A pair of vacant eyes gazed into the dark as if pretending to look for something, only to avoid confrontation from their own kind. They traced every spec of light until there was nothing left of it. But they were unsure of how they were moving or where they were going, for the light spawning from the thrusters was devoured by the dark before it could reach them. People inside were under the impression that it was the space that was moving them, expanding into nothing, and pushing them in all directions. The ship was like a floating oasis of life enveloped by nothingness and blinded by circumstance.
“Enjoying the view?” rock spoke in a sarcastic tone.
That question invaded her headspace and shattered all her thoughts disturbing her delicately balanced worldview, which crashed under the weight of all the imaginary scenarios that were born to counter it.
Irritated by the interruption jazz carelessly tilted her head in his direction.
“It’s like looking into a mirror, no ordinary mirror though. Do you remember the magic mirror from snow white that could talk back?”
“Yeah, I do” he answered quickly intrigued to know the reason why she bought it up.
“Except this one doesn’t. You don’t need to ask any questions. It just shows you what you truly are. Take a person, peel the skin off, gouge those eyes out, rip open the body, pull out all the bones with their flesh and blood; this is what’s left of them, an unending void that pours out in all directions.”
He was stunned. He didn’t know much about the nature of things she was speaking about. To him, people were simple creatures like all the other species who had somehow figured out the game to stay on top. But jazz was different he thought. She barely spoke to anyone. Speaking in abstract terms, she seldom shared her true opinions. It’s like she was protecting her intentions locked up in herself like some mysterious animal caged in flesh.
“Don’t we have souls?”
“We are nothing but our longings rock. They start inside us as tiny little voids that keep growing until we can’t contain them anymore. Then they turn into space and keep expanding forever.”
“You got to do some living” he sighed.
“And before you slide back into that meditative gaze again, be sure to have a look at this. I think it’s yours” he added hastily as he handed over a compact disc.
Her dull eyes lit back to life for a moment when she saw her name imprinted into its silver. “Jazz” she read out in a dead voice. Although she managed to tone down the curiosity in her voice, the instantaneous spark in her eyes had given it away.
“I feel like swimming” saying this she stood up and started walking. The motion-sensing lights flickered as she moved across the hallway. The ship was large enough to house a swimming pool but to prioritize having a pool over any other critical infrastructure was an idiotic choice for a spaceship she thought.
“Night setting” she whispered into the oxygenated air. The projector painted a portion of the night sky relative to the surface of the earth on the roof in an instant. She put the CD into the oldest electronic device she could find that could process it. She stacked her neatly folded clothes on a raised platform before she got naked.
Her feet felt tingly when they met the carpeted metal surface. She moved into the pool slowly disturbing the perfectly uniform water body in portions. The depth of the pool was never a problem because she considered swimming to be a mystic experience that would serve as an escape from a reality filled with nothing more than nothingness and she never wanted her feet to land on the metal ground while she was having such an experience.
She flexed her arms before flipping and floating on her back facing the night sky with all the magnificent constellations and wondered whether if the actual sky view on earth would be this beautiful with all the space junk in its lower orbits. Although she was born on a spaceship like this one, she knew that her ancestors were from the earth. But she never had been to that part of the universe which was filled with star systems each with its own living planets.
The past couple of years of her life has been spent cruising through a void 93 light-years wide sparsely lit with less than a hundred galaxies, for all she knew she could be spending all her life crossing this celestial graveyard. But she had nothing to do other than hopping from one cluster to another in the hope of finding a planet suitable to live on.
Some weird metallic buzz bought her back to the world where earth with all its splendor was just another virtual projection to experience, among other breath-taking experiences. It was the sound of the compact disc that was processed and ready. The sound of moving hardware made her feel old.
“Play!” she shouted so that the microphone could catch her voice and the display screen turned blue while the projector figured out what to play.
“Let’s see what you got hidden away” she added sarcastically.
A video file opens showing a little girl in glasses holding a piece of paper.
Narrator: “uh, should I start?
