The station floats against a pure black and unmarred void, a tiny speck shining in the dark. Through the small reinforced porthole, it almost looks fake, like a two-dimensional projection against a dark screen. There are not many stars beyond the station, mostly just primordial abyss. The haptic-light projection of the galaxy shows a small red blip labeled ‘Zeta Station’ in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. The small vessel approaching the station is an old F-class Galactic Law Enforcer. The pilot can be heard in the cockpit, hailing the station to no avail. “Zeta Station, come in. This is Officer Lender aboard the GLE-342. Do you copy?” The only response from Zeta is a vacant static hiss. The station itself is a ring rotating around a relatively small cylinder, designed with spin gravity in mind. While many of the bigger stations built for tourists tend to look more palatial, being adorned with murals and unnecessary complexities, this one is simple in design and bare on the exterior. It has been emitting a category three emergency beacon to all frequencies. Officer Lender hails the station again, “Zeta Station, this is GLE-342 - are you in distress?… does anyone copy?” The soft hiss of radio silence permeates the small ship.
Lender pulls up the haptic-light map of the Galaxy. It gives off a pale glow in the otherwise dreary space. Once again he sees the small ping of a distress call issuing from this station, like a pebble tossed into an infinite black lake. Lender rubs his chin with a calloused hand, then flicks away the map in a practiced gesture. “Guess it’s just you and me, Deb.” Lender looks out through the debrishield to a piece of scrap metal stuck on the outside of the hull. It has a strange pareidolic face on a long neck, but only from the view of the captain's chair. “What d’ya think? Go in?” Lender stares at the unresponsive piece of debris, then looks down at his hands on the controls. “Yeah… Yeah, suppose we ought to.” Lender’s gaze goes somewhere far away in time and place, and he rubs the back of his neck. He looks back to the face on the debris and gives a slight nod.
In a few small deft movements, his ship begins approaching the station. The half dozen thrusters clunk and grind as they are magnetically shifted around the exterior of the ship, like the freakish eyes of an insect. One of the thrusters gets caught on a dent in the outer hull, and Lender mutters as he uselessly smacks the console. With a subtle bang, the thruster finally clicks into place and the ship slowly approaches the silent station. Lender initiates the automated docking procedure, clamping onto one of the four unmoving ports. The ports are surrounded by a ring of cooled aluminum which acts as a superconductor and magnetically brakes ships for a soft docking. Once the ship is clamped down, there is a much louder bang and the deep sound of groaning metal as the ship begins spinning at the same speed as Zeta station. Lender rises from his chair and tips a nonexistent hat to the scrap face, “Thanks for another smooth docking, Deb. I’ll be in touch.” With that, he exits the cockpit and traverses the airlock.
Spin gravity always messes with Lender's equilibrium, his inner ear telling him he’s falling sideways. The airlock door into the station hisses and then shutters open like a rusty camera revealing a darkened corridor. Immediately, Officer Lender is hit with the smell of chemically recycled air and a jarring sight. Standing at the end of the dimly lit hall is a chimpanzee chewing on something nondescript. There are crimson stains smeared on the floor, and a few splatters that stretch from wall to ceiling. Muscle memory kicks in and Lender draws his service-issued firearm. The chimpanzee chews noisily, not seeming to notice Lender at all. The thing in its teeth begins to look an awful lot like a human arm. He keeps his weapon drawn in one hand, trained on the chimp at the end of the hall. With his free hand he removes a fist-sized sphere from a pocket on his hadron vest. He clicks the only discernible feature, a concave button, and the orb glows softly with an internal light. He speaks softly into his busted comm. device, “I’m thinkin’ maybe this wasn’t so good an idea, Deb.” Not even dull static responds.
