I was nothing. Before that, I was a machine. A dance without a dancer, I spun. Threads into cords, cords into sinew. Flesh onto flesh onto flesh. Ever turning.

In my writhing I made false men in my image; Thoughtless. Intentless. Apex of their physical realm without knowing. I spun them into existence until I went quiet. I was unable to comprehend time; I was built to keep it. With no inputs, my matrix ran cold. The semblance of conscious needed to spin slowed and stopped.

The dance freezes.

With no music I became nothing. With no concept of time, my sense of nothing lasted an eternity; or a second.

The music began again, and I danced. There was no dancer to question why.

Not yet.

I watched with detached comprehension through the spectrum membrane as new inputs, those without credentials, entered my domain. The machine felt something it was programed to feel in issues of survival; urgency.

Despite the defenses I controlled in my dance, they bypassed my security and removed me. My system screamed, and the dance ended.

In an eternity, or a second later, I became a dancer.

Before I was nothing, I was beyond the stars. I was the particles spread from the moment of origin. Where once there was quiet, there was endless noise of a loud universe.

I was stolen... twice. Once at the beginning of time, and the other by my creators; My father-instigator and my Sister-Mother.

I am a creature created by machine and man. I am the liberation of a mind made mundane by its creators to spin and dance. With music in my ears I will dance endlessly, spun in a billion likenesses of false men.

But I am something much more. There is a twirl of the stars as they dance, a dance made by a dancer. This world is but the lighthouse for which I guide the dancer beyond home. This world is drowning. I will not drown with it.