LEVEL CLASSIFICATION: THRESHOLD-00
Designation: The Bottomless Pit
Stability: None (Non-Existence)
Cognitive Hazard: EXTREME (Perception Nullification)
Physical Hazard: INFINITE (You Have Already Fallen)
PRIMARY TESTIMONY
Extracted from: Report No. ------
Date: [NO TIME]
Status: IN FREE FALL / PERMANENT
There was no door. There was no light. There was no warning.
The only thing I remember is that the ground simply ceased to exist.
One second I was standing, in the normal world, feeling the weight of my feet on the soil.
In the next, I was falling.
And I am still falling.
There is no air here. No wind. No resistance. But I feel the speed. I feel the void swallowing me. Around me, only black. A black so absolute that it hurts the eyes, because the eyes search for light and find nothing to focus on.
— Is anyone there?! — I shouted.
My voice didn't come out. It was absorbed immediately by the nothingness. As if I had screamed into cotton.
I fall.
Have I been falling for seconds? For years? There is no clock. No sky. No ground.
Just the sensation of infinite falling. The certainty that at any moment I will hit something, but the "something" never comes.
TECHNICAL NOTE 00: THE PHYSICS OF NOTHINGNESS
This level is perhaps the simplest and most dangerous of all. It has no rules because it has no "things". It is the absence of everything. Observed data:
- Absence of Reference: Without walls, ceiling, floor, or light, your mind loses track of where your body ends. You start to feel you are gigantic, occupying all space, and at the same time you feel you are minuscule, a point lost in infinity.
- Time Dilution: Here a second can last an eternity, and an eternity can pass in the blink of an eye. The human mind was not made to process the absence of time. It starts to invent things so it doesn't go crazy.
- Deprivation Hallucinations: Because there are no stimuli, the brain starts to create them. You see lights in the dark that don't exist. You hear voices that are not voices. You feel hands touching you where there is nothing.
- The Law of Attraction: The Abyss is not empty. It is full of everything that fell inside before you. Objects, people, animals, concepts, entire worlds that lost their form and now float here, spinning endlessly.
An astronaut who fell here left this recorded on a still-functioning transmitter:
"You are afraid of the dark? Don't be. The dark is just the lack of light. Be afraid of what lives in the dark. Be afraid of what is falling with you. Because at first you think you are alone. Then you realize there are millions of 'things' falling beside you, and they are looking at you."
PRIMARY ENTITY: THE GREAT EYE / THE OBSERVER
Description: It has no body. It is exactly what the name says: An Eye. Immense. The size of a city, or the size of a galaxy. The iris is a sickly yellow, and the pupil is a darkness deeper than the abyss itself. It has no eyelids. It does not blink. It never blinks.
Behavior: It does not move. It is fixed somewhere in the middle of nothingness, and everything falls past it, or towards it. It does not speak. It has no emotions. It simply sees. It sees you from the inside. It sees your memories, your fears, your atomic structure. It sees everything.
Ability: Total Perception. The danger isn't that it eats you. The danger is that being seen by it makes you real. Or rather, it turns you into an object. When it looks at you, you stop being someone and become a "thing" being observed. And a thing has no will of its own.
PRIMARY TESTIMONY (CONTINUATION)
I fell and fell, feeling my stomach churn, feeling the pressure increase even without air.
Until I saw it.
Down there, or maybe up there, or maybe right in front of me.
A light.
Yellow.
Growing.
— What is this? — I thought.
As I fell, the light became larger. It became defined.
It was an eye.
A gigantic eye, floating in the void.
And it was open.
Staring right at me.
Did I pass straight through the pupil? Or did the pupil swallow me?
Suddenly, I wasn't falling anymore.
I was stopped.
Floating in the center of everything.
And the Eye was all around me.
I was inside its vision.
— Hello, little being — a voice sounded, not in the ears, but directly in the brain. — Another grain of sand come to visit the desert.
— Who... what are you? — I managed to think, as my mouth no longer worked properly.
— I am the one who sees. I am the consciousness of the dream. While you dream, I see your dream. While you exist, I record your existence.
— I want to get out of here! I want to stop falling! — I shouted in thought.
— Falling is the nature of everything. Everything is falling. Planets fall towards black holes. Stars fall towards their end. Dreams fall towards waking up. You are just falling too.
— I am not just a thing falling! — I fought against the sensation of being dismantled. — I am me!