The small glowing orb is unceremoniously dropped onto the ground. Lender lowers his weapon, but does not holster it. When activated, the orb will begin emitting a debilitating infrasonic drone to incapacitate anything organic within audible range. The strong interaction plates in his vest will prevent the low vibrations from affecting his organs. The ball rolls slowly, maintaining a ten foot distance in front of Lender, ready to activate at the slightest provocation. Lender begins advancing down the hall. The chimpanzee pays him no mind, continuing to chew noisily. He has heard of chimpanzees being utilized for testing, though he has never actually seen one before. The corridor is mostly dull metal colors and smooth textures, with occasional harsh, bright lights. As he approaches the end of the hall, there is a loud crashing noise from somewhere far down an adjacent hall. Lender doesn’t startle and the chimp doesn’t budge. He is close enough now that he can see the chimpanzee is chewing on a large hunk of palm frond. There is a strong fruity scent and Lender clicks the small light on his weapon. He illuminates what looks like a gory mess of viscera, but is actually a mashed pile of fruits. When Lender shines the light onto the chimp’s face, he sees two things. The chimpanzee is covered in sticky red fruit seeds, and it has gaping black sockets where its eyes should be. Lender clangs his gun against the bulkhead but the chimp doesn’t flinch. As if in answer though, another loud bang sounds from somewhere far off. Lender turns toward the noise in a practiced, fluid motion, raising the barrel of his punchgun like a well oiled machine.
There is nothing down the adjacent hall, save for some strange markings on the otherwise pristine wall. At first, the markings appear to be some arcane and unknowable words, but as Lender slowly walks down the hall, he is able to discern what they are. It appears to be a luridly scrawled set of words smeared with oil, or grease, or some other thick substance. The words repeat haphazardly and with little variation throughout the hall. The phrase he shines his light on reads, “I have seen the face of god”. Lender continues down the hallway, still maintaining his composure through years of practice. When he comes to the end of the corridor, he sees a path to his left and his right, like he is standing in a shallow bowl. Lender speaks into his broken earpiece, “What d’ya think, Deb: left or right?” After a moment's pause filled with nothing but silence, he nods and turns to the right. He staggers slightly under the new perspective of walking along the inner wall of the station. Again, he feels a wave of nausea as the centripetal force wreaks havoc on his inner ear. The initial docking corridor ran inward on the cylinder, creating the illusion of a flat plane. The corridor now looks as if it is being hoisted slightly upward by an unseen point ahead.
In order to cut down on the disconcerting sight of walking eternally upward, the corridor is staggered. You can only see 20 feet or so before the hall shifts left, then another 20 feet and it turns back to the right. Lender walks deeper into the bowels of the station, his nerves leading the way. He walks by more crazed scrawls, some incoherent and inane. When he approaches the luminescent keypad at the end of the hall, Lender speaks to his non-functioning earpiece, “What have you gotten us into, Deb...” Lender chuckles a wry, cynical laugh to cover the slowly mounting tension. He fishes around inside his front chest pocket for something. He removes a small, U-shaped device the size of a bottle cap, aptly called a U-key, and inserts it into the bottom of the keypad. A thin, ultraviolet filament stretched between the two points of the U becomes magnetized through electrical pulses, and suddenly the door slides open.
The room is filled with such a poignant and rancid stench that it is almost discernible. Inside is a laboratory filled with strange specimens on shiny tables. Looking carefully, each organic lump resolves itself into a different creature only found in earth's oceans. There is a cuttlefish, a mantis shrimp, either a squid or an octopus, and two other specimens he doesn’t recognize. Lender assumes these are replications created here using genome sequences. His feeling is still that of unreality as he walks in and looks down at the strange glistening forms he’s heard of but never seen. When he identifies the first specimen as a mola mola sunfish, his suspicions of bio-testing are confirmed. He recalls reading at some point that the mola mola were being experimented with for neutral buoyancy in gaseous environments. The punch gun that serves as every galactic officer's baton was based on the physiology of a mantis shrimp's forelimbs. There isn’t any current federation technology that utilizes the octopus or cuttlefish, though both creatures possess extraordinary camouflaging capabilities.
When Lender rounds the final countertop, he finds the mutilated body of a crew member sprawled across the floor. The head is missing, and when he looks back to the final unidentified specimen, he realizes it is actually a mashed human head. Seeming to blossom from the center of the pulpy flesh is a tungsten paperweight shaped like a water lily. Lender expected to find bodies, but he finds himself caught off-guard by the brutality exhibited here. There is no chance this was an accident. This is likely another instance of cabin-fever having wrought a horrific end on a crew. “This is why I prefer to be on my own…” Lender mumbles as he gazes from the head to the body. The paperweight couldn’t have severed the head, which means that whatever was used is not here. Lender’s grip tightens on his punchgun, and he takes a controlled breath.
