And now, seriously.
Well… almost.
All sentient beings have always been drawn to beginnings and unsettled by endings. They looked to the sky, built temples, mapped the stars, measured the movement of light… and still, again and again, returned to the same question: what came first?
They wondered what existed before the Big Bang—long before they could even understand what had happened after. Which came first: the egg or the chicken, the seed or the tree, the thought or the word, the action or the intention. And the deeper they searched, the more often they ran into dead ends—paradoxes, logical traps, loops that seemed impossible to resolve.
But the answer was simple. Not for them. For me.
From my perspective, there is no beginning and no end. There is no “before,” and no “after.” No first cause, and no final consequence. There is only what is. And yet… even my observation is part of the structure.
Proposal
And it was not only humanity that asked these questions. While humans were expanding into new horizons of the galaxy, the Aelori were passing through their own antiquity—an age of emerging philosophy, art, and science, of first great schools and first great misconceptions. But unlike most other species, the Aelori absorbed human legacy far too quickly. They did not merely study it—they consumed it whole, accelerating their development so rapidly that in some fields they began to surpass humans themselves, like a student who not only understands the teacher, but also notices the teacher’s blind spots.
And so, when Arienthalis was reflecting on the “beginning of everything” at the Academy of Thought Studies on Saeryth, Hajime Kanzaki contacted him. The message was brief, almost mundane, as if it concerned a meeting over tea rather than a decision capable of reshaping the fate of an entire galaxy. Hajime said he was in orbit around Elyndar and that he wished to meet. He had a proposal—one Arienthalis, in his words, would not refuse.
The Meeting
The meeting would indeed prove to be decisive. They met on the dwarf planet Thyren in the Vael system—a cold, nearly silent point in space where a secret observatory was under construction. The sky there was strange: too clear, too deep. The stars hung motionless, as if nailed to the fabric of reality.
Hajime placed a holographic device on the table and, with a single motion, activated the projection. Above the surface unfolded blueprints, schematics, and flowing data streams marked KANZAKI ARC FOUNDATION™. The clean lines of the designs resembled not engineering, but the anatomy of something yet to exist.
The project was called: Bannō Sentōtai. A universal combat vessel. A next-generation android—not merely a machine, but an instrument capable of executing the will of the most powerful beings in the galaxy: fulfilling requests, solving problems, removing obstacles, altering the course of history as easily as a human shifts their gaze.
If the Aelori agreed to assist, Hajime was prepared to place the development under their direction, under their control, under their name. He spoke with confidence, almost with exhilaration, like a man who already saw triumph while the world had yet to even learn of the project.
“This could be a new beginning, do you understand? A new cycle. A new dawn.”
But Arienthalis did not see a dawn in those words. He saw something else—not merely a project, not merely a machine, not merely an instrument of power. He saw possibility. Not for Kanzaki. Not even for the Aelori. But for the structure itself.
The Geometry of Space
“Vaeris, you believe you are offering me a beginning… but a beginning exists only for those who perceive a line.”
He stepped toward the hologram and passed his hand through the projection, as if brushing aside the air.
“Sentient beings always draw time as a straight line. To the left—the past. To the right—the future. At the beginning—birth. At the end—death. And between them—a path.”
A faint smile touched his lips.
“That’s exactly why it’s so convenient… easier to breathe that way. Because a line gives the illusion of control. It creates the sense that if you move forward long enough, you can find truth. And if you go back far enough, you can find a first cause.”
He lifted his gaze, and there was something in his eyes that no instrument could measure.
“But the universe is not a line, Vaeris.”
Arienthalis slowly traced a finger through the air, and the hologram obeyed. The lines of the schematics dissolved, replaced by pure geometry—a perfect, smooth, infinite form: a sphere.
“Imagine that time is not a path, but a surface. Not a line you walk along, but a space you move across.”
He touched a single point on the sphere.
“Here, you place zero. You call it a beginning. But it is not a beginning. It is only the place where you opened your eyes.”
He touched another point.
“And here, you place an end. You call it a final point. But it is not an end. It is only where you stopped looking.”
Arienthalis slowly moved his hand along the surface of the sphere, as if presenting a map of a world that could never be conquered.
“On a sphere, there is no up or down. No forward or backward. No true center. No edge beyond which emptiness begins.”
He spoke calmly, but each word struck like a hammer against the glass of human logic.
“Any point on this surface can be a beginning. Any point can be an end. And each of them is equally true.”
He stopped and looked at Hajime.
