My name is Micheal, but I'm not so sure anymore. This morning I woke up and felt this... connectedness with things. I looked at my TV wishing that South Park were on, and it turned on on it's own and, you guessed it, South Park was on Comedy Central.

This one threw me for a loop. I got scared that my dream world and the (and I now hesitate to call it this) real one were starting to collide in a manner I wasn't entirely prepared for.

Being now unemployed, I find myself with more time on my hands than I'm comfortable filling in with drugs, women and sleep. What I really want is a purpose. Somewhere in the deep recesses of my psyche I know that I already have one, one so profound that the collective perceptions of all humanity couldn't even begin to understand, but I can't seem to remember the details. Something about my dreams, something about a war, something about cats.

I have absolutely no opinion of cats. They are the only thing I've ever encountered that arouse such a sense of dull apathy within me, such a sense of inconsequencial happenstance entirely unrelated to myself.

I think I'll recess into dreamland for a bit. I don't really want to, but I'm so tired...

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"Micheal... MICHEAL"

"What? Is this... Is this the shit I've been trying to remember?"

"You need to start trying man, really. That incident with your TV, that was only the beginning, the fetal stages of your development. I think that it's appropriate now to tell you of what, physically and in your realm, you are."

"Well then, tell me. What am I?

"You, Ashen, are one of the less than ten remaining people on your Earth who can act outside of the bounds of your reality. In the past your kind has called itself the Ashen."

"The ashen, huh? What kind of shit can I do, exactly?"

"I do not know."

"You don't know? You claim to be comperable to GOD and you DON'T KNOW? How do I know I'm not just having a schizophrenic fit of self-deification?"

"You don't. Nobody can know anythinf for su-"

"Dude. Shut up with the vague esotericisms. If you're gonna guide me to my role in the grand scheme of whatever the fuck it is I play a role in, just tell me what you know and tell me straight."

"Fine then. You are to fight in a war, and not just any war. This war is the basis of everything that is. Existence was borne of a struggle between an infinite multitude of wills. There are no clear sides, but it can be said that there are two general trends. One is towards the seperation of these wills into individual manifestations, free of the influence of the rest, and the other is towards the unification of all into a singularity. The second would return everythingness to nothingness as it once was, but with quite a bit more finality. The first would continue the cycle of infinite expansion until eventually it expanded into a contraction. Utter infinitesimalism for an utterly infinitesimal moment.

"Well then, what's the difference? No matter whose will is dominant, it all returns to nothingness, right?"

"Not at all. A singularity is at once both infinite and infinitesimal, all is one and one is all. An infinitesimalism would result in utter nothingness, but temporarily. At any instance of awareness, will, action, existence, ANYTHING, it would recede further into itself, eventually becoming such that the cycle would reverse itself, a true infinitesimalism would eventually arise, instantaneously giving rise to yet another infinity of meaningless struggle."

"So I take it you'd prefer the singularity?"

"Quite so. Although the finite set of perceptions imbued to any finite being cannot truly understand the difference, a singularity would last eternally. All would remain in a stasis of sameness, all would be percievable at once by all, which would be one, ad infinitum."

"You make very little sense."

"Ok, Imagine a number line starting at negative infinity and ending at infinity. A singularity is zero. One point, exactly balanced, exactly in the middle. Now an infinitesimalism extends to both infinities, includes all of the infinite points in between. It averages out to be exactly the same number, zero, but is in fact the exact opposite. Granted, this is NOTHING like how it really is; it's merely the closest approximation one could understand."

"And why is it that you opine as you do, towards the singularity?"

"I do not know. I act without truly understanding anything but that I MUST act as I do. I MUST ensure singularity."

"I see. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if at any point, past, present or future, or any other extent of the pro- and re-gression of events on all planes of existence, above and below, within and without this one, a singularity were even possible to achieve, wouldn't it all be erased, nay, more than erased, all of this gone, never to have even happenned in the first place? Would not there JUST be the singularity?"

"One cannot say. You may well be right, my battle may well be so utterly futile that it's not even worth knowing about. All I know is that I must fight it, I must enlist others to help, and I must not waver in the least."

"That seems a bit stupid to me."

"EVERYTHING seems stupid to those who can truly see what it is, yet it is nonetheless. It is the wonderful and terrible nature of existence that all may participate and none may actually comprehend it. By this standard of intrinsic ignorance, all is inconsequential. By this standard of futility, I believe that it can be safely assumed that the only thing that one can do is follow the streams and eddies of happenstance that govern our lives, with or without the knowledge of the mechanics or reasons. Invariably."

"Oh, I see. So although you have capabilities beyond my own, you are NO more important than I am or the shit I took this morning was. I think I've heard all I need to."

"Wake up then, and do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT feed the cat."

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Another strange dream, another futile attempt to remember anything but the moods present within it, another meaningless cycle of questioning my own existence and getting no answers.

I'm pretty fucking broke now, and I'm getting hungry. I think I'ma go get a new job, as much as I'd rather just sit on my ass and die. No corporate job will take me, I have a tatoo of an inverted, bleeding cross on my right temple. I don't even know why that mattress shithole hired me. Probably just a fluke.

I was walking down 8th street to go see if I couldn't get a callcenter job up the road when a VERY strange man with spiders in his dreadlocks offered to sell me bud. I declined, seeing as I really didn't want the cop that was probably waiting around the corner to arrest me for buying a fucking plant, regardless of how much I actually DID want those dank, dank nugs.

For some reason he wouldn't let up. I got the feeling that it wasn't the pot he wanted to sell, but something else. I called him out on it.

"Hey buddy, I know it's not really the weed you want me to buy. What do you want?"

"Yehhh...," He smiled and groaned through the spaces where teeth once may have been. Maybe. "Do youszh like CATS? I found me a cat here the other day, and I can't afford to feed it. Pleaszhe man, alls I need is some change or some food. Itszh all I need."

It was at this point that I felt something round and heavy suddenly appear in my pocket as he produced a small, helpless looking kitten from his coat. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a can of tuna fish. This threw me for one hell of a fucking loop. the words "DO NOT feed the cat" were repeating over and over in my head. "Do not feed the cat, do NOT feed the cat, whatever the fuck you do, DO NOT FEED THE FUCKING CAT!"

Well I also remembered for whatever reason that when I was told this I was starting to seriously disagree with the ideas being presented to me, whenever and wherever the fuck that was. It seemed like something distantly past, but the imminence of my decision was looming.

I fed the cat.

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TO BE CONTINUED