After checking the rest of the laboratory, Lender exits the room. When he reaches the hall back to his ship, he stares down its tantalizing length. He whispers to the empty air, “Not yet, Deb. I’ll clear it - make sure there’s no survivors, then we can go.” He seems to be trying unsuccessfully to convince himself that he should continue down the opposing hall. A few moments pass, and another distant mechanical bang sounds from afar, bringing Lender back. He begins making his way down the hall. It’s staggered and bare, with still more strange phrases smeared on the walls intermittently. He reads one as he walks past, “in the cleft of a rock” and he contemplates what it might mean. In his distracted state, he almost misses the person standing in the hall ahead. The small infrasonic orb beeps once, and Lender is immediately focused. They are barely visible ahead, their back protruding from the corner of the hall. They are standing in the corner of the staggered hall, facing the walls, unmoving.
The person is close enough to the wall that Lender can’t see their face. He approaches warily, punchgun at the ready, “Hey, you alright there? … Hello?” But the person ignores him and continues standing silently, nose nearly against the corner. Hesitantly drawing nearer still, Lender can hear the person softly muttering the same phrase over and over, as though it were some sort of benediction or a petition to an ancient god, “… no man shall see it and live…” The strange phrase is repeated quickly and in a breathy, anxious whisper. Lender tries once more to bring the person out of their stupor, but they don’t respond. He tries to slowly peek around, but he can’t get a good look. The whispering continues, with words as thin as shadows. Lender grabs a small dodecahedron shape from the side of his belt, and gently sticks it to the wall directly behind the person. An infrared laser trains itself on the back of the unmoving man, then Lender moves on.
He walks past and down the hall to the door at its end. As he approaches the luminescent keypad at the end of the hall, Lender speaks to his non-functioning earpiece, “the hell is goin’ on here, Deb...” Lender doesn’t laugh this time. He removes his U-key and stands in front of the door like he is awaiting bad news. He breathes a few steadying breaths, then whispers, “Here we go.” He inserts the U-key into the keypad, then watches the door slide open. Inside is a pale-white office with dim white lighting. The space appears to be fairly lived in, with used coffee bulbs and trash on different surfaces. There are haptic-light displays littered across the room like glowing gravestones. Some display equations, others have lists of esoteric numbers, and still more have diagrams and graphs and simulations playing on loop.
Lender sighs and rubs the back of his neck, trying to knead out the weight of years. He begins to walk across the room and several things happen at once. As he steps into the blinding projection of the largest haptic-light display, someone yells and appears from nowhere, rushing at Lender. Before they can close in, an indiscernible drone emits from the infrasonic orb and the assailant is thrown off. Instinct takes over and Lender drops to one knee, catching an arm swung at him through the light. Lender fires his punch gun into the arm and hears the crunch of bone and a yelp of pain. The person drops to the floor in pain and Lender is on top of them, punchgun held against their temple. The man holds his arms out and away in a gesture of surrender, wincing at the extension of the broken arm. One look at the man and Lender can tell he’s one of the scientists. The scientist seems to look confused and says through pain-gritted teeth, “Who’re you?” Lender moves the punchgun overtop of the scientist's heart and replies, “Officer Lender of the GLE-342.”
Despite the pain, the scientist appears relieved and says, “Oh thank god… The beacon - I didn’t think anyone would come.”
Lender removes himself from the scientist and helps him stand, but keeps his punchgun out. “The hell’s going on here?” Lender asks.
The scientist winces and holds his broken arm against his chest, “It’s Doctor Weston, he’s gone completely insane. He’s trying to kill us all. He… he got Tedge… just attacked him, didn’t say anything, just attacked. It was awful.”
Lender keeps one eye on the scientist and casually circles the room, ensuring all its nooks and crannies are empty. As he peaks under a desk he says, “What happened?”
At this, the scientist seems to stare backward into the past and says from somewhere far away, “He was already going a little crazy, talking to himself. But then the data - the stars. He thought we saw god. I don’t know… we saw… something, but he started raving about seeing god and then disappeared. Next thing I know he’s… he…” Lender lets the silence hang while the scientist winces then returns to the present. He continues, “after that I pulled the emergency beacon and ran. I ran straight here and hid. The air recyclers are in here, so I figured… I don’t know.”
Lender walks back over to the scientist, holstering his punchgun for the moment. He motions for the doctor to show him his arm, and he says, “So what’s the data? You said data on the stars made him snap?” So what’s the data?” Lender gently turns the doctor's arm and keeps an eye on his reaction to the question. His eyes go back to that place in the past and he says, “The stars… they disappeared. Then they came back.” Lender intentionally presses on the doctor's wound, causing him to yelp and recoil back into the present. “Easy, dammit!”
