The roof of State Farm Arena was a lonely place. But sometimes, a lonely place is just what one desires, Trae Young thought to himself as a chilly wind blew past him. He sat against one of an HVAC unit, his knees drawn up to his chest, gazing heavenward. Should he have done more? Could he have done more? The answer to both these questions seemed to be “yes”, but he yearned for a higher guidance than his own fallible human mind.
The pervasive illumination of the city had dimmed the stars, but up there on that rooftop, Trae felt he could see them crystal-clear, as if he were in the middle of a deep wilderness underneath a cloudless sky. Questions of basketball, and of life, he pondered while gazing deeply into the shimmering pinpoints of light.
Suddenly, an odd sensation enveloped him. It started as a slight tingling all across his body, but, in time, he could feel a…sundering…happening, as if his soul was being drawn away from his physical form. He continued to gaze intently at the multitude of stars in the sky, and when he felt compelled to move his eyes towards a single star in particular. As he stared at it, it grew larger and brighter, becoming the size of Venus, then, of the moon, and then…
—
Trae opened his eyes and found that he had no eyes to open. He still had his sense of sight, but it was not attached to any physical form. Looking around the void which surrounded him, he realized that he had been transported outside the Earthly realm. Far, far below him was a small bluish dot which he knew to be the planet Earth. His (former?) home.
He attempted to reach a hand out towards the planet of his origin, but sheepishly realized that there was no hand to do the reaching. He was a being of pure consciousness, unburdened by the inconvenience of physical laws. With the force of his thought, he found he could move to any spot instantly and effortlessly. He moved to the other side of the planet in this manner, then to a spot outside the orbit of Pluto, then to a location much closer to the surface of the Sun than any of humanity’s probes had ever reached. With solar flame dazzling his sight, he realized that he had no idea what was happening to him. Was his Earthly body still perched on top of the arena? Was it still moving, thinking, living? Which part of him exactly had been chosen to receive this heightened state of being?
To his surprise, he was suddenly moved, against his will, to a point far outside the system of planets which counted among its members the planet Earth. In front of him was an entirely new system of planets, and, intuitively, he knew that mankind’s many telescopes had never viewed this particular star. It burned bright and hot, just like the familiar Sun, and around it, seven planets orbited lazily.
“Welcome, friend,” said a voice that had no source, the voice of another thought-being.
“Where am I?” Trae asked, using the same voice that had welcomed him, a voice that was not carried across soundwaves, but thoughtwaves. Immediately, he chided himself for asking such a foolish question. It mattered not where he was. It only mattered what he would do while he was here.
“The Currion System,” answered the thought-voice. “It is here where the Ritual of Conception will take place, to continue the Stellar Lineage.”
This phrase meant nothing to Trae, but his soul shimmered in anticipation. Clearly, some higher force was at work here. “I am ready,” he replied. “Humbly, I submit to the Sidereal Initiation.” How those words had come to him, he did not know, but he knew that they were the right words, the sacred words, the words of truth.
He felt a sensation like a hand taking hold of him, and he submitted to it. The Hand of the Universe grabbed onto his soul and melded it, deforming it and reforming it like a block of clay. This process continued for some time, but it was not uncomfortable; indeed, with each reshaping of the pure essence of himself, he felt new knowledge flowing through him. The knowledge of all realms. Spatial, mental, spiritual.
The Hand had taken him away to an empty place where no stars existed. In the far distance, the galactic cloud shimmered with the radiance of stars numbering in the billions. “I am ready,” he repeated. A spectacular burst of light filled his vision, and ultimate power and understanding were all at once bestowed upon him.
A new star had been born.