Author: Alzo David-West

When you look out here in deep space, it’s not only black. There are all these forms and shapes hanging in the darkness, against the darkness. Sometimes they resemble clouds and peaks, even eyes staring at you across light-years.

Strange colors fluoresce and fade. The scene is a manifold in which everything becomes a painting, filled with shining, glowing points and trillions upon trillions of galaxies. They seem so near, yet they are vastly apart.

It’s a still-life painting come to life, and we are inside it, like the improvisations of Kandinsky and Pollock. I stare out the window of the space station orbiting in the system of TRAPPIST-1.

The nebulae and galaxies remind me of lightning bugs floating through starry nights. Someone once said the numbers were too many to comprehend. I see fissures at the edge of time and, between them, a burning blue incandescence outlined in scarlet and crimson.

What lies beyond the spaces in between? There are enormous planets, infrared emissions, and traces of water and ice. Atmospheres, gas, and rock circle solitary stars. Refracted lines of light grow dim in the distance. Iridescent plasmoids shine with white rays, ions, and heat.

Can you see that void where there is supposed to be nothing? That is where the crystal forms. It materializes spontaneously, along the magnetic field lines of a magnetar, a structure emerging from within an unseen quantum whole. Light reshapes.

The crystal pulses. What does it mean? I think it’s calling me. So I enter my shuttle. Where will I go? Why does it beckon me and no one else on board the station?

My shuttle approaches it slowly. It is as big as a building, and I am so small.

“_| _| |_ |_.”

“Hello.”