【by Kash Jain】
I’m trapped.
I’m trapped in this goddamn hunk of metal drifting through an infinite void, the universe that I and so many others called home. Any warmth I once imagined to exist in this place is gone; it is an abyss home only to decaying life, nothing else. There is nobody around to see me and nothing for me to see.
There are planets, of course, though they are distant and imperceptible to my gaze. There are stars, too, plenty of them. So many of them, uncountable — and believe me, I have tried. I have stared out the same pane of glass that I stare through now, looking at those pinpricks of light, just watching them, looking for a sign of anything. Absolutely anything at all. But there’s nothing there. They’re shining, bright points, sure, but they’re soulless and empty. There is nothing in them for me or anyone else.
We have always been fascinated by the stars. I heard stories of long-gone civilizations that looked up and saw patterns, saw signs, saw meaning. They sought guidance, hope, and purpose, and they found it. Those magnificent bodies were incomprehensible to the smallminded men that lived then, trudging across their planet in a desperate race to power and profit, razing anything that stood in their path. Their successors continued to find meaning among the stars, and soon enough, they were able to reach them, fleeing their desecrated home. They were in awe of what they saw but still too feeble-minded to comprehend the raw power they stared into, glassy-eyed. Their burning fury, enough to tear through our bodies and reduce us to nothing but scattered atoms, was incomprehensible to them. They thought they could harness that power. We still haven’t. We learned that we weren’t as advanced as we thought; we had no power over these beasts. All we could do was sit and watch, staring as I have been now, looking for something. But there is nothing there.
I have been on this godforsaken ship for longer than I can remember. I think I can still remember why I am here, though. Or at least, why I was. It was an experiment, the experiment of sending a man into space. Not just like that, of course, not unequipped — he would die instantly. The cold emptiness would reach out and crush him, erasing his existence in seconds. But in a ship? Yes, he could be sent to space on a ship. We had done it before — so many people had voyaged through this abyss on hulking masses of metal, the pinnacle of human ingenuity. We could send a ship, a grand one, not too grand, not grander than the ones we had sent to other worlds, the ones that never returned, the ones that stopped responding to their check-ins, the ones that didn’t call to us once they passed into some unknowable place. Well, not really unknowable, just not knowable to anyone living.
But why did we do it? It feels like a dream now. I’m sure I experienced it, that all of it was real, but it’s so hard to remember. It’s been so long. But I think they wanted us to find something. We had failed once again. Our worlds were decaying, our people struggling to survive, our end growing near after we had managed to stave it off. So, we went in search of something. I don’t know what. Even they didn’t. Like those voyages before, we were looking for something we couldn’t even understand.
We were searching for salvation.
I’m here because they sent me here. I volunteered, I wanted to do it, I wanted to save my species. We all did, so they built the ship, and we went on it and sailed out into the abyss, searching. We had hope that we could succeed where those who came before us had failed. I had hope. But I can’t find anything out here, not whatever it was that we came to find, and now not even the world I once knew.
Just empty space.
I thought I could find it. I was wrong, more wrong than I know. I thought we could maybe understand, maybe learn the secret to what governs those stars and this universe. Not simply physics and biology and science; we know about molecules, we know about sentience, we know about what binds and constructs us. I’m not talking about God. There is no such concept anymore; we know we’re alone. But I wanted to understand, we wanted to understand, I needed to understand why we were here and what is beyond us, what is unreachable, or what we thought was unreachable. I needed to understand the intangible. But there just isn’t anything there. Now, I sit on this ship, alone but for my thoughts and my sorrow, the rest of my crew lost. I have no one. Not anymore.
I didn’t kill them. Well, I didn’t kill most of them, only the last one. I couldn’t avoid it, he wanted me to do it, he begged me to do it. I can still hear him begging for me to end his life. Or was he begging for me to save it? I hear those last moments, and I hear him now, calling to me. Not a metaphor, not just the echoes of his voice, I can hear him. Of course I can hear him, he’s only a few feet away from me. His corpse, blue, lifeless, and vacant, is begging to be released. He wants to be free to rest in the infinite void, to go out there. But if I send him out there, I won’t have him anymore. I will be even more alone than I am now.
