I dreamt was taken apart, organ by organ, cell by cell, gene by gene, atom by atom. I was there, unrecognizable, and you were there, and he was there, and everyone was there. In elemental form.

In pieces I was still there looking at myself over almost infinite parts. I was more than all my pieces.

Every atom was put on a ship, and sent to the corners of the universe. Fast ships they were, and in days reached the end.

My consciousness stretched and stretched and stretched with the speeding ships, through vast empty spaces filled with majestic things. I was everywhere in every particle in every ship moving outwards, my consciousness in lockstep.

As the last ship and the last atom arrived at the end of space and time, I felt one with the universe, aware of its vastness, its uncertainty and certainty, its light and darkness, its overwhelming largeness matched by matching smallness. Along the way I also saw life, more varied and plentiful than on earth. But most of all, as I stood at the center aware of the ends of the universe, like a spider aware of every thread and every intersection of its web, I became aware of a sadness of the kind impossible to covey. The universe was lonely. And all of existence in all of its wonders and blunders was a frantic effort for meaning. It was here at the edges looking back that I finally got it. For only from the edge do you feel the finality of it all. And physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, all a desperate attempt to escape.

I finally realized that it has at last succeeded. I, you, everyone, are the manifestation of this success. And I don’t mean physically as in we are some wonderous engineering feat of creation, far from it. I mean our ability to be aware and to imagine. For by going inwards, the universe found a way to go outward beyond its finiteness and limitations. By going inwards, a finite world gives way to an infinite one. This void of nothingness I stand at the edge of is there for us to fill. You and I can fill this void with all sort of wonderful things, like morality, kindness, generosity, love, vision, hope.