His name was Samson. Convenient of him to die holding a name tag.

With nothing better to do, I used him to accelerate the development of my perception. I learned how to perceive and inspect the finer aspects of his appearance, which lead me to the display on the small box in his left hand:

Samson, LE 1114, Third Bloom. No astral signal. Last message recorded on 4/3/1114. Routine: Distress (Recovery)

Even if Samson wasn’t his name, it was now. Giving objects labels and names made me comfortable; it was the only way I could navigate this strange new world. The device gave off faint energy pulses every so often, which helped to illuminate my otherwise isolated world. To me, it was a torch in the darkness.

Hello, Samson. And, belatedly, goodbye.

In his right hand was the device used to take his own life.

I had a cursory knowledge of firearms like pistols and rifles and how they work, yet this new design didn’t match up with anything in my mind. There was a grip and a barrel, but no hole for a bullet to come out of. My imaginary eyes, which resulted from putting together all the data I received into a single clear image, read AL PARADIES MANUFACTURING scrawled on the ‘slide’.

So this was a world with arms manufacturing. I guess you can’t escape industrialization, huh?

The guy’s outfit matched the general aesthetic of the weapon. I was an existence that had been stripped of my knowledge of history, but I knew about modernity. The atomic age. Firearms, rocket dynamics, biological engineering, quantum mechanics, economics, the general theories of the human mind and the existence of religions —I knew I was from a sufficiently advanced society that could produce the same type of lightweight equipment.

Of course, none of these observations changed the fact that I was a rock stuck in a wall. As much as I wanted to, my general awareness couldn’t move far from my body; I was stuck here for the foreseeable future.

If I couldn’t act, then I could learn. I had arguably already survived an eternity of nothing, so this new environment was plenty salient for me.

If I shook out all the rust in my head, maybe I could figure a way out of here.

So here’s to learning: I had a lot of it waiting before me.

There were four named seasons in this world: Winter, Bloom, Solar, Harvest. That was the only thing I learned from the display as the years passed me by.

The rest I had to learn myself.

As I sat idle and watched the unchanging environment, I gradually grew aware of a faint pulse somewhere far below me. Once each season, a pulse caused faint white sparks to emerge from thin air. Rocks, including myself, gave off a luminescent red glow for a few days; after focusing on the precise flow of the energy for ten cycles, I could reliably detect the anomalous forces coursing through and around me.

Within my heart-shaped core swirled two different types of energy, white Soul and red Ether. I assigned them colours and names for the sake of mental convenience; in reality, they were colourless and shapeless things that didn’t fit on a conventional balance scale.

Ether hugged my Soul in a protective bubble, but whenever the pulse came, I felt the less dense Ether oscillate within my core. If I were to give a proper comparison, it was a bit like a nucleus and its electrons — except it was much easier to manipulate Ether.

I could push around the Ether if I willed it. I didn’t have any better ideas for what to do with it, so I drew pictures and wrote characters when I got bored. Not that I was good at writing or drawing, even after so much practice.

Now that I was meditating on an entirely new sense, I found it strange that vision and hearing came so easily to me. I didn’t have sensory organs or any ways to measure waves or vibrations, so it must’ve been my core that was feeding me information.

My area of energy awareness was limited to only myself at first. I focused on refining my perception over the years, slowly capturing the fungi growing on the walls, the decomposition of the body into dark fluids and rot, the droplets of condensation, the pieces of Ether one year at a time. After many years of inspecting my environment, I could pick up on the faintest twinge of Ether from a great distance away.

Far above me were the faint swirls of Ether, and even farther above that, I could see the faintest marriages of both Soul and Ether. They were a distant sky that only I, a worthless creature at the bottom of the world, could enjoy.

As for the origin of the pulse, all I could tell was that it came from below. Something was interfering with my ability to perceive downwards, so I gave up on trying to figure it out and kept theorizing about the world.

These two energies I discovered moved independently of ordinary forces of the world. There were trace amounts of Ether in everything, but it gathered in higher concentrations in certain places. One particular vein of strange, crystalline material had more Ether than me, which caused several months of jealousy before I realized the fact that I was jealous of another rock.

Despite all my discoveries, there was only so much I could learn from observation. I couldn’t make out the composition or qualities of anything with my faux-echolocation, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t actually do anything with the Ether or Soul I had been given — they simply existed within me, locked away from the outside world.

I agonized over my helplessness for a good few months, but I got over it. As much as I’d like to attribute it to my indomitable willpower and excellent character, something else gave me a hand.

At some point, after all the thinking and learning, I grew aware of something simpler.

There was a draft in this cavern. It carried an irregular beat, like an amateur singer’s first melody. Combined with the steady beat of distress signals, the underworld sang an unlikely song.

Here, in a place where nobody knew, and with no one to hear, I found myself appreciating the show.

Lightbulb mushrooms painted the first dawn as we said our farewells, giving the dead a final kiss.

The wildflowers danced with spring. The blue moon shone on swaying sunflowers, and the autumn sun shone on harvest smiles. Winter caressed my hand, and again I counted the days.

The hazy vestige of summer, the wind that sang beside the passage of time.

Warm evenings underneath magnolia trees, a gentle hand caressing my cheek.

Fragrant flowers around my head, and the joy standing before clouds clinging to the night.

These were the things that I had forgotten. In the gentle passage of time, I reminisced, mourned, and cherished a life I couldn’t clearly remember.

It was the first joy I ever experienced. However, I was actively exerting myself, burning up valuable energy I needed to stay conscious.

At the time, I didn’t know, nor did I care. I greedily lapped at that faint happiness that I had been denied for so long, even as I felt my mind growing dull.

