A long dark road.
20 Jun 2020Cosby714
It's very dark out here, high above the galaxy. On one side is the bright spiral I've known all my life but never actually seen from this perspective, and on the other...nothing.
I'm in ngc 188, an ancient cluster of less than 100 stars high above the formidine rift, if you can really call anything in space "above" another object. I can see the rift beneath me, a place that years ago I was on the trail of a mystery that little did I know would result in a conspiracy being unveiled. Above me is the endless, starless, empty void of intergalactic space. Something no ship we have could ever hope to cross. Here we are, where nobody has gone before, but plenty have looked at and tried to get to, but just out of reach. Not that there's much up here, there was a water world, teeming with life in its vast oceans. But where I am now...
There's no light here...
It's dark, dark dark dark. No stars, no nebulae, no galaxies visible. I know above me at some point there's another galaxy, probably thousands in a tiny glance, ancient telescopes proved that a millennia ago, but to my eye it's just an endless void of nothing. It's lonely, and gives a certain existential dread, the kind of cold feeling when you think about death, or look down into the ocean. Except where I'm looking, there is no end. It's a void. Most of space is empty, I know, but this is different. There's not even any light from the stars or the glowing gas of the core. Hard to comprehend, nothing, it's a concept we so readily use but are uncomfortable with when it stares us down. But there is a certain...peace to it. It's calm, no movement, no sound, no light besides my own, just a dead rock, me, and my thoughts. It's the kind of thing that drives people to madness, but I find it oddly soothing. I'm alone...truly. More alone than I've ever been. And I don't know how to feel
The ship I got here on was a fleet carrier. The group I'm with (who for reasons I can't disclose will not be named here, nor will the ship be named) launched a little jaunt over here. We weren't the only ones, within a day there were two other carriers out here from other groups, but we already had much of the cluster mapped. It was a long trip up, hours upon hours of jumping, waiting, jumping, waiting, and now we've been here for two weeks. To be honest, the isolation is getting to me. Not that I have much of a home besides my ship, got an apartment on serebrov but that's about it, I barely use the thing. Still, I feel very isolated up here. Hard to have a drink with a friend when that friend is 7,000 lightyears away, not to mention the lack of gravity. Can't really pour a drink in zero G, not that pouring a drink on a rotating station is easy, damn stream goes off to one side. And don't get me started on a zero gravity toilet. And yeah I'm complaining a lot, not much to do out here right now. I'm just waiting until the ship is scheduled to leave here in a few days. I'll quit yappin, gone on too long anyway. I'll see what I can do to entertain myself in the meantime, maybe shake some of the rust off in CQC. When I can get back to the bubble, I will. Just been informed as I'm writing this that a friend is in a cryopod with huge damage to his lungs from a thargoid ship's corrosion. Get better soon Jav, that's an order. I'll keep as close an eye as I can on him from out here. For now, this is commander Jack, signing off.