Life was weird.

  I didn’t know why I felt that way, only that everything was dark. Not emotionally dark, but enclosed, as if I existed inside a sealed world.

  Why did I feel like this? It was the only thing I had ever known.

  I couldn’t tell when I had started to exist. I simply was, without any sense of a beginning.

  Maybe I was an old soul. I wondered what a soul was, and whether it was tasty. Tasty seemed related to eating, though I didn’t know what that meant either.

  Time passed, or maybe it didn’t. It could have been a second or a millennium. I had no reference.

  I wondered how I even knew about time. Did I invent it just now? Was I a god? Did I invent god? None of those answers felt right, though I didn’t know why.

  Life went on like this for what I later called the Era of Darkness. Or perhaps the Great Beginning.

  After a while of just existing—and when I say “a while,” in this dark boring nothingness it must have been a long while—I finally understood something important:

  I was truly, painfully bored.

  Learning about boredom in an infinitely boring place was an irritant that couldn’t be solved.

  I don’t know how long it took, but eventually I felt something new, an all-encompassing hunger to devour the world around me.

  So without further ado, I consumed it.

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  Light poured into my little world and spurred my efforts until I broke through into a giant world of yellow.

  Everything was yellow except the giant creatures that stood and flew around me. They felt like servants. Or sisters.

  How did one even feel that someone was a sister?

  Two of them helped me out of what I realized was an egg.

  My egg?

  That must have meant I was some kind of chicken, probably. The thought made me sad. Chickens were born to be food.

  Yet I knew I was meant for something greater.

  Maybe I was the savior of all chickens. I was the Chicken Messiah.

  That would explain why they were here.

  It wasn’t easy being me, but I had a greatness others couldn’t carry for me.

  While I contemplated my existence, the creatures busied themselves around me.

  One of them stopped my deep life-thinking by offering a drop of yellow liquid.

  I tasted it, and my entire mind opened.

  This was the definition of tasty.

  What was this substance? Ambrosia? No, it was greatness itself. Sweet and rich and completely unexplainable.

  I would go to war for this stuff. This was our new holy drink.

  I would call it the good stuff.

  As I savored it, a giant version of the creatures entered the room.

  She was more beautiful than the rest, and I could see her more clearly than anyone else. She radiated authority.

  The moment she appeared, everyone fell silent. I hadn’t realized the world had a buzzing vibration before now.

  The nearest bee released a scent and danced toward her.

  The great one responded with a scent that smelled pleased.

  Somehow, it felt deeply important that she was happy about my existence.

  A small ding sounded, and a blue box appeared in my mind.

  It hovered in front of me—not truly there, not blocking my vision, yet impossible to ignore.

  A neon-blue box.

  “So… not a chicken?” I tried to say, but only a faint clicking and squling noise came out.

  The surrounding bees seemed delighted by the sound and began feeding me again.

  Warmth and sweetness spread through me as the great one turned and left.