There is no time yet, no days to measure it by or events to sequence it; there is no matter or space, no up, no down, no before and no after. Not even Chaos. Only Me.

Eternity doesn't drag: it festers. And as eternity cannot be measured I am unable to say how much of it has passed. As a matter of fact it does not pass at all. It just IS, heavily and absorbingly.

I contemplate Myself. As I am perfect, there is nothing to contemplate but the dreary parameters of My perfection.

Or is there? I concentrate, aware of the import of My sudden discovery. Or is there indeed?

And what if I should dream?



DAY ONE

I imagine electromagnetic radiation, in particular wavelengths of between 7 x 1 -5 and 4 x 10-5 centimetres and develop the ability to be aware of it with what you might anachronistically call an eye. Bright and good, the radiation illuminates the nothing round Me effulgently. And I blink metaphysically, switching the wavelengths off and on, dreaming night and day. Am exhausted but radiant.



DAY TWO

Having envisioned the elements the English will later call oxygen and hydrogen, I marry them to form a viscous medium - the medium of primal seas and the vapour ballooning above them. Burnt out, but wet and happy.



DAY THREE

I dream up a skeleton igneous rock arching out of the viscous medium; some of this I grind and glue instantly into arkoses, limestones, loess, greywackes, pyroxenes - and some of these I metamorphose into marbles, schists, gneisses and slates. Then, getting bored, I think up minute templates of photosynthesising beings that procreate and self-destruct, and all the exotic complexities of Linnaean taxonymy. I am groggy - but free of boredom.



DAY FOUR

I isolate the electromagnetic radiation into individual sources of light - sol atque luna, sun and moon, Sonne und Mond - and mind-pricking stars. Without the tiniest bang, the ticking of my cesium clock has started: I become dizzy with the ever-rolling ballet of becoming and dying. After a half-eternity of virtual slumber, I begin to long for real repose.



DAY FIVE

Barely able to keep awake, I fantasise autonomous beings in the viscous medium and in the nitrogen-oxygen blend of gases above - strange reveries locomoting on stomachs, legs, fins or cilia. At first I am dazzled by the brilliance of the exchange of gases: plants needing carbon dioxide release oxygen, animals releasing carbon dioxide need oxygen. The exchange of solids delights Me also - the life-death equivalences of animals consuming each other or plants. Soon, however, I am assailed by cries of anguish from My creation and silent prayers of pain; the dying and the sickening get to Me; insidiously they overwhelm Me. Having invented a machine of near perpetual motion, I find I cannot uncreate it, can only wait for its built-in entropy to run it down. Heavy-eyed, I wonder if this is a nightmare or a dream.



DAY SIX

Unable to stop myself, I fancy creatures for the dry land, including a biped that thinks it looks like Me. I'm really not the least bit religious, but these animals are beginning to disturb Me. I have given them a semblance of free will to make them more amusing, but they're already coming to all the wrong decisions. Longing for sleep.



DAY SEVEN

I sink into unconsciousness for the second half of eternity¹



¹Editor's note: the above text was discovered in al-Hadr, Iraq, when a certain Muhammad ibn Tawil was excavating a septic tank for his mother's maiden aunt; the lettering is a prototype of cuneiform writing and was first decoded by Professor Ivor Williams of Leeds University.