Not long after arriving in this world, I was made aware of the monolith’s existence. This object was on the tip of everyone’s tongue. Nobody dared to call it by name and yet, its existence constantly intruded everyday conversations.
Not many people had actually seen it. The monolith. From the descriptions I gathered, the object in question was rectangular. Beyond that, it’s hard to say what it was. It was said to hold within it a million other worlds. The birthplace of every universe. A sort of glossy mirror, shape-shifting at random.
It reminded me of modern television screens: ever-changing, reflective, and filled with infinite stories. Just as viewers in my home world were captivated by the shifting tales on their screens, so too were these people hypnotized by the enigma of the monolith. They had, in their fascination, built an entire religion around this slab of cosmic dust.
I am well acquainted with the fact that there are things we, as a species, simply do not understand. Our capacity for cognition is limited. But this fact can be accepted without falling into a default mode of adoration, prayer and fanaticism. There is no need to turn everything into a religion. There are, simply put, things that are bigger than we are.
And yet, the inhabitants of this community couldn’t help themselves but to attribute their limited understanding to a higher power. They loved this monolith because they couldn’t understand it. Its existence was proof that they were servants to a universal God that made the clocks tick, the birds sing, and their hearts beat.
What I learned was that the awe, confusion and fear that came with not understanding something was quickly instrumentalized by those who could convincingly provide an explanation. These players positioned themselves at the top of the social structure, building an entire institution around this monolith, and used it to control the masses. It’s an interesting observation, traveling through these towns and cities, as varied as they are, I only ever see different facets of the same thing.
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You are currently traversing the limitless expanses of Visual Fiction. Each narrative fragment in this collection unravels a memory of a man drawn into an alternate reality. With every piece, he steps deeper into the unknown, attempting to describe the indescribable, to paint the unseen, and to make sense of the senseless. These tales offer glimpses into bizarre worlds that can at times feel both intimately familiar and strangely threatening.
