Origin

A story is a story is a story.

It is rather difficult to describe the events that took place, because they took place outside time, and so not in anything we would call space. It's also difficult to explain the idea of coming up with an idea in terms outside of time, or creating something for that matter. Translated into our language--which is based around time, like it or not--here is how the conversation went.

There were problems. Beings wanted to be different, or should be something they weren't. In this place outside time, without time, "change" was not an idea yet. But, because they had infinite minds, which is almost the same as having infinite time, one came up with an idea.

"What about a place that allows change? A place with time." You would think this would be nigh impossible to communicate. In a world that lacked those terms and had time, that might have been true.

And so it was. And so the first were put through what might be a test, and left. It was an odd feeling. They genuinely left. And more were placed, at different places and times, which were close enough to be indistinguishable to any who had no memories from the place. Even those, when they came back, felt the lack of barrier was more correct. They simply remembered making the difference.

And so we sit and swim, moving on a line with branches and seen as goldfish in a sphere.