Object 25

The Holder of Creation

In any city, in any country, go to any hospital and ask to visit the one who refers to himself as "The Holder of Creation". The clerk will look into your eyes, horrified, before standing up. She (and only she) will lead you to the maternity ward and push you into a locked door, which you will glide through.

Once inside the door, you will notice two more: one to the left and one to the right. You must choose the one in the direction to which you are more accustomed, hoping all the while that fate has correctly guided your hand. Touch the door handle. If light peeks from under the doorway, you must enter. If it doesn't, you must run into the other room, as fast as you can. Sleep where you drop and do not trust anyone. Do not enter the sunlight; seek shadows and pray to whatever god you wish that you pass unnoticed.

If the light is emitted from beneath the door, or if by some miracle you evade capture after your error and return to choose once more, enter cautiously. The room seems to stretch into eternity; make no attempt to comprehend its size or shape, as many men greater than you have been driven mad at the thought. Strewn across the entirety of this room are the bodies of the stillborn and the fetuses of the unborn. Those capable of sound will seem to pierce the very fabric of your consciousness with cries, which appear to be both audible and a figment of your imagination.

On the horizon will be a mother, little more than a child herself, clutching a baby wrapped in a tattered blanket to her teat. Closer examination of the suckling infant will leave you pondering its true age. Its expression seems weathered and careworn, an eternal, knowing glance assuring you that its eyes have forgotten more than most will ever see.

Approach the mother, calmly. Should you startle her and interrupt the feeding, your only hope is to whisper, "I wish not to disturb you, nor your beautiful son." If you have appeased her, position yourself so as to gaze directly into the child's eyes. Once there, you must not break eye contact for fear of upsetting the infant and bringing about your own doom. You may ask him one question and one question only: "For what have we been created?"

The baby will move and wrap his tattered cloth around you, binding you and rending you limb from limb, yet you must not react to the pain or risk never returning to your original form. If you can overcome the agony, he will stare into your eyes, and you will see the beginning of the cosmos. All things that have been since the creation of existence will unfold before your eyes. The truth of the origin of the Seekers will be brought to life, and if you're not driven insane by this truth, you will feel the warmth of this knowledge glowing inside you. This heat will grow until the pain of the burn outweighs that of your torn flesh a thousandfold. You will feel your body melt away, burning into nothing save ash.

At the peak of your anguish, if you have managed to remain stoic, you will blink the eyelids which you no longer have, opening them to find you have returned outside, exactly one day before the incident. In your hands, you will find a tattered manuscript, the text of which seems to predate existence.

This is Object 25 out of 2538. This book years to return the other Objects to it, and within it is the cryptic knowledge of how to do so.