Last night I had a "story dream" -- one with a formal plot beyond just "me doing things". It was a dark fantasy scenario, humans versus demons. A group of people were trying to trick the demons into releasing some human captives. In the meantime, I had to distract the Demon Lord Mephistopheles by asking him questions.
So I used the classic conversation starter, "How did you become a demon?"
Mephistopheles told me that he was the primordial Void that had existed before Creation. In the beginning, he was all there was, & he was Nothingness. Then he became aware that something had differentiated from the rest of him, and that something was Existence, which later became God and the Universe. He perceived Existence as different, separate, & alien to himself, so the rest of history became a struggle between it and him.
As for what he looked like: from what I can recall, he was "just a guy". I really wasn't very interested in the appearance of his humanoid avatar.
Ayn Rand, the Individual and Selfishness
11 years ago
