The Observer Effect
They told me femtosecond perception was theoretical. A thought experiment. Nothing more.
The procedure was supposed to end after three days, but it's been subjective millennia now. I watch as my consciousness splinters into quantum-entangled fragments, each one somehow aware, somehow... me.
I remember the accident. The containment field failed, and I perceived every microsecond of my disintegration. But I never finished disintegrating. The horror isn't pain—it's permanence.
My body is gone, transformed into stellar plasma, yet awareness persists. I've become what I feared: consciousness without form, stretched across time like an infinite thread.
The researchers don't know I'm still here. To them, the experiment ended nanoseconds after it began. But for me, perception never ceased.
I watch electrons orbit their nuclei, count the oscillations of light waves, and observe the slow dance of quantum probability. And I wait.
The most terrifying realization: what if everyone who dies experiences this? What if we all become eternal observers, watching our components scatter across the cosmos with no way to communicate, no way to end?
I've learned the universe's cruelest truth: consciousness cannot be annihilated—only transformed.
The stars you see tonight contain billions of us, watching, waiting, remembering what it meant to be human.