Part One: Genesis
Clash of Titans: The pride of an intellectual colossus versus the unadulterated curiosity of a child.
In eons before measurable time, a stellar soul occurred. A cosmic being, a consciousness that, in its pride, desired the unconsciousness of matter. With no clear beginning, bearing the divine and terrible burden of singularity, it dove deeper than the stagnant surface of existence. It became a part of duration, without the right to regret.
Sebastian, lulled by the siege of the everyday and the rings of boredom, received a signal. A thought, sharp as an energy beam, brought his hypersensitive senses into the resonance of a forgotten memory. The cosmic eye opened and focused on a small, blue-green planet. “This requires investigation,” the thought vibrated through the ether. In the harmony of interaction, a decision was born: to descend into the density of matter, to the 45th degree of latitude, and investigate the origin of that strange energy.
The movement was instantaneous. The shifting landscapes of Earth—gorges, canyons, winding roads—became a labyrinth through which consciousness had to pass. Green and grey, life and stone, alternated like waves, announcing the proximity of the goal.
He perceived a house. It stood on the edge of a cliff, at the foot of a mountain, like an aberration in the natural order. Dilapidated, decaying, it defied the inevitable end in a silent battle with time. That house was not merely a structure; it was a monument to human persistence in the face of entropy. With a single leap of consciousness, he crossed the distance.
The porch creaked under the weight of a bodiless presence. The place exhaled abandonment. The stench of mildew and the touch of cold on the door were the first kisses of earthly reality. Sebastian stepped into a frozen moment, into a pocket of time torn from existence.
And then—sound. A murmur from the floor. Sobs mingled with laughter, shouts of exhilaration melting into screams of despair. It was a cacophony of human fates trapped in a sheaf of yellowed papers. Words sought a recipient. The whispers of centuries-old solitude exploded in Sebastian’s mind. He did not wish to leave. That sickly, musty air was opium for the cosmic traveler. It was the scent of the past, the aroma of unrepeatability.
There, in the silence before the door of realization, Sebastian met Dorian. Not the one from the novel, but his double in the mirror of time. The harmony of thought and word opened a temporal tunnel. He ventured far, beyond the border of memory...
Echo of Memory
It was once beautiful to watch you walk with your dormant step,
And dream my dreams, already faded, yet still alive.
They still desire your unexplored soul,
Which daydreams within me and refuses to admit:
The name of its destiny is my name.
Now you find comfort in that dream,
Where you listen to the echo of touches that never happened,
Of lips that, in a final spasm, wanted to say something,
Something to atone for centuries of solitude.
But they were halted.
Condemned to eternally offer a smile without happiness,
Weeping without tears,
Love without warmth.
Because they had to ask:
SORROW, why do you bear his name?
Engaging heavy, earthly senses, Sebastian pressed on. He felt the weight of his own existence. Before him opened a novel—not a biography, but an autopsy of a soul searching for unlived moments. A dance of lawfulness and spontaneity. Half a century of life: too much like Don Quixote in the battle against windmills, too little like Don Juan in the seduction of the moment.
Learn to lose, realization whispered to him. Only then will victory come to you of its own accord. Let disappointment be part of your relationship with the world, but never part of your view of the world.
Sebastian knelt over the cradle of his duration, before the mirror in the room of existence, and continued to read the record of his own genesis.