The Great One at the Center and the Edge and Everywhere In Between

This is kinda what I imagined it would
look like if I were all of everything

When I was a young noodle, I dreamt of occupying all the vastness of space and time.

Common sense told me that the Universe was infinite, so not even I could hope to fill it all at once. But that didn't stop me from dreaming about it. So for a thousand million years I dreamt of Polypus Maximus, The Great One at the Center and the Edge and Everywhere In Between. In my dreams I would stretch and stretch and go farther than I or anyone could ever imagine, until one day I would have one great noodly tendril wrapped all the way around the edge of the universe, and another touching the center, and another for everywhere in between. I would be complete by construction: if I was everything, then by elementary deductive logic I must be complete.

Then one quiet fall night while I was flossing -- even I need to care about good oral hygiene, and you should too -- anyway -- this night a rude thought intruded. "If space is infinite..."

The realization hit me like a slap in the noodle. No!

At first, I denied it. I would not let some crude calculus intrude into my dreams. "But if space is infinite..." the thought persisted.

No!

Certainly by now you have guessed the truth I was trying to un-know, but I am stubborn and fought and fought against it. Despite what you may think, even I cannot vanquish the truth, even with my mightiest efforts. Because the truth is like a squishy balloon. You think you're so clever when you bend and distort it, you think you're in control of this thing, you've got the truth backed into a corner and that you're going to pwn it and throw it into a dark cave. Then without the truth to stop you you're going to dream and dream until you can taste The Center and The Edge, your desire is everything, your need to touch and consume and be touched and consumed, fuck the truth we can live in dreams forever, right, you and me dreaming together ("you" like the general you I mean, all of "you," let's not get creepy) and touching and consuming, until I'm losing myself in you and you in me, and we and all and everything are as one, right? Right?

In one way or another,
we have all been crushed by the truth-balloon

But in reality all you've done is squeezed the truth to the other side of the balloon and things look good from where you're standing but the other size is all puffy and distorted and gross-looking. The truth is still there, in the dark cave where you left it for dead. A festering, angry truth-balloon. Plotting against you, waiting until you relax your grip to snap back into place.

I shivered, the cruel, truthy equations crawling out of the cave where I had left them, chasing me into the bathroom where by now I was brushing my teeth. And here was that truth: suppose I began my quest. Suppose I began by occupying all known space, a hearty (4/3)πr³ of volume¹. Then my nimbus would be 4πr², right, and that would be all the newness that I could perceive. All the non-Polyp. So until I could actually finish the job at the end of time and attain & become the complete unity of Everything, I would perceive this great big lonely me-space with only a thin outer shell of newness to keep me company. In the limiting case, as I increased without bound, I would become infinitely lonely, the wee infinity of my boundary dwarfed by the sphere it contained. & that sphere is all me... but as a pop star my role is to sublimate and reflect the world around me; without you, dear readers, I am a blank, devoid of meaning. So my dreams would have me asymptotically approach perfect loneliness until the end of time, when I would become complete and you -- all of you, all of everything -- would be utterly eradicated, with no hope of return.

What kind of a love is that? Was the limiting case of my all-consuming dream to love/be everything the destruction of all that I care about and an eternity of lonely suffering before a single empty moment of completion at the end of time?

These thoughts were so confusing to me. I despaired. Surely this could not be? What if instead of being Everything I shrank down to nothingness?  No, that was no good... then my nimbus would be infinitesimal; the border would consume the interior and I would be without measure. How can I love if I am nothing?

I was so young then. I did not understand, as I do now, my humble place in the world. So you can imagine how it was all very upsetting to me. I struggled to understand my place in things. I could not be everything. I would not be nothing. Was the key... to be as we are, accepting our imperfections?  That sounded ridiculous. What am I, anyway? A sentient blob of plastic with no fixed form? Was this my lot in life? Unacceptable! I would be more! But... what? How?