There is no hope. Not for him, not for me, not for our species. Not for this damn ship, this floating but silent machine, once alive and buzzing, now as cold as his body. It’s just me in this hollow place. I can’t escape, and even if I could, there is nowhere to escape to.
There is nothing out there, nothing but the stars that watch me. They can’t see, not like we can, not with eyes, not with sensation, not with perception, but they see me. They stare into me and past me, knowing every fiber of my being and every part of who I am and everything I have done and the murder and the failure and the ruin that I am now; they see it all. They know it, they know it better than I do; despite their distance from me and their independence from my reality, they see me and know me.
They see him too. I know because he tells me. But he won’t tell me his name, which I can’t remember anymore, or who he was, or if he had a family, or if he came on this damned ship for the same reason that I did. Not that I could even recognize the shared reason if he did, or that he could even remember. He whispers to me, begging me to let him go to the stars. They’re calling him, whispering to him like he is to me, telling him to go to them, and surely he will find what he’s looking for. They see him too, and that’s how I know they see me. He whispers to me that the stars can see him and they’re calling, they’re begging for him to come to them, to enter their warm but uncaring embrace, to become atoms once again. They want me too, but I can’t hear them. Maybe because I am still alive, I can’t know their language, and I can’t communicate with them.
He thinks there is an escape among the stars, an escape into infinity. He thinks that what he is looking for is out there, among them. If I let him go, they will show him what he is looking for. But I can’t trust him. I can’t trust them. I can feel them, even if I can’t hear their words. I can feel their piercing, uncaring eyes peering into me. They know that I don’t trust them and that they can’t convince me, so they try to use him for their purpose. Maybe I might trust him more, they think. Maybe I did, once. Maybe we were friends. Maybe they’ve always been watching us and waiting for our demise. But I can’t be sure. They have no meaning to me, other than as watchers, because they won’t convey anything to me, or maybe because I can’t understand what they would say. But he does, he says, and he wants me to let him go.
But I can’t let him. I won’t let him. I know it’s selfish, but I can’t be even more alone than I am now, I don’t want to be, I really couldn’t take it.
There is no hope. I know this, and I know that will never change, it can never change. But it isn’t true just for me, it’s true for him, for the man I ended, for my crew, for the ship, for the others we sent. They are long gone, we had hoped that they would find something, but they’re gone, and they won’t return with or without those who once stood on their hulls. They have abandoned us. They have joined us in nonexistence, disappearing into the place from which we came, the infinite void that stretches beyond anything I can even begin to comprehend. There is no hope for our people, our cities, our children. My children?
Did I have a family? Did I leave someone behind? Maybe he was my family, once, or maybe he had his own. Did I ever really even know him? We were here together, so perhaps we came for the same reason, but I don’t know his reasoning now. He won’t tell me, he’s keeping it a secret. He won’t tell me what he’s looking for.
I think I might have had a family. I hope I did, because I don’t want to be alone. But even if I did, even if I had him, I’m alone now.
All of it must be gone. At least, I hope it is. I don’t want to be alone in nonexistence, but I will be because the stars don’t care. They see me, they see him, but they don’t care. I don’t want them to be gone, but it’s easier that way. It’s easier for them if stars can’t find them, unless the stars have already taken them. I know that if I falter, they will come and take me too, bringing me into their nothingness.
That’s all I know, now. That it’s empty here in the void, that this is the end of it all, this desolation that is coming for us or has already arrived. Is it here, already? Has it consumed me? I don’t think so, not yet. But it comes. I don’t know when, but I know it’s inevitability, and I know we can not stop it, and I know that the stars will not care to see us go, just as they don’t care now, just as they never cared before, just as they will continue not to care as we are swallowed. I know we have failed. I know that I have failed.
I’m sorry.