A Naked Singularity

by Sergio de la Pava

When I looked up from the floor I found I could see Everything. I saw the fundaments of the universe; quarks and neutrinos in visible ubiquity, jittering and bouncing, off each other and onto me. I saw Time itself, the fourth dimension, naked and enormous in its full horror, neither flowing nor frozen, and beside it the relativistic Elsewhere, lifeless and defunct. I saw Music, not the notes or the sounds but what it verily was. I saw incomplete but beautiful Math, its integers and the rules they obeyed, and I understood it all. I saw minds. I saw thoughts, disembodied but clear. I stared at consciousness itself, saw what it looked like, and became frightened. Concepts were visible; I saw Justice and Cowardice, Enmity and Envy. I saw leprous bodies piled high, discarded by what had animated them and seemingly congealing into a single mass of fibrous muscle and cartilage. I saw the unborn and the dead as they clawed at the living. And the living weren’t healthy. They were diseased and deformed, with arms where legs should be and skin peeling to expose ambiguity where distinction was needed. I watched flesh devour flesh and heard bones crack from weight and from that moment on I started hearing everything as well. I heard colors and circles, trees and triangles. I heard Fear lick the face of Hate accompanied by a final whispered scream. Then I heard, felt, and saw the world begin to crack open to admit, little by little, the return of Light. The light dispersed everything el...