Once upon a time, there was a…uh…no, forget it. It wasn’t once upon a time. Let’s put a twist on things today. Let’s see, if it wasn’t once upon a time, then it must have been once upon NO time. That ought to make things interesting.
Once upon no time, there was a man. He lived in a world without time or matter, excluding himself. He was a floating man in an endless sea of blackness. He had short blond hair, soft green eyes, and he happened to be wearing a black t-shirt with blue jeans. He had no idea that he was destined to remain in this floating hell forever, which was technically no time at all seeing as there was no time. He often spent most of his time (or rather, most of his lack of time) thinking about who the heck he was, what he was doing, and why he was floating in an ocean of darkness. It appeared to him as though he had been floating for a while, but he couldn’t have been because there is no time wherever he is (or was, or will be). He was relatively intelligent, but couldn’t fathom how he could exist without time. He didn’t really even know what time was, but he knew that he was here, wherever here was. His one goal in life (if you could call it life) was to get out of here, if such a thing was possible.
Once in this no time (or maybe this was always happening, or never happening), this man saw another man exactly like him appear from the blackness. This quite confused him, because he knew that the man had just appeared now, and was not appearing again, which meant that he had appeared in the past, meaning that there had to be time. This befuddled him insanely, because he strongly believed that there was no time wherever he was. In order for there to be no time, this other him couldn’t have appeared, unless he had been appearing forever (which didn’t exist). And if this other him had been appearing forever, how come he didn’t remember it? He thought about it for a moment (or rather, no moment) and realized that if he remembered it happening forever, there would be time. Since he didn’t remember it, it could mean that it was happening constantly and he just didn’t know about it. But if it was happening, that would mean that there was time because it was happening, is happening, and will happen. This series of mysteries continued to confuse the poor man, but he realized that if there was no time, then the man should appear again. So he looked around, but couldn’t see any more of him. Frustrated, he turned back around to see his other self disappear, and then reappear. This time, the man was so insanely confused that he screamed out. If the man disappeared and reappeared, then it must have happened, meaning there must be time! The man wasn’t sure if he was onto something or not, but he concluded that time is impossible to explain if there is no time.
‘Time cannot exist without matter, and matter cannot exist without time!’ he thought. Unfortunately, upon discovering this, this rule that he made immediately took effect, and he disappeared. If only he had known that he was going to reappear again a moment later (or no moment at all) and begin the whole chain over again without any recollection of what had just happened (or what hadn’t happened, as the case may have been), even though he had been doing it forever before into no time, and would be doing so again forever into the lack of future.
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If this entertained you in the slightest, Matthew's got more fun in store right here.