This short story could best be understood as fitting into the niche genre of "cosmic horror."
“I do not know how long I had been in this realm. This place appears as if it exists outside of time,” I thought to myself, as I got up from my computer and approached the book stacks in the space that I found myself in. This space resembles a library. This was what came following my death. This realm had physical elements, and I myself had most of the same physical properties as I did in my normal life. This space seemed to have an infinite magnitude, both by space and by time, and it seemed that my still-finite self was preserved for infinity. At this point, I thought that I would be mentally satiated if I was here for eternity, given the fact that I seemingly had access to every book ever written on earth, in these book stacks, but I was very wrong.
After walking a couple of miles, I finally found the book I sought. I was thankful that it was "relatively" close to my computer, which had no function other than to direct me to particular books that I wanted to read. I pulled the dusty book out from the book stacks, the book that I was searching for was “Hamlet,” by William Shakespeare. I sat down on the floor of the void, right under the book stack where I pulled this book out from. Upon processing that I was about to embark on reading a work of Shakespeare, I remembered an idea that I had come across in my past life: the infinite monkey theorem.
The infinite monkey theorem posits that a monkey typing random characters on a keyboard for eternity would eventually type even the most complex works of Shakespeare. In the conception of infinity that I developed in my normal life, I believed it to be the case that any given Shakespeare work would be produced by the monkey not just a single time, but rather: an infinite number of times. Upon recounting the idea that was put forth by this theorem alongside my analysis of it, I started to despair. I realized I was most likely in for an infinite amount of suffering, a type of infinite suffering that differs from the common conceptions of eternal torment in hell.
I realized that I would eventually read every book in this extremely large, but finite, library, each an infinite amount of times, which would eventually lead me to process every single morpheme of each book, and then think about every single possible thought and combination of thoughts related to every single idea in all of these books. Beyond this, I would think every thought I could ever think, apart from these books. My brain was still limited in finitism, for I myself was preserved to be infinite, yet not made infinite in my capacities. Thus I could only think a finite number of thoughts, each an infinite number of times.
What caused me to despair is that I realized I would become eternally bored, eternally void of stimulation, unable to be stimulated for I could eventually not generate any new thought that I had not already processed an infinite number of times. This brought me into infinite despair. I wished that perhaps I could trigger a reset of my mind upon reading every single book and processing every single morpheme therewithin, and thinking every possible thought I would possibly think. This, however, would not be the case, and I knew that it would not be the case, identifying it as mere wishful thinking.
With the exception of immortality, I was still finite, unprepared, yet preserved for infinity. It was this that caused my experience of infinity to be that of a series of successive events that never ends, as opposed to a metaphysical conception beyond time that would be what my experience would have been had I been made transcendent above my finite existence that I still very well partook in, despite being preserved for infinity, with no possibility of death. Given that I, along with all of the books that came from the finite world, which sit in the library that composes this eternal space, were all finite, there is no infinite amount of knowledge to be consumed, and there is no infinite amount of thoughts to be had. This accursed realm which preserves my finite self in infinity was infinitely unideal, for I would infinitely feel an infinite expression of an unpleasant emotion - boredom - and would thus be in an infinitely unpleasant state for an infinite amount of time.
This is essentially no different than if I were to be in an eternal space with only my own finite thoughts. In both cases, I would eventually run out of novel thoughts and would experience the same infinitely unpleasant state. While such a thing might occur faster in such a void that is fully empty, this amount of time that separates the start of existence in this realm and the end of mental satiation is irrelevant in the grand scheme of infinity.
I yearned for an afterlife that differs from this, one completely unlike that which is generally purported in common notions of the afterlife as a fully physical place, that is preserved for eternity. I cried out for a benevolent, personal God, akin to the one that is found within Christianity. In Christianity, there is a notion that God would elevate our bodies and souls in such a way that will lead to the attainment of metaphysical attributes that prepare us for immortality, which will be given unto us prior to entrance into heaven - an inherently metaphysical realm. This concept juxtaposed my situation, a situation that contains no mark of a benevolent and personal God - a God who would elevate my properties. I cried out for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
My cries were not answered. Seeing that my cries were not answered I cried out again, this time for any god who was both personal and benevolent, and would be able to free me from my physical limitations in this realm. Yet again, my cries were not answered. I presumed that some sort of god would have had to exist in order to create this realm that I found myself in, but it seemed that the god who created this realm held a relationship to this realm that is akin to the postulation of the deists - of the relationship between creator and creation. Or perhaps, I was simply sent to hell.
Unfortunately, there is no happy ending to this story.
Thank you for reading,
- Eli Gardenswartz
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