Space-time coordinates marked relative to planet earth:
2 February 2995, age 9.
Distance: 2 light-years
They say I’ve 10 minutes. I don’t know what to say since I don’t understand who this is for. But everyone speaks about this planet earth, and they call it home. I honestly don’t know why. We went to a planetarium today and my mom cried when she saw a hologram of lots of people near a huge water body, they are called beaches she said. I know that she hasn’t been to one, but she still feels nostalgic whenever I bring it up.
(Video pauses for a moment and then resumes)
Everyone’s talking about a magnetic flip on planet earth. I don’t know what caused it, but my people are constantly in touch with those earth people, and everyone’s kind of terrified”
End of track one. The robotic voice echoed through the room. She remained speechless for a moment, but before she could reach the second track set on autoplay had already begun.
It was the same girl but slightly older than before.
Narrator:
Space-time coordinates marked relative to planet earth:
2 February 2999, age 13.
Distance: 3.7 light-years
Hey, it's awkward even for the second time to speak to a screen. (She giggles)
If my memory’s correct, I think we parted at the magnetic flip thing. You know what, turns out it didn’t have much effect except for a bunch of species that were wiped off. The earthlings are safe though. It sounds funny when we call those people our ancestors, but they are still alive. There’s some good news this time. Planet earth was hit by a very big asteroid, some 30 meters across. It hit the earth with tons of minerals and that turned a whole desert into a grassland. Yayy for more species (she laughed)
Ok, I got to go, see you next time!”
End of segment two, the robotic voice yelled again.
She was so still that the water around her had become calmer. It was like she had become a part of the pool. The girl on screen was her. She dived into the deeper waters as tears rolled down her cheeks. All her memories rushed back. It was like finding the key to an old house abandoned a long time ago. She screamed with anger when her feet finally found the metal floor. It had been years since she had felt something this pure. Although she was crying and screaming, she finally felt complete. The emotional intensity shook her body filling up all the voids inside her with the will to live and experience life. She quickly came up and swam close to the old pc and turned on the video recorder.
Narrator: “Finally, ugh damn these emotions.
Space-time coordinates marked relative to the assumed position of planet earth:
12 December 3012, age 22.
Distance: 72 light-years
It has been years since I’ve done this, but this might well be the last time. I don’t know if this reaches someone or not, but this is important. Planet earth is gone. As far as I can remember, my great grandparents were involved in an operation to find habitable planets in the nearby star systems, but they weren’t successful given the short time. After the earth got destroyed, they had nowhere else to go, so they continued their search.
The super idiotic part here is, that the handlers of this project wiped out our memories of planet earth to ease the pain of a non-existent home. They considered people would be efficient without all the memories that tied them back to earth. Since then, we have been hopping from one galaxy to another and latching on to earth-like planets, and sucking the life out of them like parasites. Even after all these generations, we haven’t found one single planet to call home. Even those which resembled earth in every quality couldn’t stand us for more than a couple of decades.
I don’t care about planet earth since I’ve never gone there. But it does provide a sense of home. Once people lose their memories, they are not people anymore. They are metaphysical shells devoid of attachment. I know this because I’ve been through it. We can never completely lose our memories; we just lose access to them, and they are locked away in some part of us. These lost memories haunt us like ghosts showing up in nightmares. No one should be subjected to such a horrible life.
So, if this message finds someone, I want you to burn it into your hearts and minds that you had a home, a past, a history. You are not sons and daughters of the void, you belong somewhere. You had a family and people cared for you. There’s no greater meaning to life than loving people and getting loved back.
I want you to live and die with that fact.
The transmission was interrupted by a loud noise of clanking metals. A comet passing by had collided with the ship head-on and the ship lost half of its body. The collision had tampered with the artificial gravity systems and all the water in the pool curled into a ball around her body lifting her up into space. The moment she was out into the space, all that water boiled in a few seconds cooking her inside. Blood rushed out of her body from every exit. Displaced and tangled, her bones curled up into a sphere that was pulled into the tail of the comet.