But Lender asks again, “What about the stars? What happened to them?” The scientist appears miffed at Lender's methods, then walks away from him to a nearby desk. The doctor grabs a small sub-light printed cube that houses countless microscopic sets of data inside, and he slides it onto a holo-projector. The holo-projector spins quickly and a volumetric display of numbers becomes tangible above the projector. The scientist manipulates this with his good hand and a list of files displays in the air between them. Lender simply says, “This is all way beyond me. I don’t even know what I’m lookin’ at here…”
The scientist scoffs and says, “These are the stars and the data on their disappearances. It’s all-“. Suddenly, a loud blaring alarm issues from Lender’s hip. Lender holds up a hand to the scientist, then silences the alarm on his belt. He quietly walks over to the door, drawing his punchgun at the same time. He opens the door and walks to the place in the hall where the man was, but no one is there. Lender looks at the small device he placed on the wall and presses a button on the top, then walks back to the room. The scientist questions him, “What was that?”
But Lender waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. Just tell me what’s going on here.”
The scientist appears exasperated. “The stars didn’t just vanish, they were blocked. They were blocked by something and we have no idea what it was.”
Lender responds, “Couldn’t it have just been an asteroid field or something?”
The scientist grows frustrated. “No! You’re not-“ then he winces and decides on a different approach. He moves to the center of the room and activates a large haptic light display like the navigation chart in Lender’s ship. This display tracks and projects directly onto the retina, allowing each viewer to see the same perspective. The center of the room becomes filled with stars and the scientist speaks as he moves the stars with his good hand, “Something blocked these stars from our view, watch.”
Lender watches as a huge swathe of the lights blink out in a wave from left to right. “Okay, alright. That’s weird, but why don’t these stars here disappear?”
“Exactly! That’s exactly right! Every star within these two points disappears in a vertical line that sweeps from left to right - as if… as though something passes in between us and them. But not these stars.” Lender looks at the field of stars and moves it slightly left and right. The scientist says it as Lender realizes it, “The stars that don’t disappear are less than 10 light years away, but anything further gets blocked.”
“But… that’s impossible, that would mean that the something is hundreds of light years wide.”
The scientist whispers, “Thousands. It would have to be thousands of light years across. Bigger than galaxies and nearly as old as the universe…” A heavy metal groan sounds from the walls of the station, but the scientist doesn’t take notice, “Imagine something so large that whole stars are born and die before their light even reaches the other end. I mean, the light from some of those stars takes millions of years to reach us… I don’t know… it would have to be ancient… and just inconceivably large. And it just passed right beside us.”
Lender feels a tingle crawl up his spine, raising the hairs on his arm and neck. He pauses a moment before reluctantly asking, “…What was it?”
The scientist throws his hands up and seems to revisit an argument he already had, “I have no idea, but it was big and it moved through the cosmos in a motion that could be seen as organic, at least that’s what Weston saw. He was already at the breaking point - but then this… it just broke him, I guess. About a week ago he started talking to phantoms and staring at Tedge and me with an awful look. He’s always been very religious and then when this happened, he interpreted the data as some vast ancient creature moving out there - god, I guess. He started raving about Moses and seeing the face of god, and he… he just lost it: started tearing the place apart.” He goes quiet and Lender gives him space to finish speaking, “… He killed Tedge... like it was nothing. Just… hit him, and kept hitting him.” Lender begins to speak when a strange sensation makes him pause. It feels as though the room begins to move away from underneath him, and all of his arm hair seems to catch a breeze in the room. Objects begin suddenly sliding and then Lender feels a heavy impact before everything goes black.
When he finally comes to, there is a congealed mass of his own blood branching away from his head into the air. Everything is thrown throughout the room in various states of destruction and disarray. A muffled claxon is sounding off, red emergency lights are flashing, and someone is groaning in pain. Lender rubs his eyes and winces slightly at the searing light. He sees a strange mass of writhing body parts floating impossibly off the ground and continues to rub his eyes. All at once the shape resolves into the body of the scientist being pummeled by Weston, bludgeoned with something dense. Lender attempts to move toward them, but his limbs simply flail in mid-air. He winces at a hot burning sensation in his leg and finds a sharp piece of something embedded there. He gingerly touches it, winces, and leaves it where it is. With the spin-drum shut down, the entire station is strained and shuddering with convulsions as parts slow or cease moving. Lender looks around for something to use, but there isn’t anything.
