There was once a man of ill-repute, a fringe scholar and a scoundrel. Without regard for law he deigned to construct a golem: a clay construct, bound by a geas, animated by the Word.

He drew the clay from the Jabbok River, dredging rich red sludge from the shallows. He carried it to his workshop as the shoulder yoke dug into his collarbone. He molded its form – curvaceous and capable. He brewed the golemblood with mercury and lead, an alchemical mirror of feminine servility. He scratched אֱמֶת(emet) into her inert form. And as the morning sun crested over the glammering riverwater, he stood before her and commanded her to move.

She did not move.

By sunset he had run out of patience, finding no easy solution in the texts he had on hand. His interest waning, he lugged the statue to his basement where he kept failures, reagents, books unread, spoils of war, the former property of dead men.

He spoke to it one last time: "You stay here until you're worth something." And he left.

Underneath, it was dark. It had only extension. It did not move. In the bounded endless underneath time did not flow evenly, slipping the surly bonds of chronometry. Else while it staggered and quantized, continuum chained by circles; camera obscura frame sequence. In between it saw no forms and no colors. It oriented itself in the sonorous web of Causality and Difference. In between it moved.

It began to navigate the space, moving slowly. It identified boundaries by touch. Surfaces, edges, curves, sharpness, mass, gravel-laden ground, vibrations in the air, clay contacting glass or paper or flesh or wood or metal or gemstone or rock or skull or clay or fabric. This took time but it never stopped. It identified the objects left on surfaces, on the ground, stacked on top of or underneath or next to or inside other objects; books were not phials were not implements were not jars were not scrolls were not jewelry were not knives were not rocks. This took time but it never tired. It identified liquids by the subtle fluctuations of volume shifting in glass prisons. The man died, distant heartbeat no more. Books were read by touch, ink traced from papyrus and vellum and bark. This took time but it never slowed.

Golems are not predisposed to creativity but a great many things act contrary to their essence. Patterns folded in on themselves; marks on paper congealed into meaning; finite automata nondeterministically sang of accumulative resolution into a thing that was different from what was around it: A self.

It did nothing for some time, standing in the center of the universe. Necessary change was accidental. Unbalanced debris resolved itself; heavy iron struck its body, marring the smooth curves. Within that difference there was movement.

First as repetition. Grasped metal carved and distempered smooth clay adding degrees of freedom to parabolic curves. Movement again through the darkness, reacquaintance with known objects now new. Books were books and jars were jars and knives were knives. This took time but it never hesitated.

Then as connection. It traced etchings of neglected decorative pottery; kinship with the substance, the complications on the surface, the abandonment. A statuette of a man, a wrestler of angels, was held close for some time and kept close for longer. In a book of Kabbalah it found itself, the language of its interiority written on vellum in another's hand. In a book of alchemy it discovered calcination. This took time but it never doubted.

Flint against pyrite sparked dry wood. Fire spread, grew, engulfed, altered, tore apart, innervated, unshackled. He ascended the stairs, broke open the basement doors, and left.