Mare Tenebrarum

When embarking upon our odyssey, none of us would, nor could have foreknown what forbiddance presided over the unpeopled outlands of the cosmos. 

Our safety was entrusted to the dependable Lucis, a prodigy of modern science, built for the sole intention of travelling into the extraneous. Through parsecs and parsecs we vagabonded, equating to years unreckonable, with not the merest sound or noise. To not be unhinged from the deafening silence, we overcompensated with frivolous conversation, melodies were played as nostalgia, and a general bustle was produced within our ship. Beyond, however, all was quieter than the grave, as we, a hearse of curst humans, drifted throughout a swarth cemetery, inhabited by flecks of petite glisters. This unsettling reality incurred the dawning of how obliterable we are. How inconsequential we are in comparison to space, where there is little to aid one in diarising, and differentiating day from night. That is, if these terms still have logic in such an illogic place. 

What blunted the quietude was how we saw some of the most extramundane phenoma: Gamma-ray bursts vaporising rainbows of light. Glacial comets hurtled nowhere, passing planetary dwarfs, as pulsars oozed fiery radiation. The chocolate rings encompassed an amethyst supernova. Blazars, as if fulgid pearls, necessitated that we avert lest we be blinded by its lucidity. Quasars, mammoth in size, frothed their gaseous accretion discs, swirling through infernal energy. There was dark matter, enchanted by necromancy, bound by gravity to morph into pyramidal or circular hearts of white, lucent gold. Multihued orbs, resembling crystal balls, were ablaze and aplenty. Waning nebulae irradiated, and pollinated fluffy cumulus dust, which motlied the sequinned surroundings. 

All this wonderment left the crew and I feeling empty. In spite of how natural these phenomena are, we could not help but view it as preternatural. It minified our pretence of being important.

We now comprehended how pygmy we are in a realm of Gargantuas. With existentialism blighting us, insidious unease was sown. 

The irony being that, when we signed up, we knew what we had consented to: unabating vagabondism through galactic bowels, so as to harvest wisdom for humanity. The expedition itself was one foredoomed as purgatory. 

From how far we had now rifted, communication with Earth was complicated to being nigh-perennial. The delay was so slothful and interminable that we forfeited our care to try speaking to family. Complacency tempted silkier than despondency. 

We adhered to a cyclical routine, like madding anaphora: the aforesaid gazing and melodies, reading novels, plays, and poesy, unsavoury meals, exercising, watching entire filmographies of deft directors, and conversing. The lattermost, however, wears thin when nothing new transpires. There is a finitude to what can be spoken about, before it is degraded to being prosaic. Even when together, we were isolated, for one need not be alone to be in solitude. Our divertissements acted as mollifiers for sustaining our sanity. That being stated, it did not neuter how false these suppositious remedies were, in the grander scheme of things. We would never evince so aloud, though, deep down, we all abhorred ourselves for having decided to adventure the cosmos. 

Including myself, the crew was composed of seven astronauts: two of whom operated the Lucis, a maintainer for catering to the ship, and the rest of us toiled at researching and unpuzzling any nonpareils we might spot. Commander Rodin and the pilot seldom abdicated from their throne, at the head of the Lucis, where the largest window is established. Rodin was pedant, and goaded the pilot into having his undivided attention. Neither garnered much slumber, nor did they much engage with our prattling to buoy afloat. It was a queer form of seclusion. The maintainer, in charge of keeping the Lucis fastidious, was sociable and intermingled with the researchers, to whom I belong. 

Our commonality was how we all fluctuated between stable and unstable. Moments of paroxysm recurred, from persons being depressed by the ageless hours, pining for their family, or regretting the choice they made. Such constant bouts of grief blossomed implicit resentment towards one another, masking the actuality of it being targeted at ourselves. 

When sleeping, my dreams - though I am certain this was universal - pluck from the well of memories, and euphoric instances with my family, in attempts of dulling my mental anguish. One, which always resurfaced, was the cradling of my son, before my husband and I had named him. “How handsome must he be now,” was my continual lament, after waking in perspirant dismay. 