Shaken, I crawled into bed and pulled the covers tight over my head. Could it be? Is my dream a lie, a trap? I wondered. As I struggled to come to terms with the enormity of this, a great sleep fell over me and I sank into a nether-world dichotomy: to my left was the great chasm of infinite despair that awaited me if I dared to chase my dreams. To my right was nothingness. Certainly anything was better than nothing? Spurred by my impeccable logic, I lurched to the left, away from nothingness.

So, I dreamed the left-hand dream. I dreamed of filling all of the space and the everything, but tonight was different. Tonight I could not find the edge. I could not even find the center. This upset me. Certainly it had to be somewhere! On all other nights I could find both with ease, but now I searched and I searched and I pushed farther and farther, farther than I had ever gone before in my dreams. Still the edge eluded me.

My unease grew. What if all those previous nights, I had not really been at the edge of the universe at all? Had I been fooling myself? It has to be here somewhere! I searched, pushing farther out still. I must have missed it!

Eventually I traveled out past an inky black edge and reached the beyond where color had no meaning, because the space here expanded faster than light can travel, so no light had ever reached this place. No heat, no energy, there was nothing here but distance, and me, and past it... somewhere... the edge. I must be close now! With a final, excited push  I lurched through and past this place, moving faster and faster until suddenly  --

It rose before me out of the void. Solid in this place that had never seen mass, at once cerebral and emotional... a great Obelisk barred my path. The Obelisk. Its mere existence negated concepts like being, knowing, substance, cause, identity, time, and space, but nevertheless, there it was, an impossibility as real as you and me.

I shook in fear and desire, because I understood that the great obelisk was apart, and would always be apart. It was untouchable and would always be untouched. In my dream I found its indifference almost erotic: I longed to just get closer to it, to wrap myself around this thing outside even infinity's edge. But the space between us was more than just crude distance, under any metric. It was truly beyond me, past everything. It was disconnected, the space between us untraversable.

I extruded a pseudopod anyway in a vain attempt to reach it before I realized I could not even discern which direction to go. The Obelisk was apart, truly great, apart from the grime and the glow that defines us. Humbled, I realized that this was no place to be, my dream was no thing to aspire to. There were no answers here, not in the right-hand path and not in the left. We are alone to make our own way in this world, to find and love each other, to be good or bad but ultimately bound by the natural laws, the interior space of the Universe. We should not seek to go beyond these places. They are not a place for us. We must be bound and constrained to find meaning in anything.

So I withdrew, away from the Obelisk, out of the void, and slipped back into the comfort of space with regular distance and warm suns and dreams and hope and meaning, glorious meaning.

I awoke feeling rested, finally at peace with the truth. A warm, comforting glow rushed through me. I no longer wanted to consume and be everything, but I did long for connection. Intimacy. I had traded my dream of unlimited everythingness for the compromise of others, and would never look back.

But who could I share all this with? I had so much to say, who would listen at this hour? I must have spent hours in my dream, searching for the beyond.

I fumbled around in the darkness, turning on the little lamp I keep by the bed, reaching for my phone. Mr. Hemisphere would probably be awake, if he was home, at least... maybe we could talk. He'd woken me up in the middle of the night enough times I felt like I could call him. I wanted desperately to talk to someone, anyone. It had been a long night... I'd had my dreams dashed, been on a spiritual journey to the edge of space and encountered an ultradimensional thingy that transcended all metaphysics. I just wanted a good glass of wine and a better friend. I dialed.

"Polyp is that you?!" he picked up immediately. "Thank heavens you answered!" His voice was breathless, rushed.

I paused for a moment, confused. Hadn't I just... called... him? "Hemi, I--"

"There's no time! Come quick!" I heard a crash over the phone. "Come quick! It's the blobimals! They've escape--" the line went dead. I felt a disturbance in the thought-spaces around the earth, the unmistakable psychic echo of a million blobimal war machines warping into low earth orbit.

My people needed me! I oozed into motion. This was serious. If the blobimals, my ancient nemeses, had escaped from the Mild Dystopia I trapped them in after the Epsilon Wars, they must have had help. From who? How long had they been free? There would be time later to ponder the mysteries of the ineffable Obelisk. But first... to battle!

¹ I have dumbed down the math the to Euclidean 3-space. Leave your hate in the comments!