I was new. I was real. I existed. Knowing this as I did made everything all sparkly and shiny. As if it had only just been made. As if it were all freshly minted. Straight out of its packaging. I carried on walking. Walking down the road. I’m new. I’m real. I exist, I thought to myself as I walked down the road and this felt great. Everything felt so fresh and clean and sparkly. I was new and sparkly and so was the world!
This became my refrain as I walked down the road – “I’m new, I’m real, I’m sparkly…” As I walked I was keenly struck by how sharply in-focus everything was, how sharp-edged and clean it all was. Everything looked as if it had just been printed by the most amazing ultra high-tech printer ever. The whole world had just been freshly printed and so had I.
Wow, I thought to myself, this is so amazing. Everything was so vivid and clear, like a brand new book that had just fallen open at a particular page, a page full of marvellous intricate full-colour illustrations. The whole world was like that. Freshly printed, fallen open at a particular page, accidently revealing its pristine glory. A page that had never before been seen by the human eye.
All of this has just been freshly printed, I realized then. I was seeing it for the very first time. It was so fresh, so new, that it almost hurt my eyes. It had all just been printed and so had I. Printed by the Great Printer. I wondered what that Great Printer looked like. It must look great, I marvelled. The Great Printer, printing everything so beautifully, so perfectly. I really existed, I realized all over again and the force of this realization shook me like a sudden strong gust of wind. I’m new! I’m real! I exist! I couldn’t get over the strangeness of this realization…
Everywhere I looked there was great stuff to see. Fascinating, intricate details. Pristine details that had never before been seen. I’m new. I’m real. I exist, I thought as I walked down the road. I didn’t know what to look at next. It was all so great. I couldn’t get over how great it all was. I realized then that I didn’t even know what ‘it’ was. What everything was. The thing I was talking about. “What is it?” I asked myself, full of surprise and wonder. It all felt so new, so bright, so vivid. Kind of supernatural. And I didn’t know anything about it. What it was. That why it was so strange to me. That’s why I found it all so amazing. Everything had just been freshly printed, including me.
“The Great Printer has just printed everything and that’s why everything looks so new” I told myself and saying this made me feel a bit more settled in myself, a bit less thrown by it all. Then, having thought this, the next thing was that I found myself wondering how the Great Printer had got to be there. “What printed the Great Printer?” I asked myself.
This put me in a bit of a spin. This was a thorny problem. Eventually, after turning the problem over and over in my head, I figured out a way around it. The answer was that the Great Printer was Eternal. It had always existed and it always would do. Forever and ever. Probably someone should make up a religion about it, I thought. Maybe I should. Maybe that was my mission. I was meant to be the Prophet of a new religion. Whose job was to tell everybody about the Great Printer and how it was Eternal. Get other people to understand about it. Explain about the Great Printer so they could understand and know how great it was…
I looked around me. Something had changed. Something was different. For a moment I wondered what it was. Then it hit me – the sparkle had gone out of everything. The fresh, pristine look had gone out of it. The world looked grey and tired.
