My name is Reliul. It is not my original name, but one given to me at the time I became what I am today. The word means "wanderer" in a cosmic language too old for you, or I, to fathom.
Allow me to try to put my age into perspective.
I have lived for longer than any other human. In fact, the entire existence of Homo Sapiens on this planet has only spanned a single heartbeat for me (if I had a heart anymore, that is). What seems to you a million years is a tick of the second hand to me.
This Earth is a newborn to me. This whole universe is only a stop on my endless journey through reality. I cannot count how many universes I have visited in total.
Hopefully that translates well enough to you. I know perfectly well how time on immensely large scales can be... difficult to imagine.
With a reality filled with interesting things, why am I even communicating to you? I could be watching a supernova or black hole merger, but instead I am here. Humans are not even that interesting. I have seen millions of other civilizations out in the void, and most are more violent or intelligent or impressive than humans.
Because drifting through spacetime for hundreds of trillions of years gets lonely. I have seen so much, but have never talked with another being until now. Either by sheer luck or destiny, the creature I can communicate with is a human: the very lifeform I used to be. I cannot begin to tell you how completely excited I am right now.
My stories will finally be shared to other people. I am no longer confined to my thoughts, cursed to wade through the increasingly thick sludge of memories. I fully realize that these stories will not last. This universe will die eventually, erasing everything within it. But these precious moments of bliss are absolutely worth it.
So the rest you will be seeing in this book is my tales from across reality. Some will be familiar to your human experience. Many will not. Some will not really be stories, either. Simply descriptions of things I find especially strange or exceptional. Just keep in mind that all these stories are real.
YOU ARE READING
The Stories of Reliul
Short StoryThis book is a collection of short stories (though some may not be quite as short as others). They are told from the perspective of a unique narrator: an immaterial observer named Reliul cursed to wander the multiverse for the rest of time and not b...
