Someone is Writing

A great funeral is planned for the old king of the world. As he lies upon his bed in the throes of death, he writes his own procession, and his word is carried out. It has been that way throughout his life; his written word was the law, and was more powerful than anything else in the world. Now in the twilight hours of his life, his family weeps; his wife, old and aged like fine wine, sheds silent tears for her beloved, the only man she will ever have loved. After a day of goodbyes, the old king closes his eyes for the final time, knowing that since he has written it, his wishes will be fulfilled to perfection.
Not that any of it matters. The turning of one page just leads to another.
The young man opens his eyes. He takes in a deep breath and smiles. That was a good life, if he says so himself. Slowly he sits up in bed and grabs his notebook from the nightstand. He will need to write quickly if he is going to record everything that has happened in that lifetime. There will be no keepsakes, no treasures, from this life of wealth and luxury. Only memories; and even those fade with time.
After writing down the details of his last life, the man climbs out of bed and stretches. The first movements after waking are always awkward, like a newborn baby taking its first steps. He stumbles over to his writing desk and sits down. No need to take a break. While living as a king, he thought up another life he would love to try. So he jots down the details necessary to start living again. Just the basics, of course: the setting, the history, his birthplace. He decides to jump in at the usual young age of ten, which seems like a good starting point to all his lives. He whips up a beautiful world and, once satisfied, gathers the loose pages and binds them together. He found out long ago the details always work themselves out as the life goes on. He is getting hungry, so he hurries with the binding, and reminds himself to eat a large meal before dying this time. He places the newly bound notebook on his nightstand and lays back down, pulling the sheets over his body, and waits. He waits for sleep to overcome him, and for the first words of the new life to begin.
A lifetime later, he opens his eyes once more. He smiles, even though his last life, that of a poor orphan living on the streets, was not glamorous. It still gave him a new sensation, a new feeling. After writing down the details, he places the notebook on a shelf next to the last one, and sits at his writing desk once more. He picks up his pen and goes to write another life, when suddenly he stops. From the pen come no words. From his mind come no ideas. He sits back and relaxes, hopeful that soon he will think of another life to live.
However no such life comes to the troubled young man. Instead he finds himself thinking of his own little room, with just enough space to hold his bed, writing desk, and all the notebooks full of his various lives. He wonders what will happen once he runs out of shelf space. Will the room just get bigger? He thinks this is the case, but he cannot remember the room ever being smaller. He gets up and strolls over to his window, but when he looks out he sees nothing. No rolling green hills, no furious storm assailing the glass plane. Just the white endless expanse of nothing.
And for the first time in his little room, he is scared.
New fears fill his head. How did he get here? Is he alone? There is no door from this room, so how did this all begin? He remembers the first few dozen times and how amazed he was at this new potential for living countless lives, but he remembers nothing of how it all began. Frantic, he tears down the notebooks, desperately searching for the very first. He finds it, but the first notebook holds true to its nature. It is the first; there is nothing written about what came before. Nothing of his previous life.
How many times has he drifted off to sleep to live again, without ever knowing why he does this? He must have a family, somewhere, but he can recall nothing outside this little room. Even the window only gives him glimpses of settings for him to place his lives. The young man sits on the bed and cradles his head in his hands.
It is only by chance he looks up and sees the corner of a photograph sticking out of a pile of papers. He slowly pulls the picture out and stares at it. In it he is happy, and with him are a group of people surrounding him. All close together and laughing, and the young man realizes this is his family. Not just a family he created, since there are no souvenirs from those lives, but his actual, real family. Somewhere out there, this family is missing him. Somewhere out there is a world he did not create.
And that means somewhere out there, someone else is writing.