Author : Clint Wilson, Staff Writer

Captain Alexander sat strapped into the pod. The others watched him through the facemasks of their sterilized white suits. Dobson, the head of the project gave him one last nod through the window of the control room as the countdown finished and the command was entered. And with a great white flash, through the wormhole the good captain went.

The next thing he knew the pod, with him in it, was whisked to the center of the galaxy in less than a nanosecond. The plethora of stars outside were brilliant. He floated there completely awestruck as he blinked around at the glowing nebulae without.

And then without warning the heart of the galaxy suddenly spoke to him.

“Welcome traveler.”

For a moment his words caught in his throat, but he eventually managed to answer the unseen voice, “Who… who are you?”

“I am not a who, I am a what. I am no living thing, but a naturally occurring mass of matter and energy with calculating abilities. You would think of me as a computer.”

“A… a naturally occurring computer?”

“Yes, most galaxies have them. We even communicate with one another, but we are not truly complete until we are fertilized. Again, welcome traveler, you are the first, so you will be the seed of life.”

Captain Alexander meant to ask another question when suddenly all of his questions were answered at once. The pod disintegrated around him and instantly he was no longer the physical being he had just been. His life force was now pure energy and he was thoroughly integrated with the naturally occurring calculating mass. He was now hyper aware of everything.

He knew that he was indeed the first life to reach the heart of the galaxy. He was also aware of thousands of other life bearing planets. All at once he knew every heartbeat, every pulse, of every living thing in the galaxy. His consciousness was expanded beyond anything he could have possibly ever imagined.

Now the Milky Way was no longer a mindless mass but a living entity, with his super expanded mind at its center. He was the life force driving everything and anything. He whole-heartedly accepted his new position and knew with absolute certainty that from here on he would watch over all things, including the poor, sad, misguided souls back on the tiny blue planet of his origin.

And as his love for all things in the galaxy spread he conversed with other gods in other galaxies, and he knew that everything was always going to be most grand until the end of time. He knew this with his heart of hearts, and with his all-knowing mind and his precious soul.

Back in the lab the team stared at the catatonic man inside the pod. He had a distant smile on his otherwise blank face as a steady stream of drool ran down his chin. The team leader, Dobson addressed his second in command. “What happened Hutchinson?”

She stared at the numbers on her screen and said, “It’s going to take some time to figure out what exactly went wrong, but it’s obvious that he never went through.”

Dobson nodded, all the while thinking, poor bastard. “Yeah, at this point I think it’s safe to say that the mission was a complete and utter failure.”