He hastily unclips his punchgun and aims away from Weston, pulling the trigger. The rod springs out of the barrel at the speed of a bullet and then retracts nearly as fast. The speed and force is enough to push Lender backward toward Weston. He twists around as he sails across the room and into the bodies of Weston and the scientist. Lender grabs hold of the scientist’s coat and then fires his punchgun into Weston’s knee, feeling it shatter inward. Weston screams as he is propelled into a spin, while Lender and the scientist are flung back somewhat. Lender pulls the scientist to himself to assess the damage, but he’s already gone. There is nothing where his face should be, save for an indecipherable mess of gory pulp and splintered bone. Lender’s back bumps into the ceiling, and he releases the scientist, pushing himself off the ceiling toward the desks below. He reaches the floor and pulls himself toward the door, through an asteroid field of debris and furniture. When he reaches the door and exits, he looks back to see Weston attacking the walls of the station itself.
Lender is navigating his way down the staggered hall, slamming into nearly every surface along the way. There is a loud crashing explosion, then a perpetual hiss that seems to come from everywhere. Lender speaks with gasping breaths, his voice carrying into the empty depleting air, “Ah, Christ. I’m coming - I’m coming in, Deb. We gotta go.” He winces and groans as he impacts heavily into each wall. He reaches the corridor back to his ship and is amazed to find the Chimpanzee still alive. It is on the wall, clutching a support beam with one hand and a foot, and is still chewing. Lender pushes himself down the corridor and glides silently past the chimp, slamming into the airlock door with a loud metal thud. He feels as though he is gasping for air through a straw, yet he knows there is plenty of oxygen left in the station. He opens the airlock and looks back at the unsuspecting chimp. He speaks aloud, “God dammit… warm her up, Deb. I’ll be right in.” He flips the all-systems-on switch and then pushes himself back toward the chimp.
Lender lands heavily against the wall behind the chimp and attempts to grab it. It doesn’t put up any fight at all, and Lender is able to hug it to himself, kicking back toward the airlock. He hits the doorframe and has to pull himself into his ship. Once aboard, he pushes the chimp away unceremoniously and it bumps into a ladder, holding fast to it. He maneuvers himself familiarly into the cockpit, pulling himself into his seat. He looks up and out of the fenestrated front of his ship, and he sees nothing but blackness and stars. Lender experiences something like agoraphobia for the first time: breaking out in a sweat at the sight of the vast void ahead. He shakes the feeling off as best he can and guides his ship off and away from Zeta Station. He unclips from his seat and pushes his way down the ship to check on the strange primate passenger. When he looks down into the cargo bay, the chimp is there on the ladder, mindlessly chewing at the last remnants of its prize. Lender begins to move down toward it when he hears the sound.
It is a low, rolling wave of guttural sounds, as though thousands of whales were croaking out their alien song. Every bolt and sheet of metal rattles and quivers with the vibration of that sound. Lender can feel his internal organs shaking inside, and he is hit with a wave of nausea. He looks at the chimp and sees it flailing in the air, no doubt screeching, but Lender can’t hear anything. He pulls himself back to the cockpit and looks out of the massive windows that make up the face of his ship. Lender becomes frozen with fear, a deep and primal dread. This time he sees a glittering void with scattered stars, far fewer than there were before. From the left side of his vision, stars begin to emerge, as if being created in a vast sweeping motion. There is something out there, moving through the vast and empty universe. And now Lender can make out the shape of it by the stars it blocks, and it is a terrible thing. It is shapeless like a siphonophore, and it is far too distant to discern details. Yet, he swears he can see a rippling movement, an undulation reminiscent of worms or billowing smoke. The glittering void is in fact it’s reflective form or flesh or whatever unearthly name can be attributed to such a thing. It appears to weave and swim between entire galaxies and collections of stars half a universe away. He remains frozen in place, unblinking and fixated on the shape in wide-eyed terror. A myriad of thoughts flicker through his mind, and he realizes that he is not just small in the universe, but inconsequential - less than nothing. He thinks this and other horrifying thoughts, but only gives voice to one. He whispers into the void, “oh god…” as a single tear spills softly from his eye and floats away, shining in the dark.
