Personal Space Ch. 03: Contact

Mentally, I grasped on to those thoughts. If I was to go back there with her, I had to start here and now. Breathe easy. Concentrate.

It worked, eventually. I ran diagnostics on everything I could think of, to reassure myself that things were in order and I could return to my ship. I still had that jump to make. I had to get out of here. Anywhere but here.

I decided to leave my safety line behind, lest it would hinder me while making the jump. The spiderweb on my ship's belly would make it obsolete, anyway. I detached it from my suit and wrapped it into the handles of the frame. I swear I didn't let go for longer than a split second.

I reached, but just like that, the handle was too far away. To my horror, I realized that the array was moving away from me.

No- no, I was the one moving. I was falling towards the entity. Impossible, but happening nonetheless.

I reached.

I reached again.

Nothing.

I made swimming motions, knowing it wouldn't work.

Nothing.

I checked myself for a solution. My karabiner! I reached for my side, grabbing nothing but space suit. A feeling of doom crept over me. I was adrift, floating away from safety, into the unknown.

The only thing that kept me from screaming was the knowledge that I would die being compressed into the size of a single atom as I reached the center of the entity, and not after disappearing into darkness. Somewhere, there was a sense of relief, that I wouldn't be falling victim to the hunger of the void.

Perhaps I too would be copied, embedded in our dimensional fabric?

Without gravity to pull my tears down, my eye sockets began to fill with them, clinging to my eyeballs. I had to shake my head briskly to retain any kind of blurred vision.

"Lisa," I said, sending a radio signal into the immense noise emanating outward, like a whisper into a waterfall.

"Lisa."

The battery on my suit finally died as I passed the event horizon and the screens went blank. Only emptiness remained, filled by my ship, myself, and an unknown anomaly I would soon collide with.

I slowly rotated toward the entity and it came into view. I was definitely going toward it, though I couldn't tell the difference. From up close, it looked identical to any distance before. I could hear its buzz, its crackle all around me, and I felt spoken to. I was now submerged into its radiation, my vac suit the only barrier between me and its full effect.

I continued turning, and I saw my ship again, looking far away yet immense. I realized that the event horizon of the entity was acting like a lens, bending light and magnifying the Theseus to immense proportions.

Pitch black and tack sharp, there was a shadow on my ship... The shadow of a man.

A man in a space suit. As big as the ship itself, he seemed to float freely, projected onto an object of his own making.

As I twitched and the man mirrored my motion, I came to realize it was me, blocking the light coming from the entity behind me. I shook my head again as the vision blurred.

There it was again, the singular point. The buzz had become almost violent as I approached it, shaking me. Still, I didn't know what it could mean, couldn't understand what I was being told.

The glass in front of my face began showing hair fractures, from a stress that I was somehow unaware of.

Emotionlessly, I observed how they grew with short bursts, until suddenly, the pressure from my suit blew the shards outward. The air in my suit roared out past my face, sending my bandana flying.

I was exposed to the vacuum of space.

I had been trained for this, and my reaction was panicked but immediate. Opening my mouth, I let all air escape from my lungs with an endless sigh, lest it would tear me open.

I squeezed my eyes shut so that I wouldn't lose them, and as I felt my veins swell, I tensed every muscle in my body to keep my blood inside me. Ultimately, it would only delay the inevitable. The last physical sensation I was aware of, was the water on my tongue beginning to boil.

And then I saw. With my eyes closed, I witnessed and understood everything. I understood where I was: This was the epicenter. Not physically, but originally: This was the big bang still happening, continuing the creation of the universe from its seed.

This point sewed space together and sent it every which way through quantum entanglement, negating entropy and repairing its aging process.

I could see what it was doing, creating stars, in turn creating planets. Ultimately, creating us, human life, to spread and multiply and eventually, infuse every corner of the universe with our presence.

And we would evolve to fire, like synapses and neurons, and become entwined as a brain-like structure, life as it was meant to exist. We would become one and transcend this reality, the cradle to us humans, the cells to form a cosmic child. We were the cosmos' self-awareness.

It would happen. It was mathematically written inside our DNA, our need to explore and multiply making us what we are. It couldn't not happen.

And I saw that I was part of it. How could that be, with my death seconds away? I could see Lisa, feel her presence. It aroused me to no end. What I wouldn't give to embrace her again. What I wouldn't do for more of the gift I was given. Every moment with her, a free moment to cherish.

There was no debt to pay. Our enjoyment of this process, our love, was a gift from this entity, meant to be experienced to the fullest. Somehow, we ungrateful many, were allowed to enjoy the completion of our collective task. Our lives, a clean slate for us to write. The universe in all its glory, ours to discover.

It was now behind me again, about to touch me as I died. And then it wasn't.

It disappeared without so much as a sound, and hearing people's frantic screams in the radio, I understood how time had dilated like the light, and although it had seemed an eternity, I had only been exposed for milliseconds. They had come for me.

"Lisa," I said.

-"Yes," she said.