Follow the darkness

Darkness. That’s all I see now as I look towards the stars (or the lack of them). A week has passed since I last saw what a star looks like. What other people look like. At least, I think it was a week. I don’t remember much of my journey - only where I ended up, and how I lost the stars.

What feels like forever ago, I sat on my chair gazing up to the stars. Below, countless scientists crafting equations and yelling to each other about recording results. All eyes were on us to save everyone in our system. But they didn’t need me. Nobody needed me. My job was to sit in a room and plan what everyone else would need to do, or what the universe would probably do. That night was the only time I had seen the outside world in some time. Usually I would sit in the darkness of my office, beside a quiet telephone, illuminated by the lights of the scientists’ computer screens. But I began to despise that.

I had been there thirty years by this time. My parents forgot about me shortly after they had forgotten about each other, and I had found my way in life alone. Really, the only help I can recall is from my cousin Esther who influenced my decision to become an astronomer. And I think what hurt the most was that she showed more interest in my future during her weekly visits than my family had for nineteen years. It isn’t that I didn’t try to contact them. I did. I was eager to hear how father’s travels were progressing, if mother’s health had improved. I wanted to hear their voices. Years later, after study, a degree, and then work at the center, I was still waiting for that. Even as the black-hole grew. Even as doomsday approached.

Measurements were off, predictions were failing. Perhaps, as some speculated, it had appeared suddenly. Though I knew something of that size would have taken time. You build up pressure inside and one day it collapses in on itself. Esther was there the day we found it. I remember the yellow-tinted shirt she was wearing, the hallway she approached me in, the dull small talk she tried to make, finishing with an uneasy silence. She told me she had been in contact with my father. Mother had passed away, and he was now ‘happily’ married to another woman. He had contacted Esther to see how I was going. She said she thought I should know.

Thought I should know? I screamed back at her as I asked what kind of statement that was. I already knew mother was unwell, that father was occupied with other things, that despite my wishes they were not getting back together. I knew he had never contacted me and probably never will. But the fact that he chose to contact Esther to tell me this – that is something I should have known from the start. She was just like them. I left and raced back to my office, forcing as many tears as I could before my hydrated eyes caught sight of the telephone. It was never going to ring. I grasped it in my hand and threw across the room where it smashed against the wall. Moments later, the alarm at the compound sounded. We had detected what appeared to be a black-hole near our sun, draining its light and growing in size.

Most of the weeks that followed were a blur. I attended meetings with other scientists; spoke to the governments of our planet, and the planets nearby; but eventually would always return to one thought. Where had I gone wrong? Esther and I had studied together, and both applied to this research center in the same year. While she worked more in the mechanical department, and I was in the theoretical, we both saw each other often, and shared stories of our similar lives. We both ate porridge for breakfast, both went to bed by nine. We both wrote reports, both worked, managed, walked, breathed. For crying out loud, we both had a similar name. Why would father have contacted her and not me?

I didn’t speak to her until the end. Instead, I watched her team prototyping space vessels. During the nights I gazed up to the black hole, though it was hard to see clearly with my darkness draining everything I used to love about the sky. All the beautiful stars. All their predictions had led to one thing: that this black hole would lose its influence once it had consumed our sun, but it was going to take our planets with it. On the following day, I attended a large assembly where they rostered people to the new escape vessels. I was scheduled to leave on the very first one. They would have liked that wouldn’t they? They almost seemed shocked as I questioned them about it, giving me a vague excuse that I had not contributed these past months and that it was probably for the best if I left. But I wasn’t going anywhere.

We shuffled people into hundreds of these small capsules a day and launched them away from our system. They were not completely sure where they were going. We didn’t even know where we were sending them. Or maybe we did, and no-one had told me. Mostly everyone seemed to just ignore me anyway. Even Esther barely glanced my way. It was clear that the few who did talk to me only did so to try and diffuse my black-hole before I hurt someone. It felt like it was me they were sending everyone away from. They just wanted to leave, like mother and father did.

It was on that last day that the black-hole had almost consumed our sun. It was volatile, and any sudden actions could have caused it to lash out. And I did. Esther finally came over to me and told me it was time to leave. She told me all the other planets had evacuated safely, that even my father was out there. But as Esther went to grab my hand, I slapped it away – suddenly deciding I wanted to stay. Or more accurately, I didn’t think I could cope with being in the same place Esther and my father were. One by one, the bright computer screens all turned off as the remaining scientists packed up and prepared for the journey. They all headed to the remaining vessels as Esther stood still. She just looked at me as if I were joking. She told me she had noticed me watching her and wanted to apologize for how our last conversation had went. I didn’t care, I just wanted her to go. In one last attempt, she went to grab my hand again, and the black-hole unleashed. I pushed her back with so much force that she fell onto the ground. Underneath our feet the planet started to shake as the black-hole consumed the rest of the sun. I could feel our planet getting pulled towards it.

It was at this point where everything could have been different. There was something else growing inside of me: a flicker of a thought. It wanted to reach out and help her back to her feet, and to go with her to that vessel. I could have been with them. But I turned around, ignoring her as I walked back to my office amid the shaking of the building. The roof had crumbled away, I could see into the sky. There was no longer any sun, and outside of the building, the only light came from the stars. I didn’t even know where the black-hole was anymore - I could only feel I was being drawn towards it.

Then somehow, smashed in the corner of the room, my phone rang. I walked over to it and picked it up. It was my father. Esther had told him I was refusing to get on the vessel, and he wanted to convince me otherwise. At first I just sat against the wall silent. Eventually, as my racing mind slowed down, I began to mumble a sentence. I tried as hard as I could to be angry at him, tried to fit as much of 30 years as I could into the short discussion we had. In the end, after a tear or two, I just told him I was sorry. But a few moments later he said he was the one that should be sorry. He told me he had been carrying around the pain of mother’s illness and his life choices for so long, that they had ended up separating him from the people he cared most about. He lacked the strength to speak to me, knowing it would cause him to face his failures. So, he had turned away those who cared for him most; and now, he was afraid I was making the same mistake. But it was too late for me. Esther’s vessel had launched and disappeared into the darkness of the sky. As I continued speaking to my father, our reception started breaking, with the phone eventually losing it all together. I dropped it and continued to stare out the ceiling. I could feel it getting faster. One by one, the bright stars disappeared as I entered the void. As soon as the last star stretched away, I was met with nothing.

As I said, I don’t remember much of my journey into the darkness, I only know where I ended up. I have lost all the stars, and sit in the same chair I have spent the last thirty-one years of my life in. I can’t tell if I have traveled to before the first star was born, if I’m now sitting at the end of days, or if I was simply dropped into the vast corners of a universe where no star has touched. Though still I look for them. It’s doubtful whether anyone will hear this message; this phone hasn’t had reception since I left. But I have had enough of following this darkness now. I’m ready to go home.