Drunk on an eternal duet with the wind from a kinder place, I fell asleep once more.

I came back to full lucidity the moment there was a disruption in the wind’s song. An ugly scratching had taken the place of my beautiful song — if I had a body, I would’ve surely thrown the nearest object in the offending direction.

As I was, I could only grumble and wait.

The scratching intensified. Then, without warning, a wall on the opposite of the cavern collapsed.

A tortoise came through, but not one that I knew of. It was twice the size of Samson’s skeletal remains; decorating its shell were plated growths that shimmered in the darkness. Those growths were practically radiating Ether — looking at them was like staring directly into the sun.

The creature waggled its spike-tipped tail as it entered my sanctuary, head low to the ground. It seemed to be looking for something.

I gawked at just how much power that tortoise had within its shell. It had ten, maybe twelve times more Ether than I did. How was that fair?

Ah, no wonder. It was eating the Ether-rich rocks dotted around the cavern’s pool. Yeah, understandable.

Appearances and diet aside, it was an ordinary tortoise. My anger dissipated as I watched the animal feed — why should I get mad at an animal following its instincts?

Mister Tortoise was chowing down alright, munching as fast as a tortoise could. He used powerful, snapping jaws to break apart stalagmites and flowstones, then swallowed the resulting rubble whole. Not my idea of a good meal, but he seemed satisfied.

I was content to merely observe a living creature. No offense to the fungi or Samson, but ever since I gazed upon the stars far above, I wondered what kinds of life actually lived here. The tortoise’s entrance gave me a certain reassurance that the fauna was, more or less, recognizable. It was familiar; I took comfort in the familiar.

That contented feeling lasted until I realized he was moving straight towards me.

There was a gleam in his stony eyes. He drooled, dripping clear drops of saliva that sizzled upon hitting the ground.

Wait, I said, trying to mentally gesticulate that I, the sentient rock, was not a good meal.

Hold on. We can talk about this.

You want to learn about science? What about philosophy? I have a near-encyclopedic knowledge of most general fields. I think I had a degree, once.

Hey, wait. Can you hear me? Want to hear me sing?

Let’s make a deal. I’m a spirit, don’t you know? A guy told me that once. Eh?

The tortoise did not reciprocate my attempts at intellectual discourse.

It dislodged me from the cavern wall with a single bite. When I hit his tongue, I experienced another sensation I had long forgotten.

Pain.

I shouldn’t have felt any pain. It didn’t make any sense. I had no nerve endings, no thalamus to process the signals, no brain to receive it. Yet freshly extracted pain hammered against me, forcing me to accept my new reality.

I was burning alive. Every inch of my body was coated in corrosive fluid; minuscule fiery needles dug into my flesh and twisted me apart.

I was bleeding. Hooks came and stole away at my Ether, my blood, the glue that kept my fractured existence together.

I was dying.

My senses were honed by eons of observation. I assumed myself immortal, something that would last to the end of time. And here I was, being eaten by an oversized tortoise.

I was dying.

Did it really have to end like this?

I was dying.

I was a fool. I got conceited from merely existing for a long time.

My Ether was all gone. The next hooks came for my—

—Ah.

I was forgetting. What was I doing again?

Drop by drop, my consciousness disappeared. I couldn’t do anything to fight it — I simply had no power to my name. I was helpless.

Soon, I’ll be gone.

Was any of this real? This entire existence was much like a dream. A sad, cosmic joke.

This was how the nameless disappeared from the world. Forgotten, crushed under the heel of an unforgiving world.

Who are you?

With less than half of my current self remaining, I heard a voice.

That damned voice.

A voice that caused me an eternity of torment.

Somebody was smiling at me beyond a veil of white light. Somewhere, far in the distance, was a smile.

An insufferable smirk.

This was your fault.

This was your fault.

All life is sacred. Don’t forget that.

—You.

I curse you with all of my being.

So, because I’m not alive, my life is worth nothing?

You think you can get away with saying that to somebody whose soul is being sheared apart in an animal's mouth?

There was a wind blowing, the resentment of an isolated eternity.

Petals fell from my crown of thorns, falling towards the open skies.

I felt it. If I reached out, I could touch it. The song that sang for me alone; I wondered if it would sing me a coda if I asked.

It was a greedy song. I knew this. I didn’t have much left to burn, but I was going to die. There was no point in holding back my spite.

I knew of a tortoise’s anatomy. It breathes, much like any other living being.

Reaching towards a distant spring day, I burnt any energy that remained and launched myself directly into its trachea.

Immediately, the tortoise froze. Forming coherent thoughts was beyond me, but I sure could count.

One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.

The tortoise began to cough, trying to dislodge me. It was moving, thrashing itself against walls, desperately trying to get me out.

I wasn’t going anywhere. Not anymore.

Thirty-three. Thirty-four.

The tortoise’s lung muscles tried to suck and blow air, fighting against the object lodged in its throat. Blood dribbled from one particularly sharp end of me, further obstructing its ability to breathe.

Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two.

He moved. He slid. He fell.

On the count of sixty-seven seconds, the tortoise retracted its head into his shell and died.

I let out a tiny, broken laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation. It didn’t make any sense.

How did this happen? Did the tortoise really not hear me at all?

Why was I cursed to live like this? Could this really be called living? To drag out my torment, did that damned woman save me with some supernatural bullshit at the last moment, or was that my doing?

I sat in the darkness with my unanswered questions, stewing in a growing puddle of blood.

With growing uneasiness, I realized the rules of my new world.

There was no way this was going to end well.