Pressing The Button

PRESSING THE BUTTON
by Matthew Sanborn Smith

The three of us floated in our spacesuits. The three of us floated in an endless grey void that used to be the universe. Nothing else existed save for the machine in the middle of our little group. Roughly cubicle, it was about eighteen inches to a side. I couldn't remember who my companions were or even who I was. All I knew was that the machine would bring back everything. I thought myself a manufactured being, programmed for this one vitally important task. Three of us floated. The machine had only one button, large enough to fit three fingers. We all pushed together.

Everything happened at once. The whole universe happened at once. Every color, every sound, every happening. There was no Bang from a single point. Chaos came evenly distributed and instant. Needless to say, I went insane. What happened next, I'll never know. That is the whole of my existence: two minutes. Floating in space, going insane. I don't replay it over and over. It just is and always is. Reinforces my belief that I'm manufactured, perhaps an AI in a program that froze when my companions and I tried to populate our vast machine with a reality.

Floating. Insanity. That is all there is.