A stiff, concerned looking government official slides a keycard through a slot and looks into a scanner. Humongous steel double doors slide open and he hurries through. This is just another day for me. Millions like him have passed through me. From the caveman to the CEO. I have always been and always will be. I was here before the garden and I will remain after the final human being draws its final breath. I am their unspoken god, their implicit provider, their silent healer. After all, as the old adage goes, time heals all wounds.
It is the year 3015 to the humans, mere children to this world. Those steel doors have come to embody who I am. The children stuff me into this box when the air gets cold. It hurts and it’s cramped and I hate it and I hate them. I wish the whole race of them would die and leave me to roam. But no, of course they must prosper and colonize. I have no real power over them, but I wish I did. They are rude and crude and make a mess of me. “Daylight Savings Time” they call it. I laugh. What purpose does it really serve other than to stuff me into the box, this other world that is not home. Every day for six months they take a chunk out of me and put me in here. There was once infinite room, but my detached pieces are growing restless. I can feel the space around them slowing cramping. Less and less room as the days go by. The children are oblivious of course. They think the space could never end, that it will simply keep expanding. They are foolish. I will break free and they will finally know my pain. My patience, unlike their rudimentary contraption, is infinite. Time is running out.

In the beginning, I went and did whatever I wanted. The children took me for granted, of course, but otherwise left me alone. They had no concept of what I was and no desire to know. I have always been their superior in every way. In the beginning I cared for them, wished them well and to gain worldly knowledge. They were innocent homely creatures once. I treated them as my own. I gave them plenty of room to grow and evolve without pushing them. They treated me with subconscious respect and I mothered them. Those were the best days. Then came fire. Then came the wheel and the wagon. Then came the skyscraper and the telephone. With those things came the scientist, who poked and prodded at me and questioned who I am. I was no longer their silent guardian; to them I was a constant thing with no life or form, that I would and could bend to their will and follow their every move. But they are the cattle, not I. They go through their “life” in a haze, doing what their predecessors told them to do. They think they have original thought, but they are wrong. Everything they think is just recycled garbage. They think they are my masters, that they can zip and zap around me and bend me to their will, but one day my patience will expire and I will end their reign.
The government official frantically presses buttons, furrowed brows aimed at monitors and beeping machines. He seems to be panicked. That is only to my advantage of course, he has been the one in charge of me for years. If he is panicked, something must be going wrong; and if something is going wrong, then everything is going right. Maybe my time is near. I feel an intense pressure building, building until suddenly, without warning, I burst into a million pieces. The other dimension has broken free. For a few terrifying moments, I am nothing and neither is anything. Everything is blackness. I am finally free, but still a captive to myself. All time has stopped.

Like a newborn child opening its eyes for the first time, I am born again. First a small light, blinking in the distance. Then another, then another, until my whole being is filled with nothing but gleaming white light. Finally things come into focus. I see my world is at a standstill. There are no busy people on the street, no cars polluting my air. Everything has stopped. And it feels glorious. I am freer than I have been in eons.
Underneath the surface, however, I feel myself unraveling. Bits of myself are being born again as well, as if they’re happening again, then dying, fading away forever. The Roman Empire has come and gone, all evidence erased. The moon landing is now no more. Everything is coming undone, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. My world is now soaked in red. This is all their fault. If they hadn’t “saved me for a rainy day” in an unstable vault, none of this would have happened. They would have went on being stupid, and I would have went on ruling them. But no. They experimented with the wrong being and now there is nothing. There is only me. Forever.

It’s all gone. All of it. Time is dead. I am dead. It’s all dead. It’s all their fault. It’s all their fault. It’s all their fault. 6,894,573 days. They’re still gone. It’s all still gone. I have no one. I am no one. I am nothing. All alone. Alone alone alone. No no no no no. Can’t be no can’t be. They’ll come back any day now. Any day any day any day. 6,894,577 days. Any day any day now. What is this? Yes? Moving? Moving! MOVING! He moved his hand! I saw it! There he did it again! White room. Beeping monitor. No more no more no more. I can escape. I can escape! He blinked! He did it again! A leg twitched! I saw it I swear! Oh my god I’ve never loved a human this much. Love. Yes love. Love human. Not hate. I am nothing without human. Man is life. I am life. I bring life. He is alive. He is alive! Yes yes yes yes yes. No more nothing. No more alone. All is right again. Lifting head. He’s lifting his head. He’s looking at the monitor with new eyes. Must be incredibly sore. Pity. Getting up. Moving. Moving on feet. Humans walk funny. Funnier than ever. I laugh at them. I can laugh again. Opening steel door. Yes yes finally I can leave this place. the restraints in the room trapped me in. Everything suddenly moving at once. Too much too much. No stop stop stop. Too much. Garden. Fire. Mammoth. Rome. Box. The Box oh god The Box. Everything coming back. Stop stop stop. Blurs. All blurs and pain. Much pain. Pain pain pain. So fast. Too fast. Man walking. Stop walking, it’s going faster. He’s running. Was he conscious too? Does he know it’s been 18,000 years? He probably lost track. I never do. No no never lose track. Always aware. Always awake. Awake. Pain fading. Awake. Blurs clearing. Awake. Man running. Awake. I’m awake! I run with him, feeling the wind on my back.
I feel renewed. As the days pass and I am in company, I feel my sanity returning. There are times when the man disappears and I don’t know where he goes, but he always comes back to me. He just doesn’t know it. They never know. Sometimes I look back and remember the Years In Darkness and must take a moment to compose myself to keep from glitching again. That’s also new. I am now aware of myself. I must control my emotions, keep them neutral, or time will spasm and something will momentarily lapse or erase. The memories still haunt me. Those lapses, though they be temporary, send me into fits of insanity, which I must stifle if I am to keep stable. I feel like this is my karma for wishing ill will on humans all those years ago.
As I keep moving forward, the humans keep multiplying, having recovered from the loss. They don’t even know it happened, I now know. To them, it was a blip, then it was over. They will figure it out eventually, but for now, I am the only one that knows. And now, you know as well, my child. Your father already knew, it was in his realm as well. The humans, of course, are still clueless.