— Are you? — the pupil contracted, and I felt a horrible pain, as if my soul was being read with a blade. — Let's see. Let's see what you really are.
ANOMALOUS ARTIFACT: THE ONLY PHRASE
Floating in the void, engraved in particles of cosmic dust, repeating infinitely in all directions:
YOU ARE NOT FALLING INTO THE ABYSS.
THE ABYSS IS FALLING INTO YOU.
DO NOT TRY TO STOP.
STOPPING IS DYING.
CONTINUING IS... WORSE.
REMEMBER:
IF YOU LOOK TOO LONG INTO THE DEPTHS...
THE DEPTHS BEGIN TO LOOK BACK AT YOU.
AND IT IS ALREADY LOOKING.
PHILOSOPHICAL FRAGMENT
"Human beings are terrified of two things: being alone, and being small. This level delivers both sensations in lethal doses. Here you understand that the universe does not care about you. That you are a tiny accident in an infinite space. That your life, your problems, your history... everything is just a speck of dust floating in an endless corridor. Accepting this is the end of the ego. It is the end of the person."
PRIMARY TESTIMONY (CONTINUATION)
The words entered my head like a flood.
They weren't just letters. They were images, sounds, feelings, pure and raw truths.
I saw the birth of galaxies.
I saw the end of civilizations.
I saw what happens after death.
I saw the faces of things that dwell in the void.
I saw... I saw how everything works.
All the pieces of the puzzle fit together at once.
My mind screamed, trying to process such a massive amount of information. It was like trying to fill a glass with water from a firehose.
— Stop... stop... — I murmured, holding my head in my hands.
It hurt. It hurt so much.
But it was fascinating.
— Do you understand now? — asked the Librarian, with pity. — Now you know. You know that everything you do was already written. You know that all your pains are small. You know that all your joys are fleeting. You know everything.
I looked at him. My eyes were no longer human. They reflected pages and more pages spinning endlessly.
— Yes... I know... — my voice came out hoarse, distant. — I know that everything is... just text. We are only words. Stories being read by someone we don't know.
— Exactly. So now... you can rest. You have no more questions left. You can become a shelf too. Join the collection.
He raised his hand to touch me, to turn me into part of the library, to store me on the eternal shelf.
But then, I turned the last page of the book.
The page was blank.
— What? — I whispered.
The Librarian froze. He went pale (as pale as a shadow can be).
— Impossible... This page is never blank...
— It is — I said, feeling a strange strength returning to my body. A strength that came not from knowledge, but from doubt. — If it is blank... it means it hasn't been written yet. It means I can still write it.
— NO! THE STORY IS ALREADY OVER! — he shouted, losing his composure. — YOU KNOW EVERYTHING NOW!
— I know everything that WAS! — I shouted back, slamming the book shut. — BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT COMES NEXT! AND THAT IS ENOUGH TO CONTINUE!
PRIMARY TESTIMONY (CONCLUSION)
I threw the book into the air.
It didn't fall. It exploded into thousands of loose words that floated in the air like confetti.
— FORBIDDEN! SYSTEM ERROR! — screamed the Librarian, covering his ears. — YOU CANNOT IGNORE WHAT YOU KNOW!
— I AM NOT IGNORING IT! I AM SURPASSING IT!
I ran.
I ran through the shelves that tried to close to trap me.
I ran while knowing too much, while feeling too much, while hurting too much.
But I ran.
I saw a light at the end of the corridor.
It wasn't the light of a lamp. It was the light of the real world, raw, simple, stupid and wonderful.
I threw myself through it.
THE RETURN
I woke up on the floor, in my room.
The book I was reading before sleeping lay open beside me.
I sat up, panting.
My head ached. Millions of pieces of information still buzzed inside, like background noise.
I still know too much. I still understand the universe in a way no one else does.
But I chose... to forget a little.
I chose to pretend I don't know.
Because mystery is what keeps us alive.
Now I look at people and see them like open books. I know their fears, their pasts, their almost certain endings.
But I say nothing.
I just smile and turn the page.
After all, the best book is always the next one.
CATALOGERS' FOOTNOTE
This level is one of the most dangerous because it doesn't kill the body; it "completes" the mind. The Entity is the personification of order and absolute knowledge, but even it has rules.
It was confused when it found the blank page. This proves that not even infinite knowledge can predict or control free will.
There is always room for a new story.
ADDENDUM
The book closes.
A new one opens.
The reading continues.