Ascension

"I don't know when I first had the dream. I was young, very young, so it was a very, very long time ago. I lost track after the first few millennia.

I don't remember my family, or my home. They're long, long gone. But I remember the first dream. I was alone, in a starless, moonless, sunless field. There was nothing beneath my feet but scorched earth, where I knew nothing had ever grown. In the center of that field was a tower, one reaching beyond the limits of my pitiful sight. Never changing, never shifting, a single spire striking eternally into the heavens 

In the dream, I ran away. I fled. The tower behind me, I ran as far as I could, and when I stopped, I had returned to the tower. I tried again, and was back at the tower again. After the third time, I realized I could not leave. So I entered, instead. There was nothing inside, nothing but the stairs. I woke up.

The next time I had the dream, I began climbing. I started to take each step, one at a time. I could see up the middle of the tower, but the top faded into nothing as I climbed. I don't know how long I climbed until I woke up. But when I had the dream again, I was there, where I had stopped.

This went on. Nothing changed in the waking world, but the dream would come to me every few weeks, and I would keep climbing. In time, I realized I could no longer see the base of the tower. Within the dream, there was only me, and the stairs ascending and descending. And then one day, I realized something.

What would happen when I reached the top.

I froze when I thought of that. This tower had a base. Should it not have a top? I laid there for dream after dream, unwilling to climb higher. I feared, more than anything else, the day that the tower was no longer endless in my sight. For what then? True, I could climb down, but it would not save me from the unbearable knowledge of the top.

What would be atop it? Would it be the God who consigned me to this eternal dream and eternal life? Would it be a Devil who had done the same? Would not any devil who accomplished this be a God, and any God who would visit this suffering upon a mortal be a Devil? Or would there be nothing? The knowledge that this dream had carried me up here for unfathomable lengths solely for its own completion?

I agonized for years, until I began climbing again. Because though the terror of what could be still awaited me, the terror of not climbing, of not doing what I had done for so long, was growing worse.

Whenever I have that dream, I continue to climb. I still cannot see the peak of the tower, or the base. 

I don't know how long I will continue to live. Perhaps thousands of years. Perhaps millions. Perhaps I am truly and completely eternal, and I will live as the universe dies around me, until I am alone in an infinite void. And in that void, I will sleep, and I will dream

If there is any justice, any mercy, then in that dream I will still be climbing."