Thunder Struck a Chord Up in the Sky

A brief, fleeting glimpse...

It flashes before you. An instant.

In which everything seems to freeze and the cascading mirror images of eternity all line up.

Your stomach does flips as you remember everything you've seen. Everywhere you've been. Everyone you've known.

Time slides to a stop.

Everything collapses in on itself.

A singularity. A moment -- perfectly wonderful and perfectly horrible.

As the universe pauses, you cock your head to the side. This is what eternity feels like.

This is everything. Everything that's ever been and everything that ever will be.

This is the perfect coalition of everything it means to be alive.

But we're not built for eternity. So the shadows creep in from your peripheral vision. And the building blocks of atomic nuclei collapse in on each other.

The flip side of everything rears its ugly head. And you see nothing. Nowhere.

This is what it means to be dead. The imperfect absence of everything you treasure, everything that hurt you, everything you thought you'd forgotten.

And desperately want to remember.

And then the moment passes. Time speeds up.

And you look around at the world, with no explanation but a knowledge that everything's changed.