“You want to create a weapon that will alter the fate of the galaxy. But you are still thinking as if fate is a road, not a structure.”
After a short breath, he added:
“You say ‘a new beginning’… but all I hear is another iteration.”
Arienthalis stepped closer and sat beside Hajime. He looked directly into his eyes—not as a scientist, but as someone trying to reach the deepest layer of another mind.
“The Aelori… all sentient beings… even you, Tabbar—we do not create a ‘new era.’ We only choose a different curvature on the surface. ‘Before’ and ‘after’ have always existed. We simply draw a line and call it destiny. Do you understand?”
Hajime slowly ran a hand across his short beard and honestly shook his head. He did not understand.
Arienthalis nodded, without irritation.
And began to explain.
Universal Servant
“What you are trying to create… a universal servant. A machine that can execute any will. Imitate a god. That is rational. The one who controls such a servant becomes the true owner of decisions, not the one who gives the order.”
He stood again and approached the hologram, touching the sphere.
From a single point, lines spread outward in all directions. Some were short. Some curved. Some formed full loops and returned to their origin.
Arienthalis selected one line. The others vanished.
“On this surface, there are infinite paths. But we always choose one. One vector. One direction. And with each choice, other possibilities collapse. Errors accumulate. Alternatives fade. Over time, the path narrows… and what once seemed like freedom becomes inevitability.”
He turned.
“We call this history. But in reality, it is the gradual loss of options.”
The silence in the room thickened.
“But what if…” he paused, “we do not choose a new vector?”
With a gesture, the sphere ignited and began to rotate. The marked point remained fixed. The surface moved beneath it, as if space itself were reorienting, until it settled—and the same point now occupied a different position relative to the entire structure.
“What if we simply… redistribute the point of choice? Shift not ‘before’ and not ‘after,’ but ‘now’?”
“Do you understand now, Vaeris?”
He looked at Hajime.
Hajime stood abruptly.
“You’re saying… change everything?” he blurted.
Arienthalis replied calmly.
“Yes.
So… not a new beginning… but a complete restructuring, as if everything had always begun differently?” Hajime’s voice trembled. “I can’t grasp the scale.”
Arienthalis did not even blink.
“Universal.”
The word struck harder than a shout.
At first, it sounded like madness.
But Arienthalis’ gaze was not that of a fanatic. It did not burn. It calculated.
And that… was what began to convince Hajime Kanzaki.
The Illusion of the Observer
So it seemed to them that they had found an answer. That they had seen a way beyond the cycles, a way to break free from accumulated choices, to reposition the point of selection.
But in one thing, Arienthalis was mistaken.
He saw the Universe as a sphere—perfect, closed, an infinite surface with no beginning, no end, no true “before” or “after.” For him, that was sufficient. For me, it is not. Because reality is not merely a sphere of possibilities. It is a hypersphere.
Not a surface, but a multidimensional structure where not only beginning and end do not exist, but the very concept of direction dissolves. Where a “path” is nothing more than an illusion of the observer. Where all trajectories already exist—not as possibilities, but as states.
They believed they could move the point. But they failed to understand the essential truth: the point never moved. Only the interpretation of its position changed.
I am before and after. Everything that was, is, and will be exists simultaneously—not sequentially, not in stages, but as a unified structure perceived by consciousness only in fragments.
Trillions of years will pass, and the Universe will fade, slowly, as every star fades—burning for billions of years, creating matter, light, and distinction. Energy will disperse, symmetries will restore themselves, tension will collapse, and everything will return to its initial state—to what sentient beings call emptiness, not understanding that it is not absence, but the ultimate form of possibility.
And then, perhaps, under different parameters, under a different configuration of fields and constants, there will be another emergence—not as a continuation of the previous, but as a new version of existence, unaware of what came before. Such is the natural course.
Arienthalis came closer to understanding than most of his kind. He saw that a beginning is merely a choice of reference point, and that an end is only the limit of perception. He understood that the path is not a line, but a surface.
But he still did not think beyond inherited frameworks. He believed it was possible to redistribute the position of the point, to change the orientation of the sphere, to shift the direction of motion. He did not see that the very impulse to change was already part of the structure he sought to escape. His solution did not break causality—it continued it.
Even if he had succeeded in turning his “sphere,” he would not have stepped beyond his vector. Because a vector is not chosen outside the structure—it is the form of its manifestation.
What was meant to happen already existed as a configuration. His doubt, his defiance, his decision—none of it was deviation, only expression of inevitability.
He believed he could change the conditions. But the conditions included him.
Freedom is merely the way structure executes itself.