Why had I myself accepted this Orphean odyssey? - Truancy. Punishment. Penance. Hatred. Perhaps all four. Perhaps, too, this conflict of the wherefores is pervasive amongst the crew; a masochism for being damned. 

All dogged in like perpetuity to what I have detailed, till we chanced upon a region unfamiliar to us. At first, we floated by what was attributable to a vacuum birefringence, where light shafted with different polarisation planes, that brisked or idled at divergent paces in this single vacuum. Curious, we watched as virtual particles, disturbed in quantum fields, would fulgurate at random, flicker in harlequin arrays for an instant, and then altogether fritter out. It was as if fireflies were exploding before our eyes, and spanning the breadth of our periphery. Chartering farther in, the particles accelerated in their combustive rapidity, and girthed from the sheer profusion of them. Incalculable dots daubed inimitable patterns, sequences, and formations on a backdrop of impenetrable black. Consternated by the heretofore unseen, I swayed through the mesmerised members of the Lucis. My head throbbed with throttling nausea and angst. A presentiment corrupted what ought to have sublimed. To aggravate my imbalance the more, a din extempore buzzed throughout my ears. Soon, everyone became afflicted by what impinged upon the silence we had been so inured to. It droned as a hovering insect, plumbing the caverns of our hearing, provoking two researchers to convulse upon the floor. Unable to avail them from how debilitated we were, both of them frothed as rabid canines, paling, and locked in death throes. Discordant waves whistled, then, oscillating, changed to diabolise Cerberean growls, pythonic hisses, ghastly screeches, and the fissuring of flesh. Cacophonies rebounded from inch to inch of the cranium, excavating its nerval pulp, and inculcating an echoing knell. A fugitive voice, identical to that of my son, whispered an ineffable yet winsome sentence to me. Distraught by the flood of familial yearning that ensued, I began weeping.  

Time dilated yet slower and stranger, as we wrestled with this unprecedented perdition. A season in hell swept by, before, at last, it ceased smarting us. The din had been superseded, once more, for silence. Looking around, I saw lacerations on people’s skin, and follicles of hair torn from their agony. My nails were bleeding from how I must have triturated them. To further horrify us, the two researchers had died from, I presume, apoplexy, with their complexions being stiffened in dread. Moreover, no more did those virtual particles illuminate. The black had renewed as being paramount. 

Whatever had assailed us, appeared to have receded…for the meantime, at least. 

When fortitude had been somewhat recuperated, we observed how a maritime brume, shimmering and twinkling, had immured the Lucis in a hazy prison. The window at the fore of the ship was now obscured by this brumous sea. It chilled one to the marrow with cosmic thalassophobia. We were still roving, but I boded this to be but an ostensible hope. 

It was apparent that fear had infected each member of the crew, save for Commander Rodin. His face betrayed a wistful cabal - he had seen, heard, or construed something of import. 

“What just happened?” asked Rodin, turning to the remaining researcher and I. Being nescient, we could do nothing besides shrug, conceding how benighted we were by what had frighted us.

“Does no one ascertain how miraculous this is!” he exclaimed, with such fervour. “If it is inexplicable, then one of you must venture beyond.” 

Rodin inspected our reactions, surveying whether anyone was courageous enough; as he did so, he comported a perverse glee. Left unanswered, Rodin gloated and, with unenviable mettle, heralded: 

“After the loss of two members,” with accusatory behaviour, Rodin pointed to those deceased, “we are beholden to them to uncover what is behind this arcana. If cowardice pervades you all, let it be me who braves the unknown. This is too revelatory to ignore.” 

A transitory smile betrayed what I opined to be a selfish desire. The question of whom had been rhetorical: he wanted to brazen this - alone. 

Armoured in his suit, fleeced by white downy pillows, we connected him to a meandrous cord, as if a foetus. Integrated into his helmet, tinged with grey, was a camera and microphone for recording what he saw, which was relayed back to the Lucis. Atop his helmet was a luminous globe, as of an anglerfish, which would scintillate a path of visibility for him. With the pilot manning the ship, the security of Rodin’s fastening in the hands of the maintainer, as well as the researcher and I ready to scribe what appeared on screen, we commenced. 

