Looking at the single singular particle — the product of my work during this period and the particularity of an absurd number of particles, more than triple compared to the previous particle — I realized the effort required to explore another larger domain and maintain a possible connection with it.
As I observed, I couldn't help but think: what if I tried to make the particle vibrate in a specific way? Perhaps this would allow it to enter another domain on its own, just like in the last experiment, without directly relying on the randomness of nothing.
"Now… how will I know the vibration of other domains?"
My own vibration was clear to me, like intuitively feeling my own heartbeat. But how could I do the same for other domains?
I realized this would lead nowhere and left the question for the future, starting the pioneering experiment.
Following the procedure, I launched a particle into the nothing. Soon, I felt it adrift, yet simultaneously present everywhere; I quickly began regrouping it, and it collided with what I supposed was the wall of another domain.
I realized I was in another domain, where strange concepts tried to impose their rules on the particle — which I began calling the mother particle, due to its massive energy.
Unlike the previous approach, where I rejected everything, this time I followed a logic inspired by living beings: separating particles from the mother particle just enough to cover it completely, leaving no gaps.
I called this state the "cellular state"…
"This reminds me of my old body… sigh."
A pang of regret hit me as I remembered how much I had lost: all the concepts that existed in that matter, the way my cells were structured, how they functioned… doubts that had haunted me to this day.
"Too bad it was also assimilated… focus!"
Seeing that I had already formed an insulating layer, I began allowing the concepts to affect only the outer particles. I noticed various rules being applied to them — gravity, time, material properties — each one stirring almost immediately.
Soon, this outer layer showed a tendency to reorganize into more resultant forms according to the domain's rules. However, using my connection, I forced them to remain in the formation I had planned.
I felt a strain on my will; it was like being in a tug-of-war with the particles.
The problem was that I needed to control the force — if I pulled too hard, I could tear the influence of the concepts…
Maintaining the particle wall, I soon encountered a concern. I felt the reality around the cells become slightly murky. Upon touching the wall, I understood the cause of the commotion: my cell had collided with something it shouldn't.
Observing the concepts, I noticed some were exerting more force than before. I then released a bit of restriction on these concepts, and gradually a cell began to move. By the forces interacting with the outer layer, it seemed to have entered the orbit of some object…
Maintaining the formation of the particles and their state without completely breaking the rules was an art. I needed to use my will to micromanage every change, preventing undesired reactions.
Soon, I managed to stabilize it in a stable orbit around the foreign object.
However, I couldn't move as I wanted, since I could only respect the rules; any breach could generate turbulence in reality, potentially resulting in expulsion.
What I could do was adjust the suppression applied to the concepts in the outer layer to simulate movement — an exhausting process, as it required countless micromanagement operations. Without the training I had gained creating the almost autonomous city, I wouldn't have been able to sustain the demand.
Since I couldn't navigate freely or release the particle that my mother particle would have carried to its expulsion, I began conducting other tests.
I tried everything: making a mother particle vibrate, trying to make my will vibrate along with it, but nothing worked. Then a question occurred to me: how exactly am I maintaining the connection with the particle?
"I haven't tried this yet… but it's a bit inconvenient to risk all my particles in another existence… I'll take another one to test first!"
So I left a cell in stable orbit while waiting for more particles to pass by to capture. Quite some time passed before I got another; the process was partially agonizing, as I still had to focus on other particles to preserve the formation… but I managed to hold them until capturing a new one.
"I should have left a few behind instead of using everything in the pioneering experiment…"
With a belated regret, I began experiments studying the connection with particles.
I fixed my attention on a single particle. Now that it had been assimilated… could I reject it? With that thought, I tried cutting my connection with it. At that moment, I clearly perceived the thread that united us. I tried forcing it, as if I could rip it by will alone… but it was useless.
The connection was malleable, slippery, like trying to hold smoke with your hands — or cutting a line stretched infinitely with a dull knife.
Then I decided to change my strategy. I ordered a particle to self-destruct.
As if it hadn't understood my will, it simply entered the gaseous state I knew…
"If I can't destroy it or cut the connection, how about strengthening it?"
I grabbed the tenuous connection that united us and, with my will, tried to expand it, but there was no progress.
"No… this doesn't work. It's like the time I studied how to assimilate particles… that's it!"
Recalling how I assimilated particles, I tried intensifying the process even further, and soon, I felt the connection strengthen.
"No, the connection isn't stronger."
It seemed to approach me — not in the powerful way the mother particle conveyed, but in a subtler, almost intimate manner.
At first, it seemed like progress. Soon, it drew closer to my essence. But as it approached, I noticed something strange: the closer it got to my essence, the more unstable it became.
I can't say which came first: whether the connection failed or the particle destabilized first. I only know both exploded simultaneously. Fragments of energy dissipated into the nothing, leaving no trace.
"…" — It was the first time I truly saw a particle be destroyed.
"There goes my only particle, but it was a success." — It didn't matter whether the problem lay in the connection or the particle's instability: the mother particle had a better connection and greater stability, so I wanted to test how far I could push it.
With that in mind, I returned my focus to the mother particle, still in another domain. I began pulling it toward my essence with extreme care, attentive to every tremor or oscillation, fearing that excessive force might make it explode like the test particle.
If the test particle resisted, at most, at a distance ten times closer than a strong regular particle before collapsing, the mother particle easily surpassed that limit. A hundred times. Two hundred. Five hundred. Reaching a thousand times, it remained stable.
I soon realized: it had reached a point that, if I were to name it, I would call it the event horizon — a zone almost within my own essence. Something inside me said that entering this zone would bring great changes, both to the particle and to me.
My heart — if I still had one — oscillated between fear and desire. That particle was my greatest treasure, the foundation of everything I had achieved until now. Losing it would mean ruin — gathering another equal one would take forever…
"To hell with it" — I had already made great discoveries; if I stopped now, curiosity would keep me awake — and I went ahead. Everything it would cost to create another was time, and I had plenty of time.
As I gave the final pull, I felt my own existence tremble. The omnipresent nothing began dissolving, as if being swallowed, and in the blink of an eye, I realized: I was inside the particle.
"W-what!"
I expected many things, but nothing even came close to what had just happened. It was truly absurd.
Feeling the state of the mother particle, I realized it was no longer a particle in the conventional sense. It seemed more… like a space? A materialized piece of my own domain.
"It's not matter, nor is it energy."
I didn't know what it was made of. Yet it had become an anchor, a fixed point where my existence — previously adrift in the nothing — was now anchored. My position was no longer "the nothing," but "the particle."
But something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I was immense. Infinite. My essence presented itself without beginning or end, and yet… I was there, compressed within something smaller than a cosmic dust particle.
An impossible paradox. The infinitely large inside the infinitely small.
"When did space make sense…?" — I murmured, dazed.
Focusing on my new boundary, I perceived a strange sensation: I could vaguely sense the foreign domain. The particles I had used to isolate that domain still allowed a distant glimpse, a faint presence beyond my own space.
In the layering of particles, I realized that space was nothing more than an unstable illusion — a stage built upon itself, without logic or consistency. There, distance and direction were mere empty words, at least on the scale of my particles.
And for the first time, I felt its meaning deep inside me. Space was not a limit. It was a variable. A constant that could be distorted.