grows into taunting voice that echoes and even rages against the walls of your mind.
Barely exist?, he laughs. He repeats – and repeats – that it’s not even this, because even this overstates your insignificance. You become scared, because you know he’s not wrong. You want to protest but how could you, when you have nothing to say? Because you’ve always known, measured against this vastness, you don’t just barely exist, my dear.
In fact, it would seem that
you don’t
and have never
existed at all.
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