For a while, inconsequence elapsed since the brume was tranquil and docile, as Rodin waded through its esoteric thicket. He reported that it was serene, though, this was entrenched by lines which zigzagged in uniformity, shoaling as fish, and glittering as the scales of a rainbow trout. They girdled him, converging behind, rightwards, or leftwards, and disorientated his and our vision. 

“Can you hear that?” queried Rodin, as a kaleidoscope flashed before him. 

The pilot, veering to the researcher and I, motioned as to whether anything was audible. With it being evident that none of us could, the pilot replied to Rodin, telling him that it was not so. After beseeching for a clarification, in dreamful tones, Rodin stammered:  

“My wife…she calls for me…”

“She is dead, commander!” screamed the three of us. 

“But beckons me forth through this fog.” His inflection was bereft of equivocation, as doubt was Rodin’s faithless antichrist.

Perplexed, we had no idea how best to appease, nevertheless, it was obvious that we must disillusion him. 

“Commander,” uttered the pilot, “with all due respect, this is improbable.” It was sage for him to have avoided impossible, since Rodin had such quixotic certitude, that it bids fair for contradiction to may have escalated the ordeal. 

“There is no improbability,” trilled Rodin, with tristesse, “for I can see her.” 

In disbelief we leaned in, and rubbed our eyes till scabrous so as to be likewise privy to the phantom. Alas, all was in vain. There was nothing perceptible besides the kaleidoscope. Rodin’s mind must be hallucinating, I thought. A part of me sympathised with him: when that din had beset us, had I not recognised a whit of my son amidst it? 

“She is swimming toward me…” Rodin paused, then surrendered; “I must join her.” 

Alarmed, the pilot bellowed some petitions for Rodin to stay as we reel him back into the Lucis. Through the intercom, downright frantic, the pilot ordered the maintainer to perform so.

“Negative,” was Rodin’s ultimate word, before severing his cord to roam through the brume. We had no alternative save shouting dissuasions at him. In reality, the moment he had disaffiliated his connection to the Lucis, he was perdu and irretrievable. We knew this, and yet, we nonetheless parroted our prayerful futilities. 

“O’ darling,” said Rodin, addressing his apparitional wife, “how I have missed you.” The kaleidoscope palpitated. “A kiss?” His gloved hands elevated upward, gesturing with coquetry that he, too, coveted such forgotten intimacy. 

“Do not take off your helmet! I repeat, commander, do not take it off!” howled the pilot, as the researcher mewled, and I cowered elsewhere, too craven to sight Rodin’s fatality. 

Possessed by his longful hamartia, Rodin eulogised nonsense - “O’ Mare Tenebrarum!” - before succumbing to the pernicious inclemency of space’s vacuum. Defying our entreatance, he imperilled himself by vailing his helmet as chivalry, and serenaded his wifely phantom. No more could we espy Rodin’s peripheral immediacy, and nor could we hearken him. All the more harrowed, the theurgy of our terror enkindled visceral depictions of how Rodin was being racked: from the sparsity of atmospheric pressure, his blood would have begun bubbling, spuming, and purling throughout his veins, as acute decompression ruptured them, imploding his orifices, and desiccating the saliva on his tongue. With it being irrespirable out there, Rodin would be gasping on imaginary air which strangled him yet tighter. Swollen with excruciation, he would swoon deathwards in that ominous brume, forever glissading. 

None dared be the first to broach what had transpired. We were palsied, and dumbed from stupefaction. It was the maintainer that invaded this frit contemplation, by dashing from where he had been, and yelling lunacies. 

“Be calm,” decreed the pilot, “we must not agitate ourselves.” 

“What are we to do?” inquired the fellow researcher, lurching to and fro. 

Having been allayed, the maintainer ogled at the pilot, awaiting some clairvoyance of what course to pursue. Being fraught myself, I, too, allowed him to assume the role of our messiah. 

Abrading his pores, he deliberated over what would be judicious. “We ought to send some communication to Earth, disclosing Rodin and the others’ deaths.” 

From me seeing the folly of, belike, luring more to their ruination also, I disputed with the pilot.

“Would that not be foolish?” 

“Why would this be the case?” asked the maintainer, whilst the pilot crimsoned.

“Think about what we have witnessed. Sometimes, sacrifice is how one triumphs.” Glancing at the three of them, I deduced how my declaration had distressed them. “Did none of you hear anything,” persisted I, untactful so as to ingrain the significance, “anything at all, when that din blared earlier?” 

“Be plain, and stop prevaricating!” commanded the pilot. 

“I heard my son,” sighed I, “when that dreadful noise incapacitated us.” 

“I heard the voice of my dead mother,” said the maintainer, with a woesome inflection. His accord did not buttress me as I wanted. Rather, it elicited the facial contempt of the pilot to wax, as he was vexed at having to spar for authority. “What is this mad superstition plaguing you both?” Facing the researcher, the pilot looked for affirmation that we were the anomalies, however, the researcher diverted so as to shirk a response. 

“I am the commander now,” resumed the pilot, all the more galled, “so I shall determine what we do. And I have decided to overrule this. We will be contacting Earth, and telling them everything.” Thereafter the pilot strutted away, with a supercilious ego at having crowned himself.

Powerless in the situation, we had to heed him as he informed our native planet, estranged erst, of the disaster aboard. A febrile caprice begged me to pounce upon the pilot, do whatever I could to thwart him in his endeavour which would but result in additional perishment. Alas, I was too unstrung. 

In the interim, I noticed a discrepancy in what loomed beyond the window. The brume had evanesced, and been supplanted: rising up from the plumbless black, was a Charybidan eddy, which whorled as a Seyfert galaxy, and beat in rhythms of polychromos. Veins, rife with candescence, milky liquid, azure translucency, and virid slime, guttered, sheened, exuded, and billowed tidal marvels. The eddy had the semblance of analysing us, and we were degraded to imbecile animals.

The pilot, remarking this phenomenon, turned to the researcher and I, though, before receiving a dispiriting rejoinder of our unintelligence on the matter, he deferred back to the eddy. We gawked at its nectarous awe, like bees beguiled into a puddle of viscid honey, lapping up its unaccountability till drowned in thrall. Instead of a din, ululations permeated through my skull, and, from observing the others, they, too, were ravished by these ululatory tortures. To my left, was the euphony of my son, whereas, to my right, I caught that of my husband. Strained by sorrow and grief, I felt an exquisite duress lobotomise my mind, enervating me senseless. Rolling upon the floor, rheum poured from my eyes, as I recollected all earthly pleasures, delights, and those whom I loved. I now understood how the eddy ailed: by dissecting us alive, it willed molestations from our past, worries, pangs, joys, and torched our hearts aflame. 

At present, the eddy has further beautified itself, and captivated us into being enrooted to its immemorial sublimity. 

O’ how extraordinary is the manner wherein it havocs the chaos of Nu. The lapis lazuli of the Styx ripples, as if ruffled by pebbles, at its rims. Farther in, blooms violaceous petals and transplendent dew. A continuous spiral, like the shell of the extinct ammonite, winds a hypnosis of protean scales, glistering in varying bijoux. Rubies, onyxes, opals, topazes, and flawless diamonds bejewel. Engraven in its trigonal midst is the purest tourmaline, with golden refractions and succulent watermelons. Its colourful metamorphosis has the mimicry of a chameleon. With each new misery the eddy unburies, its vigour impassions yet stronger. 

I swear that I have seen it wink; protracted, mischievous, and sanguinary winks. 

Vincible against the eddy, we are webbed, as of celestial gossamer, around the mercy of its malevolence. All we can muster are cries, fruitless implorations, and involuntary avowals which are ventriloquised by what precious memories wreck us. Demise now reigns. 

From how quiet the researcher is, I reason him to have passed. The maintainer, in desperation, has announced of him having gouged his eyes out with his veriest hands. He conjectured this would reprieve or exempt him, however, there is no escaping one’s mind. We are stuck in time, fossilised in fear, and torment feasts upon us. With retaliation being impracticable, we can do nothing except suffer. 

I pray the pilot’s transmission never reaches Earth, lest the same befall. Alas, Dame Fortune works in wicked ways. She adores seeing us, her star-crossed tragedians and tragediennes, in pain from the bane with which she scourges.